V-Max build. Christmas 2007 and Santa was good to me! Well, that's not quite correct as I ordered the bits and went down to Revolution Models in Altrincham, (Manchester UK), to pick them up on the Saturday before Christmas. I was NOT going to skimp on the specifications so the bill for the conversion came to £683.00! ($1,345.00). So what did I get for my money: 1 X Quick UK V-Max conversion kit 3 X Futaba P-SBL451 servos for the swash 1 X JR DS8900G Tail Servo 1 X CSM 720 Gyro 1 X CSM Revlock Governor 1 X Quick UK tail push rod (replacement) Various fixtures and fastenings. So the great day arrived. Carol, my wife, had packed it all perfectly, including the push rod, so it was opened and put to one side for a day when I would have some time to look at what I'd bought.  On the day after Boxing Day I opened the flat brown cardboard box from Quick UK. Following usual practice, all the parts were in numbered bags that corresponded to the steps in the instructions that comprise of two sets of A4 printed material. One with pictures, one with text instructions. So I read them both once and started the build! Everything's well presented and of the high standard you expect from Quick UK. First thing you have to do is dismantle the donor R90/60. This page is NOT a detailed guide, the instructions tell you what to do but basically you take the main shaft, supporting bearings and main gears out, dismantle the collective servo tray, and remove the tail drive unit. That leaves you with the bottom frame set including the engine, brace set and under carriage. I removed all of them to check things out, but I suspect you could do the conversion without removing the engine. Here's the thing, I suddenly realised I'd NOT bought what I was expecting! My flying friend Ian Simmons, had recently converted his Raptor 50 to a Zero G, and I was expecting a similar full frame conversion. The V-Max is NOT a full frame conversion. It just replaces the top frames and provide ECCPM and a higher centre of gravity. Even Carol said she thought I was buying a new heli for Christmas! That said, and the job done, I'm VERY impressed with the results. The assembly of the frames was straight forward and as per instructions. One thing I realised straight away is this is a job you have to do twice. What I mean is you have to assemble things and check allingments, then take it apart bolt by bolt, apply thread lock (blue), and put it back together again. Point to note, everything fits together perfectly! Stick to the build sequence and don't open any bags other than the ones you need, The only servo I decided to keep from the donor R90 STD, was the throttle that's a 8300G digital that I had refurbished by JR a couple of years ago. This servo's fitted quite early in the build because access is restricted once you've assembled the battery tray. I removed the servo from the old frames and installed it using the supplied 2.5 mm cap head bolts and all was well, for the time being at least. I took my time with the build but reckon it could be completed in a day if you sat down with the time on your hands and had everything ready to install. I spent about three evenings assembling everything and maybe another two evenings installing the avionics. During that time, I realised I needed a few other bits and pieces so went down to Revolution Models to pick them up. One of the things I needed were new servo mounting rubbers and inserts, as it occurred to me that I'd mounted the throttle servo without the inserts and the old rubbers were looking a bit compressed. Five minute job to replace the rubbers. NOT! And this is my only grumble about the V-Max. All the servos are mounted using 2.5 mm cap bolts that thread directly into captive nuts located on the inside of the main frame and there's a warning in the instructions about taking care not to knock them out of the frames during assembly. However, being a diligent builder, I used blue thread lock and that caused a huge problem when trying to remove said bolts to renew the mountings! Two of the captive nuts lost their grip in the frames and started spinning. Fortunately one was easily accessible, but the other was the back right at the top and access was VERY tight! To cut a long story short, I managed to remove the bolt and eventually re-install the servo. The captive nuts are not hexagonal but round, and it's not easy to get a grip on them. Eventually having worked out the access issues, I used a soldering iron directly on the bolt head to get some heat into it and applied sufficient grip with pliers to the nut to remove the bolt. Took about an hour for a five minute job. So I was now looking at the completed frame set with the servos and push rods installed, all centred up and all