Collective

At first glance you'll be thinking this little part will be cake but that is far from the truth.

First problem is whether or not you're going to chrome it.  It's such an odd shape most places don't have a tank to dip it in. Second problem is that it has that aluminum piece on it. If they dip that you're in trouble because the chemical used in the chroming process will eat it up. What we ended up doing was to use chrome Vinyl. It's used in sign making and you can get it at any sign shop that does Vinyl signs.  After you conquer that little situation it's on to deciding to install it left or right in the pocket. If you center it, like we did, you won't be able to get your hand around it when you push it down into the pocket or roll the throttle off when you do an auto.

The best thing is place it as far to the passengers side as possible.

January 28th 2005

We took these pictures to show folks how in the full throttle position it

hits against the tub.

We knew about this when we first installed our tub and think if we installed our collective as far to the passengers side of the ship as we could have we may have not had this problem or at the very least it would be better than it is.  Since the tub is very weak and gives it's never been a problem but we still keep an eye on it.

Later on when you are rigging the ship you'll find you have to go back and make an up stop
that prevents the collective from lifting the rotor shaft too high causing it to come out of the slider collar.

If that happens the blades will be in full pitch and get hung there and I'm sure you can get the picture from there, a hell of a wreck. Doing this part later as opposed to early on in the construction process may be better because at final rigging you'll know exactly what your getting.

We tried to figure out a way to have our starter button in the end of the collective handle but we gave up.

If we do this, as others have, the button will have to rotate and thus so will the wires inside the tube. Now I'm not saying it will happen soon, but sooner or later the wire will either break or chafe from rotating in the tube. Then there is the wire vibrating around in there chafing a little bit more ever hour of engine time.

The starter circuit engages the starter when the wire is grounded and if it chafes and comes into contact to ground the starter will be turning and there wont be a thing you can do about it.

Until we can makeup some kind of a box to go on the end of it that doesn't rotate and has wires ran through a separate tube were going to leave our starter button some place else.

Bending that U shaped bracket is a real bugger lol.

We made two before we finally got smart and used a torch to heat the metal up. I was afraid to use heat because I thought it would take the hardness out of the metal but in the end that is what we ended up doing.

The collective rod in our ship does in fact rub the seat back and needs a slight bow in it to fix it.  I didn't like that idea thinking that if it ever came loose enough to rotate a bit it may allow it to get into a bind and lock up.

If your in another country like Australia I understand you have to use 4130 tubing or they won't pass it on inspection if you don't.

While I was in Tulsa this past summer prepping for my Phase III at Rotorway
I found a problem when I have the center collective installed.

When its installed my pilots side throttle is rachety and much harder to make light adjustments to.

First thing I did was since I was at John Spurling's was try a couple of his on my ship and I had the same reaction with all 3 of them.

If I left the tension bolt loose and rotated the pilots side throttle the passengers one out at the end would make about a 1 1/2 inch circle. My guess is where the two shafts meet one another they don't mate in line so that when the tension bolt is torked down they work against one another (bind) causing the problem.  To date I haven't fooled around with it any since then and if I come up with a fix I'll post it here.

RotorWay had a ship crash at the factory awhile back

and from what I got out of it the student rolled the throttle off and it locked up the CFI's  (Steve's) throttle in the other seat and he couldn't roll it back on. shortly there after RotorWay put out this Bulletin

When we were building our ship and got to this section, one of the first things I noticed was how flimsy the pilots side stop is but not knowing any better I went ahead and left it as it was.

Since this thing happened at RotorWay, I've been thinking about trying to come up with a way to reinforse the stop but it's going to have to wait until things slow down for us.

END