Well I did it again and put the Mini Titan e325 into the ground on Saturday doing a fair amount of damage, more than I usually do anyways. I just wanted to share what happened and what it costs to fix a small helicopter. If this had been a larger size model helicopter the repair cost would be quite a bit more and I’d probably be eating ramen noodles.
It was a pretty sketchy day of flying with wind steady around 10mph and with higher gusts. I had done one or two flights with no problems other than getting kicked around in the air a bit. I did a flip that didn’t turn out so hot and was a bit close to the ground. I tilted the helicopter forward and applied throttle/collective to get it up away from the ground but it just went in. I’m not quite sure what happened. I think it was dumb thumbs somehow, but my buddy Ollie said it looked like it got pushed into the ground by a gust of wind, I kind of like his story better.
Overall the damage didn’t look too bad from the outside but I found more and more bad things as I dug in.
Mini-Titan e325 Wrecked Full View
Mini-Titan Crash Closeup Photo
Visible from the outside is the carbon fiber rotor blades are obviously no good any longer and my cool holograms on the mini titan blades were also destroyed. Additionally the main-shaft is bent, the feathering shaft / spindle is bent and the flybar is bent. Also the main gear has shed most of it’s teeth. The tail boom took a boom strike as well and the black part of the canopy cracked, but can be fixed with some tape. Also the landing gear was cracked. I might be able to repair it with a piece of carbon rod and some epoxy, but I ordered a spare just in case.
Mini-Titan e325 Boom Strike Damage
Thunder Tiger Mini-Titan e325 Damaged Tail Boom
The tail belt managed to survive the hit and it’s still in pretty good shape. I had to remove the LEDs from the tailboom to take it off, I don’t think they’ll stick easily to a new tail boom, but I have some spare LED strips with the adhesive back sitting around still so I will use those instead. And the last immediately visible damage was that the case on the 9257 servo lost a pair of mounting ears in the boomstrike. I use a washer-head screw to hold my tail push rod ball on the servo which prevents the rod from being able to pop off, but it also means more stress was probably transferred to the servo instead of the carbon rod just popping off in the boom strike.
Mini-Titan e325 Damaged Futaba 9257 Servo
I ordered my blades from HeliFlightCenter.com, the local guys down the road in Gardiner, NY. They sell a nice pair of 325 carbon rotor blades for around $20.00 and you get heli-reward points you can cash in towards purchases later.
I ordered the rest of the parts from Heliproz in Montana since HeliFlightCenter mostly deals in other brands of helicopters. I bought parts as follows:
Feathering Shaft $5.99
Flybar(2) $5.99
Landing Skids $5.99
Main Gear(2) $5.69
Main Shaft Lock Ring(2) $5.99
Tail Boom $8.99
Tail Support Mount $2.99
Hardened Main Shaft $13.99
9257 Servo Case $12.99
Those parts with the blades comes out to about $90 dollars in repairs. While I had the helicopter apart I checked the bearings for the head, the tail belt drive takeoff and the tail rotor shaft. The bearings in the tail rotor feel fine, though in doing the check I discovered that the tail blades are out of track. The tail shaft is straight so either the tail rotor hub is damaged, or one of the screws holding the tail blade grip into the tail rotor hub is bent. I’m going to pull the tail apart later this week and check it, either way I believe I can straighten it out, or at least improve it, instead of replacing it.
The main shaft bearings were noisy and shot. Out of curiosity I asked Boca if they sold a full ceramic conversion kit for the e325 (ceramic races, ceramic balls, ceramic ball retainers) and they said they could get one together in a few weeks but it’d be about $1100, so I decided to pass on that. Additionally to do a full metal/ceramic bearing replacement in the e325 would be about $150. While I don’t feel that is expensive considering the types of bearings they are, I still don’t think it’s worthwhile for me to do that. Perhaps a more hardcore pilot would do it though. I’m just going to order metal/ceramics for the mainshaft and a spare set for the Scorpion 2221-8 motor.
I’m sorry there’s no video of the crash, we didn’t have anyone recording video Saturday.
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