[icyfreshy]

Pictures galore!

I bought a scale fiberglass fuselage of an Agusta A109BA a few weeks ago, it was just an empty shell so I designed the internal bulkheads necessary to mount the components. I didn't want to do a conventional RC heli installation but instead opted for an installation that's similar to full size helicopters by taking advantage of the structural integrity of the fiberglass fuselage. This meant I had to custom make the main and tail gearbox power transmission. It worked very well as these fuselages are incredibly strong and it's a lot lighter than it would have been had I used the conventional method which wastes the strength by adding a standard RC helicopter to the inside.

I milled the rotorhead, main gearbox, tail gearbox, tail tensioner, tail rotor hub, tail pitch mechanism, and several other small drivetrain and rotor components from various aluminium alloys. The head buttom and the main rotor blades were 3D raster milled from oak. I use Discreet Plasma for CADing and Vectric VCarve 4.6 and Cut3D for CAMing.

It currently has a gyro to stabilize the pitch axis. I haven't flown it with the added stabilization of the gyro so that's going to be interesting to test out. I might add a roll gyro later on.

The helicopter has a rotor diametre of 1437 mm and is roughly 1:7,5 scale. It weighs 3300 g (7,27 lbs) which is over a kg lighter than the norm for this size scale model. It will gain a little weight in the finishing process.

It has flown briefly but I had a little accident and had to make a fifth blade. I'll probably try it tomorrow.

I am also building a bigger Sea King that will also have a custom made fuselage, 100% DIY.