Micro Gaba's Align 150 DFC Combo BTF.. CRASH TEST REPORT!!!!!

[coolgabsi]

So as I said in some other thread, that I was able to acquire a brand new Align 150 DFC faster through my local hobby shop Aero Hobbies. Love this shop BTW..

So I went there today and picked up the bird. As I had heard birds coming out of the box not workng well, I decided to take my Lemon-RX DSM2 5 dollar satellite and a pair of charged batteries which I charged using the same setup that I talked about before. here is a picture..



So this is the para board connected to my charger via a modified 6S balance connector.. The modification is that I have taken the ground and the third wire from ground (counting ground) and basically connected them to banana ports on my so I can trick the charger into thinking that I have the batteries connected off the main charge and the balance port. what that does is that it lets me connect all batteries on the paraboard, and then balance them .. the wires are just enough gaige to handle the amperage( even at 2C charging rate I am pushin only 500mAh per pack).. So this worked beatifully

Got the bird and in the shop itself started unboxing and getting stuf together to make it flyable




used the supplied doublesided tape and bind plug to get the lemon Rx DSM2 satellite installed on the bird. I chose to go with this satelllite as it was just so cheap. You can use any satellite you would prefer with your Futaba Jr or spektrum or align radio.



The satellite did not give me any hard time getting bound up and the bird's gyro intialized perfectly.

I had been online in the morning and programmed the radio off the available online manual so I had the systems working just right when I bound the bird. it was seriously a breeze.

the settings were EXACTY what the manual would say it should be. D/R expo trael adjust .. everything

Once done with the pre flight checks, I realized that the JR puts gyro on AUX2 while spektrum satellites put it at Aux1. So.. my gyro light was red (rate mode) .. I basically realized quickly the lesson learnt in past and enabled governer in the radio and that basically helped me use the governor settings and go into HH mode. All lights green bird intialized

take it out back into the shop's little storage space with just enough flyig air space, and try to hover.

First hover: the tail scared me as it kept going around.. but I realized, as the headpseed stabilized, and tail motor finally caught on, the tail was steady.... ish..

Landed it, spooled again, let it come up to speed on the ground, and lift off, and the tail was locked. Wagging but locked.

kept going down on gyro gain, and finally got it calm down.

in my flying style, the EXPO from factory was wayyyy to high. it was 30 percent, and the bird was slow to respond around mid stick. Which helped me get comfortable hovering aroun but then moving around I needed a bit more punch in the ele and Aile.


So.. I thought lets go inverted on ID1.. well.. roll rates were slow, my hands were shaking, it was indoor with a defined ceiling, I was nervous and excited, all that played int the bird not having enough room to flip inverted and almost coming and hitting me, where I basially did evasive manuevers... AND BANG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! FIRST CRASH! hahah yep I did it.. I hadnt even paid for the bird yet, and I had crashed it. luckily no one heard it . I saw stuff fly off. I was disheatened. but I got the bird and the battery was the only thing flown off.. and the skids had come off the posts.. But the bird was PERFECTLY intact. mind you this is cement ground and wood strucure it hit.

i got the shine back in my eyes ahah.. and put the battery and skids together.

That said, I now turned up the roll rate and turned down the gyro gain some on the gyro onboard using the tiny pots.

Got the bird to be more responsive.. but that didnt help as I was trying to do some piros on my second pack still indoors ,a and my un trained (or lost all practice hands) basically made it go up higher. This made the helicopter go full throttle into the ceiling and then crash pretty hard all the way down into the truck's frame that he is restoring for his daughter in the back of this shop.. this crash sounded HARD and man i was sure I broke stuff.. .

Pick up the bird, and this is what I see





Damage: Tail fin, Blades, main shaft, Feathering shaft. THATS IT!!! I am surprised and very very very very very impressed till now.

So here are the pluses
the bird to go into the the pitch response of this bird is ABSOLUTELY STUNING. it jumps aroundin air beautifully.

FLIES VERY VERY VERY stable. like hands off first flight when i got the tail to stop wagging. people say it feels big in the air and they are absolutely correct. this as just two batteries later.

Tail is very precise. The tail needs some rudder pre comp with pitch as the blades beat air pretty hard, but good part is that you CAN change that in the gyro.. Which makes the gyro much more customizable than other birds.

The settings and way gyro comes out the box is very stable and settings are good for beginner / intermediate pilot

while the micros this size with this much power are definitely not for beginners.

The canopy is align design , and people say it seems like an afterthought, but I thin its light, and perfect. just what is needed.

