Jaded Burnout fucked around with this message at 12:43 on Jun 18, 2020

A Proper Uppercut fucked around with this message at 23:29 on Jun 26, 2020

Xaintrailles fucked around with this message at 23:19 on Jul 4, 2020

• As stated earlier, using your own hobby grade transmitter (if you have one) makes a world of difference. Every move you make will feel smoother and more precise. Configuring curves and rates will be much easier too.
  
• Buy a shitload of replacement parts in advance. At this point, I almost have enough to make a whole new helicopter, minus the motor and receiver board. I recommend getting extra main blades (WLToys V911s blades are compatible and much cheaper in bulk), main shafts (probably the carbon fiber version--more on that below), horizontal shafts, tail props, main gears, bearings, and a spare servo. The K110 is a sister model to the older WLToys V977, so try searching for parts under that name to find them cheaper. There is also a limited amount of cross-compatibility between the K110 and the K100/V966 (for instance, the servos and all main blade parts are identical, but anything to do with the tail probably isn't).
  
• Carbon fiber main shafts are slightly cheaper than the steel ones, a lot more resistant to bending, and they won't send crash energy to other components as much. However, they are 1-2mm too long at the top and need to be filed down to get the screw hole to line up with the rotor head.
  
  Carbon fiber shafts won't bend the first time you make a mistake, but they aren't indestructible and will lose their torsional rigidity over time (due to internal cracking/disbonding, probably). It will take many, many crashes to make this happen, but if you start noticing intermittent mystery vibrations that are bad enough to affect tail hold and can't track it down because the shaft is still perfectly straight, a really rubbery, twisty main shaft is probably why.
  
  Protip: this is a bizarre discovery, but I've found that the lovely knockoff main gears sold on AliExpress fit the carbon shafts beautifully because the holes are slightly smaller than the ones on the genuine gears and more closely match the 3/4 moon shape cut into the bottom of the shaft. You'll want some of these if you go carbon fiber. Stick with the genuine OEM gears if you're going to continue to use steel shafts though.
  
• Put heat shrink over the tail boom. They are made of carbon and are prone to cracking during a tail strike if not reinforced. You don't need to cover the whole length. Covering just the front half will improve durability immensely.
  
• Put tape over the top center (near the rotor head) and bottom one-thirds (near the landing skids) of the canopy. Those parts tend to make contact in nose crashes and will crack easily if not protected. I like to use acetate cloth tape (the kind often used on bind-and-fly quads to secure motor wires to the arms) because electrical tape comes undone after a while.
  
• GNB 450mAh LiHVs fit the battery tray of the K110 perfectly. They are cheaper than the stock batteries and provide noticeably more power (my starting head speed went from 5,000 RPM to almost 6,000). You'll need to either build a Molex-to-JST PH 2.0 adapter or replace the battery harness on the ESC directly to use them though. The stock battery is trash and will fail sooner than you think, so expect to do this mod at some point.
  
• You can buy full replacement tail assemblies, but it's worth learning how to splice new motor wires on if you ever have to replace a tail motor or fix pinched wiring because individual parts are much cheaper. This model uses enamel wire because it is thin enough to run through the inside the tail boom, but it's actually not bad to work with. If you ever have to cut off a damaged portion of the wire, the coating can be stripped back by touching a soldering iron tip to it briefly.
  

Zorilla fucked around with this message at 20:44 on Jul 5, 2020