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Having “traded down” from the medium and big nitro helicopters to the E-sky CP-Belt, I’ve gone one more step – to the E-sky Lama. At fifty odd quid I wasn’t expecting much. But the bloke on the trade stand at the Model Engineers exhibition said that I should give it a try – and that once I mastered this, then I could fly anything.
I bought the thing, brought it home & whirred it up. Instant hover in the mother in-laws living room. I couldn’t believe it. So stable and easy to fly.
Still without a crash I tried it at home. I found that it had a tendency to turn clockwise. I drilled a couple of holes in canopy (as I got tired of loosing the screws that hold it on) and tried to fix the adjustment pots according to the instructions. I still couldn’t get it to hover straight and was getting frustrated. In desperation I took the tranny to bits and ‘amended’ the trim lever so that it would go further. But even this wasn’t enough. I then had another go with adjusting the pots. Only this time I started off at the centre of the “proportional” one and moved it only a little bit each time/ Hey presto it worked! I now have to adjust the trim with a mini screwdriver – bit of a pain. I’ll probably swap the left control stick out of the tranny that I don’t use for the CP-belt, that I am now working my way up to.
The nearest thing to a crash that I’ve had was a slightly bounce against a rucksack in a rather too confined space. Result – the top blades must have hit the bottom ones – as two of them have matching nicks. And the tail boom has a break in one of the sections. Modelling glue doesn’t seem to hold for very long. I’ve sent off for the yellow flexible one – with the scale bits. I have a feeling that I’ll be doing quite a lot of scaling-up, just for the fun of it!
Yesterday I thought that I would be a bit more adventurous & try it out in my dads new loft room. Its about 40ft by 15ft and full ceiling height (and freshly decorated, so I had to be careful). Well after a few tentative hovers I thought oh well, what the heck. I stopped following the thing round like a lost puppy and flew it straight towards me from the other end of the room. Well I managed to smoothly turn it around using yje ‘tail’ and the cyclic and send it straight back where it came from. Five minutes later I was doing smooth, level figures of eight. We even had a photo shoot – although that was a bit off-putting. Other than in ‘fantasy land’ on the simulator, in 15 years I have never seen the front of a helicopter with me at the controls. A real sense of achievement. And I’m still on the first set of blades! What fantastic little machine!
MODIFICATIONS 1 - blades and inner shaft
I tried a couple of upgrades – the Xtreme blades and the Xtreme longer main shaft. Apart from the difficulty getting the mainshaft through the bottom bearing without bending the shaft this was easy to do. It keeps the blades further apart, is made of metal at the top (better I presume) and keeps the flybar in with a little cap that screws on. I’m pleased with this. As to the blades, perhaps they are not so good for a beginner – as the pitch must be more, requiring less revs, but I didn’t like them & they have gone back in the box. I’ll be asking Heliguy to send me some original ones. By the way the www.Heliguy.com is just fantastic – easy to order, keeping you informed and things turn up quickly & undamaged. This aspect adds even more to brilliant new hobby.
MODIFICATIONS 2 - canopy mod
I'm quite pleased with my first attempt here. I've detailed the steps as others may get ideas from some of the techniques. I'm no expert & basically made it up as I went along!
I started by trawling the internet for pictures of the real thing. I have cropped and shruk the images to avoid infringing any copyrights.
The first stage was to remove the stickers from a new standard Lama canopy. The excess glue was removed with enamel paint thinners. I then marked out the lower areas with 'TrimLline' tape. The clear areas were masked with Tamiya masking tape (brilliant stuff!).
I then masked the outside completely, taping a plastic bag over the front. I used Tamiya lexan body spray on the inside. The result was quite a neat job.
The trickiest part of the whole job is the side windows. Using the research photos as a guide, I drew the shape onto 0.5mm plasticard, double thickness, and cut the shape out with a craft knife and scissors. By doing both sides at once, I got them to be the same.
By searching round the internet, I found loads of ways of doing rivets. The simplest is to push a metal spike into the back of the plasticard. By experimenting, I found a plastic chopping board to be just the right hardness underneath, to give well defined rivets, without makeing a hole. I used the same tecnique with thin strips of plasticard for the other bits.
I continued to use Trimline to mark things out. The bands round the front require banana shaped peices (not strips) of plasticard. To get the right shape I taped plasticard over the front and traced the red lines, before removing and cutting out. Canopy glue is an absolute must. It sticks these materials together very well, can be repositioned - and most importantly dries clear without any misting effects.
I put together the engine kit that came with the 'unbreakable' tail kit. I painted the original tail (not sure how long it would last). I added the Xtreme battery warning / strobe set to the helicopter. To get a picture of all of the lights at once, I had to set the camera shutter speed to about 5 seconds.
MODIFICATIONS 3 - early repairs
Bought this set from E-bay from a Hongkong supplier. About £6 plus £2 p&p. Well, they say you get what you pay for ..... It fitted OK & looked nice. But the hei was all over the place. I haven't uploaded the pictures. Anyway when the original plastic swash plate came apart after a crash (never switch the heli on & carry around by the blades - you might just touch the throttle & drop the heli - needed new outer shaft & tail repair as well), I bought the official E-Sky swash, the other one might have been OK, but it was in the bin by then...
Browe the tail (again). Repaired by supergluing a piece of yellow plastic rod from one of the kids ("Ker-Plunk"). Then reinforced with very thin strips of glass cloth and 'fast glass' epox (for car filling). Quick lick of paint & good as new - with a bit more character. One of the stabilizer wings broke off. Fixed this back by drilling out, inserting a chopped off sewing pin & super gluing. I have got an Xtreme 'unbreakable' tail waiting, but couldn't be bothered to do all of the painting again & light fixing!
Watch out for motor connector fouling swash plate at the extremes. I had to bend the connector on the motor a bit. Also arms needed a lot of unscrewing to level the swash platen at the neutral position.
