The latest changes to my SxS

[CLS447]

Well, other than the road dirt from hauling her to ROC, my machine seems to be holding together pretty well.

Some of the latest thing I am doing to my gyro are:

1. I had my AC 2 bearing towers bored to accept the RAF style bearings & teeter flanges. Nice improvement.

2. Got Hegar 6 x 4 wheels & 6 x 4 x 13 tires to replace the 6 x 6 wheels &"tundra tires". Less drag & a total of about 6 lbs less weight.

3. Got a Hegar 6x 4 wheel & tire for the nosewheel . Should definately be better for rough surfaces. About the same weight as the steel wheel with tube & tire. One problem though, it is too wide for my front fork but it sure looks good on there,the new mains should look fine to.
Gonna revamp the front fork... maybe something like the Sparrowhawk's design. Double fork with axle, semi- castering. I am concerned about fork strength, then I just look at a dominator & figure I'm overthinking things!

4. Thinking about swapping out my 13 lb Panasonic battery with an Ultra-start Red from Aircraft Spruce. 4.4 lbs & can start up to 100HP. Sure would hate to spend the $90 & find out it wont start mine!

5.I am having a set of towers made that duplicate the RAF towers in every detail except mine will have 4 bolt holes for the bearing block with standard american spacing. I believe the RAF's are metric.
It was then cheaper to order the droop stops & spreader assembly from RAF. Anodizing was extra...I got black.
RAF gets $40 each for their towers(no annodize) but could not make me a set with a longer bottom for the 2 bearing head.
So they will cost me a small fortune to have the machine shop make them. Is anybody interested in a set? We could share the expense!
I am doing all this to try a set of 30' RAF blades to see if the give the feeling of more HP & better climb.

6. May replace the Legacy starter with an extra EA-81 starter I have . Looks lighter & should draw less juice if I change the Batt.

7. I am looking for the smallest automotive alternator I can get. Like the one Ernie B. has on his SUB-4. Hopefully I can get a larger aluminum pulley for it .

8. Gonna take off another degree of pitch off the WArp to see if another 100rpm's gives more thrust.

9. Fix my trailer so I can get it back to the airport, now that the rain has taken a break!

10. Try 25' Dragon wings on my 447 to see if it climbs better.

11. Take a long winter break from flying.....BOO HOO!

[Brent_Brown]

Chris You might try a ridinglawn tractor alternators they as light as you can find. Thia is my John Deere 12v-14amp 31/2 lbs generator part number is AM877557 and regulator number is AM101406

[CLS447]

Thanks Brent, I actually have one of those for another machine. I will have to see if it will fit my mount.

[CLS447]

I ran her up today without changing pitch. Got the same number as the test at ROC,470 lbs of thrust. Took 1 degree of & ran her again. RPM's went from 5260 up to 5380. Picked up 20 lbs of thrust. But i KNOW WHAT THIS IS DOING TO MY CRUISE SPEEDS. whoops!

Can't wait to fly it now !

[automan1223]

Brent ?

Do those alternators have real bearings inside ?

[GyroRon]

Automan, those alternators are what is used on the engines that power the cooling units on refridgerated tractor trailers. These units run for days upon days non stop. I would say they probably have good bearings in them. What they don't have - or do really - is put out alot of juice. A diesel engine once started doesn't have much of a current draw, so these things weren't made to throw out alot of current. Works well for most gyros, but not for one with a electric Pre rotator.

[automan1223]

Ron,

If you have a good battery and dont do training with your pre rotator I dont see why a low am setup would be bad. I could fly for days with a bad alternator. My group 75 has a 90 min reserve cap at 25 amps. No gyro will pull even half that juice unless you have lights etc.
That small alt might be what the doc ordered.... But whats the point.

[barnstorm2]

Jonathan,

In another thread Ron mentioned a NHC Redrive that went bad again AFTER the gear replacement. Was this your redrive? what happened?

Thread: http://www.rotaryforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2610

[automan1223]

My redrive had a soft gear that was the victim of a machine shop that could not do their job. Larry confided in me that he threw those guys a serious beating and is now using a new machine shop to reharden the gears after the machine work is done. Larry sent me a new gear of the correct hardness. . I have about 10 hours total on it. At about 25 hours I will pull the drive again and inspect the gear for anything strange.