Till now out of two batteries, and 5 different flights , and two crashes hahaha (pretty bad I know) I dont think the damage is near bad enoigh


the wires are routed just beautifully which makes me think this is the second batch as compared to the first batch where the wires werent zip tied near the motor. I cheked the servos after every crash to make sure I still had the wires lol.. And no issues there at all .. time will tell



NEGATIVES by far::::

The bird is not indoor until you have 30 feet ceilings and area very big as the blades going this fast and so much power, the bird moves FAST when it moves. so i guess not a negative but definitely an outdoor bird and intermediate pilot and above

Settings out the box for me were way too slow. I will play with them to get them right where I want them.. but I like the fact that I can customize that

biggest let down is the hardware: screws. While all screws are all very well loctited, the screws are .050inch or 1.2** mm and the allen keys that came with it stripped three screws in first attempt DONOT USE ALIGN SUPPLIED ALLEN KEYS. but if you want to not loose your mind working ont his bird you WILL need a set of 050 allen wrenches (preferrably with a handle) of good qualiy.. The screws might not be the bes tquality either. I now have to make another trip to the hobby shop tomorrow to pick those up. I hate the screws getting stripped. and yes I stripped the jesus bolt on the head yoke and had to dremel that already and the allen keys were just not goo enoug hto grab the screws in the feathering shaft, so that pissed me off bad as things are on hold till tomorrow now.

BUT I AM VERY EXCITED ABOUT THIS BIRD.. i just gotta get past the small screws.. hahaha!

 

[breeze400]

Boy I'm disappointed GABA. You have enough experiance now not to crash your new bird first time out! Lol. Just impatient, that's all!

 

[Graham Lawrie]

Glad you got one and were able to crash LOL. Mine never lifted off the ground I checked the screws and could not get any of the Align allen keys to work. I normally use my own anyway rather than supplied as they are mostly cheap rubbish that come in the kits. Good report, just wish my first experience of this bird could have been as positive as yours

 

[Slobberdog]

Nice initial report Gaba, keep us all posted on how this little bird goes,

yes the screws are small on my 130 but you already know that, but at least they did not try and make the 130 screws Allen type,

Fly, crash, fix and repeat, but I have to say, you know the rules, where's the maiden video!

 

[Tony]

but I have to say, you know the rules, where's the maiden video!

I would really hate to have to ban one of my own mods...

 

[coolgabsi]

I wanted to make one today but it's gotta get fixed first lol

 

[coolgabsi]

ok folks here is some report on what has been going on with the bird

I read and heard multiple reports about peopl suggesting to rebuild the bird completely if it has any little issues like tail wag.. I thought that was nuts.. But NO .. It is right.. YOU REALLY NEED to rebuild this bird.

I was not happy with my tail performance, this is a Micro bird, so obviously doenst like vibrations. But the build is easy enough that you can readily find whats wrong and fix it.

So I got greedy in this horrible weather, with 20mph winds and took the bird out, the tail wasnt holding perfectly in the house , outside it just couldnt keep up, something in the bird was making it vibrate enough to which added pressure of ghusty winds and all, just made it go bananas. It just would wag and slide sometimes. Horrible. Ended but ditching it in soft sand. Still bent the main shaft. YES main shaft is pretty soft but feathering shafts can take crashes.

This was it, I was rebuilding the bird and making sure its done right. Its a small birdie so doesnt take a lot.

1) Motor: took off the motor, and there was a thin white layer below it --- Excess thread locking compound. the screws were in wayy too tight and had too much of the chinese cheap threadlocker on them. CLEANED IT.

2) Main gear is soft, and had an area where it was a bit warped, slowly pushing down, i got it all true.

3) The main motor's connector that goes into the ESC was not very well soldered. I touched a wire and wiggled it on one of the three motor connectors, One of the motor windings on the connector came off. So solder wasnt done well.. So I decided to take them out of the plastic housing completely, and resolder and heatshrink every single winding to its connector and install it well. It wasnt the prettiest job but it is done well

4) I wanted to leave the tail motor alone, but I knew if not today them some day when I gotta change the boom I will need to do the same to the tail motor connectors as I did the the main motor. While I hadnt seen the new Aling How to video to how to take the connectors out of plastic, I dont think that will always work as the little connectors can bend very easily. I had to fight to the get them out, but once I did, I resoldered wvery wire on it, heat shirnked it, and sintalled it back. Again not the prettiest, but strong

5) While inspecting the servos, trying to take them out, I endedup nicking on the little servo wires, so that meant I was resoldering that one little wire out of three on my elevator servo.

6) Took off the gyro, cleaned it off any tape residue, and the mount, inspected the body of any fractures or cracks

7) Installed the gyro back with good quality futaba gyro tape and two layers of servo tape. The gyro was riding a bit higher than stock but not high engouh to cause issues.

8) instllaed the satellite RX on the system using THIN servo tape rather than the thick gyro tape kind material supplied as that made the sattelite not touch the landing gear, as the kanding gear takes vibrations sttraight from the main gear and motor, and would trasfer it straight to under the gyro mount.

