Introduction: With one base MaxiR micro-heli kit under my belt, I thought it might be fun for me, and useful for others, if I did a review of the MaxiR SE kit. While I do sell them now, suffice it to say that I got into this only because I really liked my first MaxiR - I always figured that it's easy to sell something that you really like! If you think I'm pumping sales with a glowing review, then please read the entire review. Although one might infer I don't like the heli while I'm pointing out some issues that were encountered, don't get me wrong - these MaxiR's are fantastic little micro-heli's! User testimonials are given at the end of the review. The Maxir SE was originally available as a custom-numbered, limited edition, pre-built (with motor installed) "collectors heli." Evidently it proved to be popular because now this model is available as a kit. It features anodized red or blue coloured aluminum frame sides, boom and other parts, as well as CF fins, blades and misc. upgrade parts not included with the base model. A very unusual features is the very light combination flybar and paddles (see last photo), which probably help with the 1 roll/second performance. Compared to the base kit's fiberglass frames, this SE kit has a slightly different pattern to the frame sides, which allows the option for placing the motor ahead of the main shaft (edit: newer base kit frames are like this too). This would be useful with balancing when a lighweight LiPO back is being used in conjunction with a heavier gyro like the GY401. My previous experience with the base kit's great performance, amazing durability, reliability, and modestly priced repair parts has me looking forward to my life with two of them! I was pleased to notice that there's a new manual with colour CAD renderings available on the LAHeli web site.

KIt Specs (actual/used):

Rotor Span: 620mm RTF weight: 350 - 450g (not completed to weigh) Motor: AXI 2208/26 (AXI 2208/20) Battery: LiPO 2S-3S 700 - 2000 mah (LiPower LIte 3S-1320 mah)

Rotor blades: LAHeli carbon 28 cm (included in kit) Cyclic servos: HS-55 (Airtronics 94091Z) Tail rotor servo: HS-50 (HDS-877) Gyro used: FutabaGY401 Speed control: TMM 2512-3 Heli

Build Philosophy:

Huh? What's that? :) Well, I guess it describes an approach needed for success with a minimum of anguish. These MaxiR kits are described as "builders kits" sometime, and perhaps that fits. With any micro-heli, some fiddling will be required, granted. But with the MaxiR kits there are a few tedious areas - things that perhaps did not have to be, and even a few more with the MaxiR SE.

So please don't figure on building today and flying tomorrow. Or perhaps even next week. Take your time and adopt an attitude that allows for patient assembly of the kit. Enjoy working the parts to make them just loose enough to be nicely free-moving. If you are a n00b, don't rush into a solution to some difficulty without perhaps asking others about it. Please check out my MaxiR enthusiasts' site and forum for more info about assembly of the MaxiR.

A word about these photos: In an effort to show contours in the black plastic, some photos were deliberately underexposed. Also, trying to accurately portray the colour of the anodized red parts was very challenging. And.... click on a photo to see a larger version of it.

Kit Contents:

Maxir kit is organized into many bags.

The photo on the left shows the kit contents less the blades. The one on the right shows the essential differences between the base kit and the SE. The anodized parts are finished very nicely. The carbon tail rotor blades and paddles are nicely made with a very nice finish. The flat pieces like the tail fins and others are a little odd, compared to what I'm used to - they are finished on one side only. The other side has the undulating weave in its natural 3-D relief. They remind me of the dimpled flights available for darts. They are quite thin and very light and perfect for the job, I'm sure.

Good value in "bling" is included.

On the left is a photo of the aluminum "bling" and o the right is the carbon "bling" included in the Maxir SE kits.

Building the Canopy: (later)

Building the frame:

A note about shaft/bearing fit: If a bearing is so hard a fit on a shaft that you are resorting to hammering it, don't do it! First try other bearings and you might find enough variances in their manufacture that you get an easier fit that way. But be prepared to chuck up the shaft in a dremel tool and run it with a piece of fine emery cloth folded over it. This only takes a few minutes of sanding and trial fits to get it good. If you force on a bearing, you will very likely live to regret it!

