Rotorscale 450 AS350 and Airwolf with a few mods

F106DeltaDart

Elite member
After a bit of a wait, Motion RC released the Rotorscale 450 PNP helicopters a few days ago. I’ve been testing them out for a while now with and messing around with some customization. The helis are already mechanically set up, with motor/servos/ESC included and the Roban 450 sized fuselages. The mechanics are a clone of the Trex 450 SEV2. All you need to do is add your FBL of choice and go. They are also planning on offering 3D printed parts, and multiblade heads as optional upgrades.

Bottom line, these are a great value for the cost, and will offer a ton of customization, as well a long awaited source for 450 fuselages and parts. Here are a few photos of various mods I’ve been running an ikon2 in my AS350 with all stock servos and motor. I did switch over to a HobbyWing Platinum V4 ESC for the active freewheeling capability. This allowed me to lower the head speed so that I could run a 3 blade scale head. Also used the main rotor blades from the 470 size AS-350 in this setup.

Here are a few photos of my first round at giving the stock chopper some detail. Added on the basket, snowshoes, exhaust, wire cutters, and mirror kits.















The basket made built of a brass frame, with screen door mesh glued to the brass. Thin brass rods were also bent and soldered to make the mirror kits. The snowshoes were made of styrene. I believe most of these parts, as well as a few others, will be available as 3D printed upgrades in the future
After flying it this way for a few weeks, I had an incident that was entirely my fault, and decided to rebuild the heli with a different scheme. On the Hirobo 3 blade head, I forgot to Loctite on of the spindle bolts, and it shot a blade off during ground run (luckily!). ALWAYS remember to double check those Loctite joints!! Anyways, the damage from the other 2 blades cut through the canopy and boom.



However, with some fiberglass cloth and high build primer, it was repaired and upgraded! I replaced the tinted windscreen with a clear windshield and repainted in the scheme of one of the OK City police choppers. Still need to add the searchlight and FLIR, but it turned out great, and really flies fantastic! It’s had over 6 months of incident free flying after triple checking those Loctite joints!





 
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F106DeltaDart

Elite member
I’ve also been flying the Airwolf for over a year now on an ikon2 and all stock electronics. Around 6 months ago, I decided to add some extra details, and mods to the wolf. The first one was to change the main rotor rotation to scale direction (CCW). This was done by disassembling the heli, pressing out the one way bearing, and putting it back in upside down. I also flipped the tail rotor over to the left side, fabricated a larger scale-sized V-fin from balsa, extended the side window pieces forward, and replaced the tinted windshield with a clear windshield. Here are a few photos of the finished bird:















 

PsyBorg

Wake up! Time to fly!
Airwolf was the show back in the day. I always wanted an rc version of it. Till I saw how expensive they were back in the 70' and 80's.

By the time I got situated and wanting to get back into rc the Huey cobra and then the super cobra took top spot.

Now its the apache longbow at the top of my list but airwolf is still top 3
 

F106DeltaDart

Elite member
Thanks guys! The Airwolf is a sweet flying machine! And helping out with testing and design on the Rotorscale helis has been a ton of fun. Hopefully it enables more people to get into scale helis with the cost, effort, and parts being significantly reduced from what is normally required.

And Psy, a Longbow Apache would be sweet!! Would be interesting to figure out how to fix the radome in place on top of the mast.
 

PsyBorg

Wake up! Time to fly!
Mount it to the pre drilled holes used to mount the t bar for pitch setup on any fbl head.

Just have to make sure the radome is well machined and balanced.
 

F106DeltaDart

Elite member
Mount it to the pre drilled holes used to mount the t bar for pitch setup on any fbl head.

Just have to make sure the radome is well machined and balanced.
That is one way to do it, but the radome on the full scale is actually fixed and does not rotate with the main rotor. Kind of the same thing as the Mast Mounted Sight on OH-58 Kiowas. I would bet with some clever engineering, you could run a shaft through the inside of the main shaft and hard mount it at the bottom of the mechanics. Would be interesting to mess with though!
 

Namactual

Elite member
The Apache is my favorite as well. I have very fond memories of Blue Thunder, but I am not sure that design has aged so well.:unsure:
Some day I will buy myself a heli, these look like fun.(y)
 

Mastercrat

New member
The Apache is my favorite as well. I have very fond memories of Blue Thunder, but I am not sure that design has aged so well.:unsure:
Some day I will buy myself a heli, these look like fun.(y)
 

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