the angles correct without using any sub trims in the tranny! Next step was to install the CSM 720 Gyro and the obvious place for that was behind the mast. This was one of the main reasons for the trip to Revolution Models because I'd already test fitted the gyro and found the wires were a bit short so longer ones were needed. The gyro's dead easy to set up and having checked the rudder channel for correct movement and direction it only took a couple of minutes to set the endpoints and initial gain. The next task was setting up the CSM Revlock. The ideal mounting place is at the top of the vertical bulkhead just behind the battery tray and double sided tape's provided. The donor Raptor was fitted with a Throttle Jockey so I took the old sensor off and installed the CSM unit. All the wiring fitted perfectly so I entered the calibration process, again, being CSM, dead easy. Next was the sensor test and this is where things went pear shaped! I could NOT get the sensor recognised. On investigation I found the Quick UK cooling fan, that the original builder, Ian Tongue had installed, has two magnets, and they are absolutely flush fitted in the face of the fan! A perfect job. What's not perfect is that you don't use two magnets with the Revlock unless you're running a slow revving petrol engine, and in those circumstances both magnets must have the same orientation. My magnets are north and south orientated, hence the sensor test failure. What to do? After consideration I decided to replace the governor rather than butcher the cooling fan. A quick call to Dave at Revolution Models, and he sent me a Revmax in the post, and I returned the Revlock paying the small price difference. Job sorted, but it held up the final job of tidying up all the wiring and sorting the transmitter programming. With the amount of electronics on a modern heli, getting the wiring reasonably tidy is a challenge. The regulator for the Duracell RX battery was wrapped in foam and cable tied to the underside of the battery tray. The receiver, again padded with foam is attached to the bottom of the vertical bulkhead, beneath the governor which leaves the battery tray free for the battery! Next step was to set the maximum and minimum pitch values. By default, I was getting a range of between + and – 15 degrees, that I think you'll agree is a bit extreme! The default ECCPM mix value in my JR 8310 is 60%, so I reduced it to achieve about + and – 11 degrees. Next I looked at the cyclic pitch and again adjusted values to achieve about 7.5 degrees as suggested in the instructions. There's no binding in the corners. Basic pitch and throttle curves were set, and I programmed 51% ATV for Aux 3, Revmax, in normal  mode, and 58% in flight mode 2. (I took these values from the existing model and they used to give a head speed of between about 1800 and 1850. All that's left to do is fly the V-Max and I'm looking forward to that! Having read various reviews and discussed it with Richard Budd, who wrote the review for Rotor World, it will be a significantly different heli from the Raptor 90 STD. I'll let you know. Edited 09/02/08 Saturday Today the weather was fantastic, more like a day in May than February. Unfortunately, I couldn't take full advantage because I had to collect my son, Christo, from a gymnastics training session in Wakefield at 1:00 pm. (Christo's been selected to train with the UK National Gymnastics Squad so his time's valuable as well. The sacrifices we parents make huh)? I finally got to the Bury Club's flying field at about 3:00 pm and it was warm and sunny. Only three other people there, and they were about to pack up for the day having been there since mid morning. One of the Club's rules is that they don't allow solo flying. In my opinion a VERY sensible rule, so I found out how long they'd be around for. Turned out to be about an hour, and that was more than enough for a couple of familirisation flights with the V-Max! I've not flown since October so was a tad nervous to say the least, but I was not prepared to rush the situation. First thing to do was a range check. Now here's an odd thing. I used to fly on channel 65, and with that crystal set, during a range check, I could never get more than about thirty feet away before the signal was lost. I've changed frequencies and crystals to suit the range available at Bury, and today I got more than a hundred feet away and still had a viable signal! All for the good. Fuled up, checked out the air frame, servo movements, tail responses and all looked well. Time to crank the engine that hadn't been started for three months! It started within five seconds and settled down to a fast steady tick-over. (Just love a well set up YS)! Walked out to the flight circle, put the V-Max down and let it warm up for a few seconds whilst I walked back a safe distance, about fifteen feet.  