	Although there aren't that many, it's best to scrape off any casting remnants on the plastic parts using an razor knife before assembly. The first step involves pressing the bearings onto their mounts. Inserting a rod such as the round shaft on a hex driver into the bearing helps with steering it into the bore straight. Don't use the main shaft for this because you might bend it. The manual shows the base kit's construction photos. One difference with the MaxiR SE immediately coming into play is that the "swashplate lead" (anti-rotation pin) is replaced by a nice setup using an extra swashplate ball which rides within a guide. The photo on the left shows that part lined up to be installed. The main shaft is shown inserted in the ball bearings to test for their alignment.	My kit came with the head block installed on the shaft. It should spin very freely - check this as you build the frame to make sure that it doesn't get misaligned. One little problem that was easy to see was that the top bearing block just did not want to line up parallel to the top of the frame. The servo mount interfered with the top corner of the frame. Getting the bearings installed in line with the shaft is very important, so I filed the sharp corner down a bit and also took away a little bit of plastic. Alignment of the frame sides was checked one last time and the screws firmed up in their seats. The swash guide was then screwed into place with its solitary bolt. Note that the MaxiR SE frames allow for mounting the motor to the front or rear of the main shaft!

	The simple undercarriage frame is the heart of the Maxir's crash survivability. Usually if anything breaks it's the skid mounts and they can usually be repaired if desired. Then the frame triangles will bend and absorb impact, but also sometimes break. The frame triangles are slid onto the frame rods while checking alignment with the mounting holes in the frame. The photo shows the frame triangles installed in the frame and the rear one screwed into place before final fitting of the front one is done. After that the skid mounts are screwed into place and then the skids snapped into position. I find it helps to first screw the skid mount's screws into the skid triangles without trying to fasten the mount -	just concentrate of forming the threads and getting the screws nice and straight. The skids then go on nicely. A frame stiffener is included with the SE kit, but I left it off until the the kit is assembled and all the gear installed to make it a bit easier to get the motor in and out as required. The white plastic battery plate holders were inserted in the plate and then they were slid onto the frame rods. It helps to file the ends of the rods a little round to facilitate them being slid into the mounts. At this point the aluminum canopy bolts were swapped for the screws used in error as shown in the photo of the completed frame. Also, I'd neglected to keep one antenna tube holder on the skid to the right side, so I fixed that too.

TAIL BOOM:

	The first step is to slide on the boom holders. To prevent the tear-down I had to do with my first kit after it was built, the tail servo holders, pushrod guide, and boom support mount were also slid into place at this time (not mentioned in the instructions). I go my own way with the tail drive bearings - I use a toothpick to smear a thin coat of black CA inside the spacer rings before inserting the bearings. The bearing spacers are tapered a little so it's best to position them for easy insertion from the back of the boom. Once the bearings are installed on the tail drive rod, I place a dab of black CA on the joint with the tip of a pin to hold the bearing in place. These parts are not as tight a fit as described in the manual. The idea here is to keep the bearing races doing their job instead of having other parts moving.	Also, I like to be able to pull the tail drive out from the boom without any parts staying behind:) The conned gear is inserted into the bearing with a 3 mm I.D. and then pressed onto the tail drive. I get the press fit started by hand, then I insert the other end of the drive rod into a small hole in my workbench. I use a 2.5 mm hex nut driver that happens to be the right size to use as a hollow drift. It fits nicely on the conned gear, inside the gear teeth and around the drive rod if it pokes through. Then I hit the end of the driver with a length of 2 x 2 inch wood I have for these purposes:) I get the rod just poking through the gear.

