SparrowHawk Redo

[Brent Drake]

Jon, your a true gentleman with all of your help. I could not have tracked the blades so well without your help. Thanks so much Jon!

[Master Roda]

I'm glad you were able to get them tracked Brent. They must be smooth again. Are the RRPMS where you want them? You should be a pro by now
Jon

[brs]

Thanks Jon for the picture. I remember you telling me about these lights once. If I can't get the DynaVibe to do what I want I may do something like this.

Since my belt is off and I'm waiting for a new one, I took the opportunity to change the drilling on the horse-shoe retainer for the top two bolts. I remember seeing that someone else had done the (Stan Foster?). Should make changing the belt take an hour less than it does. Another poor design redone.

ANTENNA: The Copper tape I ordered arrived so I put it to good use and finalized my antenna. It tuned up nice with a 1:1 at ~121 and the 1.5:1 bandwidth goes from 117.67 to 124.86. I seldom have to transmitt above 124 Mhz, mostly ATIS/ASOS stuff there. Pics below.

[PW_Plack]

Very good Brock! I'd have used a ferrite choke balun near the feedpoint for a little extra insurance, but you may get away without it. The real test will be to watch the gauges and check engine function at a bunch of different frequencies, especially where SWR is higher.

Now...I wonder if you paint over it if the increased dialectric constant and higher theoretical loss will lower the center and widen the 1.5:1 bandwidth? Hmmm...

For fun a couple years ago at an antenna seminar at ROTR, I made a dipole from some 2-inch wide aluminum air conditioning tape, using the forumla for the first try. It resonated way down in the FM broadcast band. I had to cut something like 2" off each end to center it at 120 MHz, and it was under 1.5:1 from 108 to 131!

I'd heard about the aerosol nickel coating "Super Shield" and its potential use for ground planes for years, and recently got a can to play with. It's surface resistance is significant, but it might be possible to spray a dipole onto the inside surface of a fiberglass vertical stabilizer or cabin A-pillar, and the loss caused by the resistance would make it very broadbanded. I may give it a try!

[Brent Drake]

Here is my Safari LED set up.
[IMG][/IMG]

[brs]

I've been trying to track using the DynaVibe (picture 1). I started out with .84 IPS (inches per second cabin-hop) and reduced it to .04. I felt really good about this but then I had circulure stick shack. So next I measured the side to side shake while in a vertacal descent and made appropriate adjustemnts on the barrel for side to side adjustemnt. After flying again I found there was no change. Perplexing.

Next I took a better look at some pictures I made last week while using a plumb-bob. Look closely at the shaddow in the second and third picutures and you will see that the blade is not off side to side but end to end where there is no adjustment. My rotor head is not true. It needs to come appart and corrected before I can continue. Two steps forward one step back.

Instead of messing with the head I called SportCopter and volunteered to be a guinea-pig for a new head and upper mast they have for the RAF/SH models. I'll let you know how it goes though I doubt I'll be able to post picutures of the parts.

On another note, I removed my PRSU and redrilled the horseshoe retainer to move the bolts clear of the ring gear (Thanks Dennis!). It was sooooo nice and easy to reinstall after doing this. Took the time to install all prsu drilled bolts so I could safety them.

[brs]

Hi All, It's been awhile since I've posted but I've been keeping up with some of the forum traffic. Wanted to share my SH door solution in hopes to generate creative thought. I suspect this could be adapted to several machines.

My first effort was to try to create doors similar to what SH had made as my efforts to purchase doors yielded no fruit. But in the end I abandoned this effort as the fellow who was to help me with the project was unavailable.

So the pictures below are my "Plan-B". We installed them today and I flew the pattern a few times. The machine seems much quieter and it is odd not having wind blowing at me from both sides.

The fellow in the pictures is Mr. Lee from Vietnam who works with these materials on boats. I found him by chance and from what I can understand he actually made some doors for an RAF about 8 years back. Anyone know whose gyro that might be? If you are near Portland OR and need some doors, PM me and I'll get you in touch.

There is no frame and it just snaps on around the edges. There is a vertical stiffener that bows the windows out. This provides extra space for the throttle hand and sets the angle of the front half to give more visibility. Getting in and out takes a little more care as there is not as much leg room but I find I can do it without any problems.

I am amazed at how clear the vinyl is. It is about as good as my dirty wind screen. From the outside there seems to be some glare from reflections but I've not noticed this from the inside.

[CLS447]

Looks great ! How's the new rotorhead working out ?

[okikuma]

Brock,

I missed this post last week. I like the current dipole antenna setup.

Check out this thread on baluns.

http://www.rotaryforum.com/forum/sho...ighlight=balun

Wayne

[ppetrazio]

Originally Posted by brs

Yesterday I installed ceramic wool in the supertrapps. The stuff I got was 1' thick which was too thick. But it easily pulled into two 1/2" layers, so I used that. Took about 10"X10"X1/2" per muffler.

I also drilled all the bolt heads, reinstalled with anti-sieze and safetied. The only unknown was how tight do I get those plates. I tried not to snug them down very much.

Also, at the PRA73 meeting yesterday I met Dennis Dubois who has a very clever little gyro. I liked his approach to suspension and am considering doing this to the SH-redo (shredo). Still studying the idea.

I have a issue with my new gyrocopter - both supports running from the wheel to the main mast sheared the bolt and I / we think this was because a hard landing without any give in the supports, having the third picture ball style shock absorbtion would help with landings and prevent the failure of the cross support bars. Can I buy them somewhere or pay to have them frabricated for me?

[CLS447]

Originally Posted by brs

Yesterday my parts came from SPDEXHAUSTS.COM. I've been very happy with these guys. From the time I started talking to them about the project to the time the parts were at my door step was only 4 or 5 days.

Unpacking and laying everything out was fun. This is a new experience that I was avoiding but is turning out to be fun and the frustrations have been minimal. You can see what arrived in the first picture. The tubes are all stock off the shelf "J" bends and "U"bends. The collector is made to order but this one was half done and only needed the 2" section welded on. All the parts are 304 SS except for the collector which is 321 SS. Got a deal on the collector because it was from another order that was cancelled.

First thing I did was to assemble the main parts to see what it looked like and figure out where I had to cut to get what matched my drawings (earlier post). Third picture are the parts reassembled after cutting. And of course the last image is the fitting and positioning.

I hope to start welding tomorrow after a quick refresher on tig welding. One frustration I have is that the J-tubes only come in one length and that is not long enough for what I need. The J-tubes go almost to the flanges so I'll have to extend them by about 2". BTW - the flanges are very nice - artwork compaired to what was attached to the SuperTraps. The two elbos on the lower left of the first image are for the exit. I've cut one in half to make two 45's and I'll create a joggle to get around the keel. The other one may end up as a spare.

More to come after I get it welded up, oh and I hope to be able to mount the new airbag struts tomorrow.

Just wanted to pull this back up.