Brad King has been running the drive on his machine for a long time and has reported no problems. All the other gears looked great so it was just a hardness problem.


Jonathan

[barnstorm2]

Jonathan,

That is good news. The way it was worded in the other thread it sounded like there was a problem AFTER the new hardend sun gear was replaced. I have a few hours on mine and I am hoping for the best.

Thanks!

[GyroRon]

It was on the machine Bo Collins was flying, the machine known as " The Beast " I am not sure what happened, just know they had engine troubles and then they got those fixed and I still didn't see them in the air, When I asked was the engine troubles still not fixed, I was told the Re drive was busted again. I don't know what else to tell you Tim.

On second thought, I do know what to tell you..... DO NOT fly over anywhere you can't land. I wouldn't trust that thing as far as I could throw it after all the fuss and problems they have had with them. It was bad gears this time, what is next?

[GyroRon]

Jonathan, not everyone is going for the most weight hung under a set of rotorblades award. The reason YOU would do okay with the small alternator and a electric pre rotator is because you got a huge Battery to feather out the loads. Huge battery = lot's of weight.

On a lighter machine a small motorcycle battery works great, but if you got a electric pre rotator you have to limit the pre rotations per flight or the duration of the pre rotation to conserve power to run the engine, if you use the smaller - LIGHTER - battery and this type of alternator.

My old two place gyro had a electric pre rotator and a big alternator, I could pre rotate to my hearts content and the battery the gyro used was a 20$ riding lawnmower battery. But I have flown other gyros with electric pre rotators that used the smaller batteries and the small alternator, as the blades are able up to speed the engine will sometimes start to sputter due to lack of proper voltage left to run the ignition system....

[automan1223]

Mechanical common sense. Either you have it or you dont. I wonder if the guys who replaced the defective gear actually....

Pulled the entire unit apart and removed all the metal shavings that were split off the first sun gear. Did they drill the oil hole and improve flow. Did they fill the unit with mobil 1 and prelube the engine. Or was the whole thing run dry. ..... Did they clean the new gear with a brass rotary brush on a dremmel tool to clean the loving **** out of it and file and burrs off. My "common" sense questions could continue but I think you get my point. It only takes one lazy or stupid move to screw up the works.

Larrys drive is the best unit out there. It has a sprag and I would not trade it for any clutch, rubber coupler doohickie or direct drive. Unless of course I had a belt drive.

As far as a weight contest. If i have to land in a field of poo. I dont want my nose wheel to fold up under my machine or the landing gear to fold up under my craft. (like someone elses machine I know of....) My machine is not quite the tank you make it out to be. The group 75 is good for training. Now that my pre rotator is not wearing itself out during every run. I will go for the oddysey battery brent had. I have been watching that battery for a while. It is half the weight at 15 lbs. has a 600 cold cranking amp which means it should load out at a cool 300 amps ! and has a ton of reserve. If your engine is pooping out under elec load then you need a small battery to shunt to during high elec loading or you have a wiring problem. . If your cranking voltage gets below 9,5 volts. Of course then you have to consider the parasitic drag of an alternator trying to charge an overloaded elec system which will suck hp out of the engine when you need it most on takeoff. Ernie had a good 30 amp peanut nippondenso alt. That one was the best.

Mowing batteries have gone dead without warning on 2 of my lawn tractors. Left me stranded in the middle of my front lawn.... real scary....in fact it was the most traumatic mechanical experience I have ever had. I ended up walking to my truck and giving it a jump. I will never forget it.

No thanks. I want a REAL battery. My life is worth more than $19.95 or whats on sale at walmart or autodrone.

Thanks

Jonathan

[GyroRon]

My current mower has 500 hours on it's 19.99$ battery without a hitch, but it is only a year and a half old now.

My last mower had 1200 hours on it's original battery when I sold the mower this past spring, It was 4 years old... again a 19.99$ battery and never a problem.

The 19.99$ battery that was in the old two place survived the electric starter pre rotator shorting out at Bensen days a few years ago when I got the charmin award. The short melted the wires going from the battery to the starter on the rotorhead and the battery was hot to the touch.... But it was still giving good service months later when Chuck Irby bought the machine.

Nothing wrong with your machine being heavy Jonathan, it has the power to handle the weight. Some machines need to be as light as possible to be able to fly at all. Direct Drive gyros especially...

[CLS447]

Here is some more stuff, Chris.