Tail rotor gearbox:

Shaft inserted into gear	A very touchy step is getting the other conned gear nicely mounted on the tail rotor shaft. Using the very helpful hole in my workbench again, I set the flat part of the conned gear over it while hitting the end of the shaft with the 2" x 2 " block of wood. Doing this protects the end of the shaft. Once in the proper position (spacer and bearing should make the shaft flush with the outer edge of the bearing), it's time to install the keeper ring. The bore of the ring has a little bit of a chamfer to assist	with starting the pressed fitting. I cheat a bit and put a tiny chamfer on the conned gear's mating cylinder. As shown in the photo, I use a brass tube as a drift to start the locking collar on straight and drive it home while the short end of the shaft is hanging free in that hole in the bench. This basically leaves the shaft free and unaffected by this last step, with the force being applied directly to the ring and the conned gear. This technique works very well! Make sure that the shaft assembly rotates freely when installed in the tail rotor case.
Hollow drift made from two pieces of brass tubing	LOcking collar installed
		Take your time to get this just right!

Next the tail drive pinion is pressed onto the tail drive shaft. Any mold irregularities are first shaved off the base of the pinion. Again I "cheat" by cutting a small chamfer into the bore of the pinion to allow an easier start onto the shaft. I stray from the instructions by using a small washer underneath the pinion. It must be narrower that the outer race of the bearing. Rest the other end of the tail shaft assembly (boom and all) on the bench and then hammer on the tail drive pinion with the block of wood. Once the pinion has a decent start onto the shaft, I flip the shaft assembly around so that the tail drive pinion is sitting over the hole in the bench. The little nub of carbon shaft poking out of the conned gear on the rear end of the shaft is now smacked by the block of wood. If pressed on too far, use a GWS gear puller to pull out the gear a little bit.

All the while, trial fits of the entire gearbox assembly should be done to ensure the best fit. One trick I learned from surviving the Hornet gearbox is to try different orientations of the conned gears relative to each other. Although not needed near as badly, this technique can help any out-of-round tracking of these conned gears cancel each other out. So if you notice a repeating variation in gear lash as you do your fitting of the gears, try lifting one out and rotating it 180 degrees. Dab a bit of grease on the tail gearbox just before final assembly. ***Time spent making sure the tail box is assembled accurately will pay off with a MaxiR that can fly well right off the board.***

Now that the tail rotor case is clamped tight, you might find that the gears have tightened up unacceptably. This tends to happen and an experienced builder might leave that little bit extra play when first setting the tail drive pinion distance along the shaft. If you notice this at this point, very carefully prying the pinion out the tiniest amount can restore proper easy movement. Be careful not to pry it out too far, or you might be finding out that it isn't that bad to have to strip it all apart to press the pinion back on a bit. The manual suggests how a mod can be done by cutting a hole for a screwdriver in the upper tail case. This can allow pressing on the tail drive pinion in the field without having to disassemble the tail case.

Photos of this and also how utterly useful the GWS gear puller is can be seen on my MaxirMania tips page. It's best to end up with the tiniest bit of longitudinal play on the tail drive shaft for the smoothest result. At this point I've lined up the tail rotor case with the boom mounts at the other end and if I'm lucky, it won't need adjustment. Later on, once the model is completely assembled I put a drop of black CA on the joint between the boom and top half of the case. Others like to drill though the case and boom (only barely through the boom!) and install a tiny screw. Otherwise the case can turn on the boom, even through it seems tight enough.

TAIL ROTOR:

The first step in building the tail rotor is inserting the bearings into the blade grips. It really helps to have a tool such as the 1.3 mm hex driver shown in the photo to aim and steady the bearing as it's inserted into the grip.

Then I use a piece of brass tubing to press on the outer race of the bearing and squeeze it all the way home. Double check that it is fully inserted. Please note that myself and others have been "bitten" by this. I repeat - you might think it's all the way in when it is not!

The blade grips are bolted to the hub and the ends of the bolt protrude just a little into the bore for the tail rotor shaft. This allows these bolts to fasten the hub to the shaft. On one side I encountered too much friction between the hub and the grip, so this was remedied by enlarging the hole in the end	of the grip just a little. A nice change over earlier models is that the tail slider is threaded to accept the brass piece. However there was no tight friction fit, so I used a toothpick to rub a bit of black CA into the joint as can be seen in the photo on the right (shiny area near brass).

