I have already mentioned the Delrin landing gear in a dedicated page because I felt it was worth dedicating that much space to it.
In stock form the piccolo will fly but the response is a little vague, to help eliminate this the first mod I did was to insert a swash ball into the standard swash plate, this gets rid of the slop in the swash and makes the cyclic response crisper.
At the same time I also replaced the stock anti rotation link, this also helps with the stability by keeping the swash plate in check and aligned.
The next thing was to replace the rotor hub, the standard one is plastic and uses nylon bearings, this is ok but when the rotor pops off, as it will do when you land too hard, these have a tendency of disappearing.
With the aluminum hub you can fit ball raced bearings which are secured with screws so they will never get lost.
Lastly I would advise replacing the supplied blade bolts from plastic to metal, the plastic screws supplied do an adequate job but very quickly lose there ability to remain tight and the blades will start to become loose.
Here are the parts in place on the piccolo
I could list every modification known to man here, but that would be ridiculous, instead these are the things I plan to do wether or not I have have the money to do these any time soon is irrelevant, but as I have done so far I will put up a link to which ever company or individual I use with some information on how good or bad the upgrade was.
Sooner or later the anti rotation pin will break on a hard landing, this pin is what stops the swash plate from rotating when the rotor head turns and without it you cannot fly, if you are on a budget this is a good solid repair which means you wont have to replace the swash plate.
You will need a pin or paper clip similar in size to the original AR pin some CA and some cotton thread, cut the paper clip to the correct length and glue it to the underside of where the break is, when the glue has set wrap the cotton around the pin and secure it and then carefully place small drips onto the cotton, once the glue has set the repair will be stronger than the original part.
I have finally succumbed to the dark art of Lithium Polymer batteries (Lipo's) after using 7cell Nicad's since I got the Heli.
Nicad's are good if you are on a tight budget and are very easy to use but only offer short flight times of at the most 5 mins.
Lipo's on the other hand are a different breed of battery and I won't pretend to know the full ins and outs but this what I do understand, Lipo's are, power to weight, superior to Nicad's and which basically means compared to Nicad's the flight times will be at least trebled, the only drawback is that Lipo's are volatile and if not treated with respect and care will either explode or burst into flames, but if you follow the advice given by the manufacturer and use a good dedicated charger they are safe.
I bought my first pack from RC Material.com a company set up by one of the members of the Ikarus forum who was also involved in the unofficial setting of a flight duration record with a set of Lipo's he constructed, I bought a 7.4v 2cell 1500mAh pack, many people have differing opinions on what type of pack is best for a standard set up like mine but after talking with the supplier I chose these, there are larger packs available made up of 3cell's but these are best used with some modifications mainly to the tail motor which will burn out with the higher voltage put through it.
I have timed a flight/hover with this pack and have an initial time of around ten minutes compared to around 3mins on my old Nicad's, bearing in mind that these were getting old, so if you can afford them Lipo's are a good investment to get the most out of your Heli and if you can afford an expensive charger the better although cheaper chargers are available that will do just as good a job.
The standard main blades that come with the piccolo do the job very well, but as you learn you crash usually fairly often and it will at some stage result in a cracked or broken blade, again there are many different options for replacement blades around and it all depends what you are looking to gain from replacing the blades.
I went for a pair of standard blades from Carbon Blades.com which are basically the same shape as the standard blades but being made from carbon fibre means they are much more ridged and stronger, and being more ridged there is less pitch up in the blades which should help when I finally master forward flight.
They also come with a small bag of screws that allow for fitting of a blade pitch adjustment system, which as it says allows you to adjust the pitch or angle of attack of the blades, this will allow you to increase or decrease the hover speed of the blades and increase or decrease the duration of the flight.
The flights with the new blades are very good, on the first flight after fitting I noticed that the slight blade tracking problem I had was gone and the conning angle was greatly reduced, this is where the blades when viewed from edge on in flight bow upwards, all I need to do now is master forward flight to see how good they are then.