Advanced the collective/throttle, settled the tail with a few jabs of left and right and guess what? It just lifted off the ground and settled into a stable hover! The head speed was a bit low and the blade tracking was out by a fraction, probably half a turn. It also needed a couple of bleeps in the tranny to trim it out, but apart from that, nothing else required. Major result! I put it on the ground and advanced the gain on the RevMax by a few points to get approximately 1850 on the head, and increased the gyro gain from the default 60% to 65% because I'd noticed a "loosenes" to the way the tail was behaving. The rest of the first flight was really all about hovering to see if anything was going to break or fall off, and to set trims in both flight modes. (You can tell you've not flown for a while when you land in Idleup 2 and expect the engine and rotors to spool down when you drop the stick)! No damage. Second flight and into circuits, flips, loops and rolls. Now I could feel the diference between the V-Max and the Raptor 90. It's just SHARPER and more responsive. When you move the stick, the heli just does what you asked it to do, no more, no less. The vertical climb out is also much better and that confuses me because the amount of engine power available is just the same as it was before! All I can put it down to is the additional collective power available from the three servo ECCPM arrangement. Fast forward flight was so smooth and controllable, and the loops were as big, or as small as I wanted to make them. The flips are where I noticed the most difference. I felt as if I was using less stick to achieve the same result, and each "event" seemed to start and end far more sharply. All in all the V-Max feels lighter in the air than the Raptor. What a machine! At the end of the second flight I did a few maximum power climb outs and noticed the tail was moving about 25 degrees to the right, and similarly, when applying negative pitch in Idleup 2 to come down, the tail was shifting noticably. Subsequently, I've spoken to Richard Budd again. He told me he has the same gyro and servo on the test machine. His Gyro gain is at 91% so I have a bit of a way to go yet! In addition, he stressed the importance of doing the final flight tests with the CSM 720 where you switch between Normal and Heading Hold whilst in fast forward flight. That's for the next session. Edited 12/02.08 Tuesday. There are advantages in having an occupation like mine. I work short term contracts, mainly within Financial Services, training coaching etc, and often away from home. At the moment, I'm between contracts (unemployed) so can take advantage of this fantastic spell of weather we've been enjoying here in the North West of England. I thought Saturday was nice, today was better, almost no wind and crystal clear blue skys. I went over to the Bury Club to meet with Leeland, so satisfying the no solo flying rule. Leeland flies electris helis, ranging from Heinslet to the Trex 450 SE. Today, he also flew a Raptor electric. Very impressive. Masses of power and very smooth. He helped out with additional setup to the V-Max that's made a world of difference. First off, I flew it in normal gyro mode and found the tail was out by quite a way so a mechanical adjustment was needed. Next we increased the gyro gain to 85% in heading hold, and about 80% in normal mode. Then, I test flew the heli in forward flight and completed the quick setup proceedure. Now when I punch in collective it's solid as a rock! There's the smallest of twitch as the power goes on and up she goes. The climb out has definitly improved over the Raptor 90. I'd noticed that the tail was very quick with the default 100% ATV as suggested in the CSM instructions. Not saying that's a bad thing, but I prefer a slightly slower response so I knocked back the ATV values to 90% and again that made a big difference to the feel of the heli. That done and it was time for some fun! I burned four tanks today just getting back in the groove and experiencing the new heli. I'm very impressed. It's so smooth and tracks so well. Looops were as big as I could make them, (huge) and once I was getting the colective timing right, flips were as small as I could make them. The other thing that impressed me was the engine. The YS ST4 is a fantastic power plant. It's not been run for three months. On Saturday it started within five seconds and today was no different. It's truely a "fit and forget" unit that once run in and setup hardly ever needs any tweaking. So, to summarise. What a machine! Well worth the time and money involved in the conversion.