	The most tedious part of the assembly is gluing the "L" pins into the slider. Hang in there - it will work out:) Trial fit the pins into the slider. With this model, one pin head would not fit into the recess meant to receive it, so the head was filed a bit to reduce its diameter. The arm of the pin does not sit at a 90 degree angle to the slider body, so it must be custom fit by assembling the unit and then using CA (I love the black stuff - it's more flexible) to fill the little wells that house the head of the pin. Get the whole thing assembled, the hub tightened onto the end of the shaft, and try to hold it together while checking the fit. Notice how you can hold some twisting tension against the pin to keep it parallel to the rotor shaft by pressing a bit on the blade grip with a finger. I hold the position of the blade grip to be a bit off zero degrees pitch for gluing - this holds the pin at a slight angle towards the main shaft and is sort of a midpoint in the way the pin is flexed from side to side during movement of the slider mechanism. Once the whole method is understood,	pop the pin out of the recess a bit and place drop of CA (on a toothpick is a good idea) in the recess. Pull the head back in and then make sure the pin is parallel to the rotor shaft (as seen from the end of the tail slider only - it will angle in a bit, but is parallel in that one plane only). Spray on a bit of accelerator and check your work. Put a drop of CA on the pin/slider joint on the backside to ensure a solid glue joint. before doing the other side, check to make sure that the two blade grips will be at zero pitch at the same time by sighting along the blade grip. It's pretty easy to see if the angles are off. Im my case, and although I thought I was gluing the short one first, it turned out the remaining one needed to be "stretched" a little bit. This was done by working the plastic in the grip a tiny amount and filing the underside of the pin head a bit (there's residual metal on two spots that can be filed down a bit). The end result was a very smooth pitch slider assembly. The pins tend to offer some resistance as the slider almost touches the rotor hub.

	I was pleasantly surprised to find another part had been redesigned when I assembled the tail pitch lever to its holder. The lever arm now has a step in it so the clevis that attaches to it easily clears the tail rotor case bolt. In the past, some mucking around and filing was required so the clevis pin did not catch on it. Now all I had to do is file the one bolt where it protruded and could interfere with the lever. The shiny end where it was filed can be seen in the photo.	Here's a little hint: it really helps to pre-thread the lever holder using a 2 mm bolt before trying to attach it to the underside of the tail case.   The carbon vertical fin sits a little loose on its mount and is meant to be CA'd to it. I did this after everything was assembled, while holding it vertical and adding a drop of CA to the outboard side of the joint.

I've used the lovely CF tail rotor blades on my base kit until I broke one, so I was expecting to have an issue to deal with: the hub of the blades is thicker than the slots in the tail rotor grips, so the faces of the blade hub need to be filed down. They came with a thickness of about 2.15 mm and seemed to fit nicely with some freedom of movement at about 1.92 mm. Just file and trial fit until it suits your taste. The blades were balanced on a high point balancer using a method I picked up from my LMH 110 heli assembly manual 5 years ago, as shown in the photo. Balancing the blades with leading edges facing up or down, with a symmetrical "V" position as shown is a very accurate way to balance.	Keep making the "V" a little steeper and re-balancing until it's as accurate as you like. Unlike my earlier set of CF tail blades, these were very close and only a small amount of material was sanded off the tip to make them balance well. I slightly round off one end of the CF blade mounting pins so that they be more easily inserted. Dab on a tiny bit of CA to the ends of the pins to secure them in place after they are installed. The GWS puller will pop these out later, no problem! Mount the blades and give the tail drive pinion a good twist and see how smoothly and freely the tail rotor coasts. Do not accept anything but the best you can do with the tail and let this be your test..........