9) The way the landing gear has the battery connectors on it, is good, but the wires were a bit too tight for my past experiences with micro BL birds. SO I wasnt happy with that. So i ended up extending those wires (battery red and black) with a soft wire of comparable gauge so the landing gear would not be a hard mount in any way the gyro or transfering the vibrations that way

10) once that was done, I made sure my feathering shaft was good, blades were good, main shaft was true , main hub was true, tail was good, and put it all together and zip tied the wires in the right locations so 1 they wont get in the way of the motor at all, and 2 that they wont be flopping around causing the motor windings to fatigue.

11) again the feathering shaft screws had waay to much loctite, enough to hold one bering to the feathering shaft. And these bearings in the main blade hoilders are pretty soft so they break if you out any lateral presure of any kind. So I just got new blade grips and replaced the one which had the one broken bearing less. The bearings are to be VERY careful of in the bird's main blade holders. They are smooth but fragile.

After all this I charged up the battery up , put the canopy on ---- initialization process

Now call this me being paranoid, or coincidence. Every time I did intialize the bird, if It would take more than 2-3 seconds to start ESC intialization , and swash jump to show its all good, I would unhook it and rehook the system's power. The second intialization would always be fast. But my sat would be blinking cause I did not turn the radio off so it thinks there was a power loss or brown out

I decided this time to let it intialize and take its time. Everytime, i turn the the radio off and then on and plug in the battery and leave it still on the ground, the gyro would take about 5-7 seconds or more to intialize fully. I decided to let it take its time. and not disturb it. with the canopy on I could tell if my sat was bound to the radio, and every time it was, but just the gyro needed a bit of time.

I decided to let it be, and have patience. its hard! lol

But this time, after the rebuild, all systems check, good intialization, the bird hovered ROCK STEADY! like there was no disturbing the tail.

Usually going Idle up would have disturbed the bird out of its mind, and tail would not be able to keep up, but man, this time! it was even more steadier in Idle up.!!! I was screaking with excitement when I saw this.

with the system behaving this way I hovered it inside the house for 5 batteries, every time making sure I was varying the pitch on the bird to make it jump in the air around to make sure its tail was still holding well with no give and I was not loosing heading at any point.

And I was successful! I dont know what helped it, I dont say all birds will need this, but this is my review. I enjoyed not giving up on the bird and rebuilding it and doing it right. I know now that my gyro board is not bad, which was my biggest concern. and now that i know thats good, rest is all simple mechanical.



One thing still bothers me: Blade tracking---- The blades are not tracking well. I have changed blades, main shaft, featerhing shaft, hub, main grips, but not change. Not that its causing an issue, and its not. But it is producing the power with non tracking blades, as much as it is, what can it do with the blades perfectly tracking/ Thats my questions .. but hey, it aint no more, so I am waiting for good weather ouside to get out in an open field and rip it open!

 

[pvolcko]

Glad you get the gremlins tamed. Sad you had to jump through those kinds of hoops to get there, though. Seems Align has some QC and production practice issues with these 150's.

 

[coolgabsi]

YEP! they really do

 

[Slobberdog]

Gaba when I had a slight tracking issue on my 450 DFC it was the swash slightly out of level, and I mean slightly, got the level tool on it and now no tracking issue, just an idea!

 

[Graham Lawrie]

Good review Gaba.
The new modifications are hitting the market. Metal tail motor mount Shame on Align

 

[coolgabsi]

Alright so fixed the tracking issue

Looked closely at my swash and the swash balls going to the blade linkages , one of them had bent up a bit in one if my crashes. I took all the swash balls out, out them back in with a tiny tiny bit of CA on them.

Reinstalling the balls correctly with the bent one bent back to where it is supposed to be, the tracking is back to perfect.

Simple things


Graham:

Yes, they are .. Me tail motor mount, carbon tail fin, and harder main gears that don't warp in high stress flights and removals when fixing

This main gear is apparently the same as align 100

And the feathering shaft is under replaceable with mcpx bl's hahahaha ... Not that I would do it but in a pinch, that's good to know

Graham did you ever get your new board?

Your frame probably is not "A" version either as they had first batch have issues of motor mount breaking, frame breaking where the main motor mounts (all because of the material) and defects in the main mrs boards ... They are replacing that all for first batch buyers

 

[Graham Lawrie]

Gaba my 150 got sent back never got it going it was a duffer I am waiting for a new one from the second batch when they arrive in the UK. I believe they are here so just waiting for an email to say it's on the way Second time lucky?

 

[Slobberdog]

Glad to see you found it Gaba, if there is any discrepancy with the swash it shows up in the blades on these DFC birds, nice reports by the way, glad I held off from the initial fight for them,