March.23rd, 2002
I finished all the little detail that were remaining and I can finally say the heli is truely ready to fly. I was able to get the VDO tach figured out, it is designed to mount on the tail boom which I have no access to inside the scale body. The answer I found was to glue a plastic 35mm film case to the inside of the fuse right behind the rear window. I mounted the tach to the round film cannister like it would on a regular tailboom. It is easy to see and to reset and it out of the way.
I was also finishing the wiring details. I wanted to build some kind of case to enclose the battery and the nav. light computer. This case would also provide a box to install 2-position slider switches to turn on and off the nav. light system and a second switch that controls only the spotlight mounted on the belly of the heli.
Below are some pics of the spotlight, made out of heavily modified MagLite and the electronics box. The plastic box is actually a Futaba R149 Receiver retail case. I have it secured to the deck with two rows of one inch wide velcro. It worked out quite well.
The photo above shows the scale accessories I added. The door handles, grip handles and antennea are from Vario. The step is homemade from carbon fiber rods and 30 mil lexan. The same lexan I used to create the strut support reinforcement plates.
The above photo is looking inside the body on the left side looking forward, You can see there is plenty of room in the fuse, too bad the Raptor wasn't a CCPM machine as I could probably have modified it enough to allow room for a scale interior in the front.
The tail...
Here are my Raptors. In the foreground is my R46, as you can see, the H500 is a big heli, it really towers over the 46. This photo makes the 46 look bigger than it really is. I don't think I will have any trouble seeing the 500 in the air. Below is another view of the helis.
Well, that's about it... next pics should include some air underneath those long skids... Maybe some video as well. Thanks for visiting the site.