ROTOR HEAD:

	In my opinion (and flaws pointed out here aside), the LAHeli MaxiR rotor head is one of the reasons this is such a fine heli. I'd noticed that some MaxiR SE kits come with the rotor head pre-assembled onto the main shaft. Why this is done was baffling to me, but I found out while I built the head. Perhaps I do things backwards, but I sure like to get the mainshaft installed without the head attached. This allows easier fitting of the tail drive pinion gear lash and also to run up the heli and press my fingernail against the shaft to check for trueness. Running up the tail boom without the head installed lets one more easily sense vibrations associated with the tail. Anyway, as I've mentioned on my MaxirMania web site, there is an issue with the alu rotor head not being milled the same on each side. The hole in which the O-rings sit is deeper and wider by a small amount on one side. This aberration is more or less identical on every rotor head. I've checked a few and a distributor in the USA found all of his to be similar. Anyway, with the 3 mm crosshead shaft, these differences are easily seen by eye. The O-rings look like they are overflowing from one side. In fact, because of this the spindle sticks out 0.25 mm further on one side! I can only imagine how that throws off the balance of the head when the blades are installed. Here's a link to a small 340K QT movie showing how my rotor head balanced.	At first I thought that this was solely due to the weight of the bearings. But knowing that some main shafts have been bowed right out of the package, I decided to rotate the shaft 180 degrees within the head. The pin was a little tough to remove and then when I tried to turn the shaft, it would not move!. So I inserted a hefty T-pin into the bottom hole on the shaft and used it to apply much more torque on the shaft. This allowed me to twist it around. When I inserted the pin, some dry powder came out the other side. Since I've found that the alu shaft fits a little loose on the shaft, I guess applying some filler material was the "engineering solution" to this issue and assembling the head onto the shaft was necessary to do achieve this. Anyway, rotating the shaft allowed the head block and mainshaft balance nicely. The two problems had canceled each other out just fine. The head remained still on the high point in all postitions now. Still, having one rotor blade positioned 0.25 mm further out than the other will have "some" effect on the overall balance after a matched set of blades is installed! Therefore, balancing the entire head will be a good idea
Holding level
After letting go

After inserting the bearings in the paddle bearing housing it is placed inside the rotor head and the set screws with shoulders are screwed in. Tighten them until you can feel the housings movement stiffen and then back off a small amount. Make sure that the housing is centered - if not adjust the set screws. Now pull out the screws one at a time, apply a small amount of blue loctite and reinstall to its former position.

When I went to install the short flybar through the collective mixer housing I was surprised to find it quite tight. Somehow the two sides of the paddle bearing housing's "tubes" do not quite line up with each other. Again, some work was needed to get these parts moving freely.

I like getting all the pinned joints assembled and free-moving before putting the head together. Everything is assembled and ready before the flybar is inserted. Hopefully you can imagine inserting the flybar with the assemblies lined up as shown in the middle photo on the right. I'm not sure if this kit had an unusually large set of CF pins, but unlike my previous experiences with the other MaxiR, the mixing arm and links were quite stiff upon assembly. In fact it was the forks in the "long pushrod" and "pushrod with ball junction" that were doing the pivoting. The holes in the mixing arms were enlarged to let them do the pivoting. The arm assemblies were then worked rapidly back and forth by hand to help loosen them up. The outside of each pin was given a small dab of black CA to keep the pins in place and make sure that any wear occurs in the cheaper mixing arms. Once I tried to insert the 1.5 mm flybar into the brass counterweight, I got another surprise. It just would not go in.	I ran the set screw all the way in to bring out any flashing that might be a problem land then tried inserting an old flybar from my other kit's bent parts stash. No real change. Then I found a drill bit close to the correct size and put it in the hole and twirled it with my fingers, hoping that there might be some cutting or forming action found using the side of the drill bit. After that I was able to drive a piece of old flybar in, bend a 90 degree handle, twist, and pull. That opened it up the tiny amount needed. I really did not want to remove any metal because it is a "counterweight", afterall. The stubby flybar for this kit was centered by taking measurements from the inside (flat) area of the counterweight and collective mixer housing at the end of the flybar. As usual, I found the patience to get it really close, within a few hundredth's of a millimeter. The collective mixer has been improved recently. Now it rides on derilin bushings instead of the threads of a bolt. This is a nice improvement as I have replaced one collective mixer on my other MaxiR due to wear after around 20 hours or so.

When assembling the blade grip halves, it helps to place a finger right under the place were the pressure is applied and give strong pressure on the screw with the phillips driver. This helps reduce stripping of the screw head and the threads. Do them up good and tight - there will be a small bit of the screw tip poking through the back side when they are good. If the assembled grips don't rotate freely, the chances are very good that the half-

moon cut-outs for the bearing spacers aren't quite big enough. A little bit of work with a small round file will fix that in a jiffy. The SE kit comes with bearings for the mixing arms instead of bushings, which is a nice touch! As you tighten up the bolt for this bearing work the arm and once it starts to bind up (nice easy play 'til this point), back off the screw a tad. I'll leave off the paddles until the Maxir is complete to save them from being bumped and bruised.

Freewheel assembly:

	This MaxiR SE kit comes with the latest freewheel upgrades done up in a nice anodized colour. First, insert a ball bearing into the freewheel hub. I have a nice screwdriver that takes the bearing over the tip and then catches it on a step - perfect for pressing and steering a bearing into place. Next, the one-way bearing is pressed into the hub up against the first bearing (note that for proper rotation with the one-way, the text on the rim on one end must be on the bottom and exposed after being inserted into the hub. That was much easier said than done. This time was tougher than the first one I installed on my other kit. Even cooling the bearing and heating the hub did not help. I ended up pressing it in with a vice. It will never come out..... One little thing that has to be done is the little spacer that goes above the freewheel bearing has to be filed to the proper thickness to get the tail drive pinion meshing nicely with the inner gear on the top of the main gear. I assemble the tail boom into the frame at this point to do this right and then remove the boom afterwards. Setup the boom mounts in the middle of their fore-aft adjustment within the frame to allow minute adjustment either way afterwards by moving the boom forwards or backwards th elittle bit that is allowed. Prepare the main shaft by assembling the freewheel ring onto the end of the main shaft and pin it. If the holes do not line up, rotate the ring 180 degrees.	With the freewheel hub inserted into the gear and the spacer resting on top, hold the gear in place and insert the main shaft from below. It might take a few trial fits to get it the proper gear mesh withthe tail drive, so patiently file down the spacer by rubbing it on a flat file under your finger. To check for proper gear lash, hold the main gear still with a finger and move the tail rotor hub while watching the amount of movement that the tail drive pinion can do within the gear it meshes with. You can see this through the top of the frame. Keep filing until there's only the smallest amount of gear lash, if any. Once the fit is good, slip on the end cap with its supporting bearing by removing the 3 screws at the lower rear of the frame and bending it out enough to slide/squeeze the cap onto place. Once installed, the freewheel had a lot of friction - I could barely move it. I removed the freewheel assembly and rebuilt it outside the frame. It was fine until I slipped in the plastic freewheel spacer and found that it's wall thickness was greater on one side and needed to be filed down a bit. I'd seen that this part was like this, but had decided to try it instead of using one of the many good spares I had on hand. When it's finished, one should be able to twirl the main shaft with his fingers, to wind up the tail rotor The whole thing should coast a bit, even though there won't be much momentum from the very light tail rotor blades, compared to what you get with the stock plastic blades on the base kit.

Servo Installation:

Some time ago I acquired some excellent Airtronics 94091Z micro-servos after seeing them being used in the MaxiR. Unfortunately the servo arms that are included are either too short or too thick. Rather than file down or otherwise customize appropriate servo arms, I decided to try the Duzi CNC arms meant for the Maxir. As seen in the photo, they are a nice one-piece bearing housing (for attachment to the arm) and rod with a threaded end. I had ASSumed that the bearing would somehow also pivot within this arm to allow greater freedom of movement. The harsh reality of it pivoting in only one plane meant that the servo installation was much more strict in the sense that the servo pushrod must be exactly vertical. This made it much harder, but I have gotten them installed using 1 mm spacers made from old Maxirfiberglass frames. The reinforcing webs for the servo's mounts had to be cut away so that the servos could be mounted on the wrong side of the lug.		the result was a nice, tight installation, but you know what? For all the bother I wish I'd just used the HS-55 or maybe the HS-56 servos...... Although the extreme angle of the aileron servo pushrod caused minor swash interaction problems that could be programmed out, I'd prefer to try the inboard hole on the servo arm. Unfortunately that would cause the right side aileron servo to hit the elevator servo's case. I could try moving the servos and using the underside of the servo arm, but then the vertical alignment would not be perfect. As you'll see in the next section, evidently I'll have some time to figure this out anyway:)   UPDATE: This section will be rewritten. Shorter spacing on the servo arms had do be achieved. This was obvious when I installed the new swash and and noted how extreme the throws were. The elevator servo was moved to the other side of its mounts and the pushrod was moved to the underside of the servo arm. This had been tried before and would not line up properly, but all it took to fix was a slight bend in the Duzi pushrod. This is much better! New photos to come!

After I hooked up a receiver and started setting up the swash and servos I found a big problem - the nice looking aluminum swash had a ton of play, all in the bearing! This was a surprise, because one that I've been using in another Maxir and another grey one I have in stock were just fine. Unfortunately they are both the earlier version with a different anti-rotation method, or I'd use them. So this project is temporarily on hold since the middle of November until I get a replacement swash. Oh well, now I can take my time with the canopy if I want and get most of this review done now:) I'm daring to publish an incomplete review because I hope that it will still be useful. More to come!

FInding me a good swashplate... UPDATES:

Dec. 15: Icare reports that LAHeli is working to resolve an issue with some of the alu swash bearings being too sloppy... Jan. 22: replacement swashes have arrived at Icare here in Canada, so I expect to finish up this heli and review soon! Mar. 20: Finally placed an order and had the replacement swash sent along. It was perfect, as was another replacement for a customer. But of the two SE kits I was sending out, one had a bad red (sigh...) swash. Guess where mine went? :) April 28: The replacement swash arrives and it's just like the one I sent back last month. May 10: I decided to "borrow" a swashplate from a kit, one that had only a tiny bit of slop, while I waited for replacements to come. It's good enough for me.

Completion:

After finally sorting out the servo installation, as noted above, the result was quite good and I'm glad I did it. I've tried the 3-D tail pushrod on my other Maxir recently and I really liked it, so I decided to use one on this model right from the beginning. It's basically a carbon tube with metal fittings that are glued into the ends. Also, a 2mm Mikado ball link threads on handily for a nice, secure attachment to the larger servo arms on the tail servo. It makes for a simple direct hookup without having to line up the pushrod in itls guide. The usual neutral position with the servo arm and tail lever arm at 90 degrees to the pushrod seems to work out very well. A 16 tooth pinion was chosen over the 15T - might as well go for it:) I use a razor knife to cut a bit of a taper at the bigging of the pinion bore to allow easier insertion and press the pinion on in a vise. I have a coupole of flat aluminum plates that I use to protect the pinion and the motor from the rough faces of the vise. The motor was installed with a fairly tight mesh, leaving only the slightest visible lash at the loosest point.

Rather than slice off the horizontal fin with the blades the first time I have a bood boom strike, I just slipped in a package to sell in my store:) A spacer to take the place of the fin mount was found and the tail boom support brace installed upsidedown to place the clamp below the boom and protect it in the event of a boom strike. The boom supports were assembled and attention paid to getting them the same length and getting the links orientated at the correct angles. a drop of black CA was all that's needed to fix them permanently. The CF paddles were pressed on the short flybar. It was a challenge to get one of them all the way on, but it did go. At this point I wanted to see what sort of headspeed I might be getting, so the heli was run up without the blades. 3000 rpm was tached. This is the first time I've used LAheli's carbon blades, having been quite happy with the cheaper fiberglass ones. This set was very close to perfect and only a tiny piece of monokote trim was neede to balance them.

First Flights:

Well,,, winding up that head close to 3000 rpm and using the carbon 3-D blades makes this a whole different ball game over the standard kit! The 1 roll per second roll rate that I'd heard about does not seem to be an exageration. The heli is very agile! This extreme sensitivity makes flying a lot less relaxing though. While I am enjoying the performance

of this setup, I might revert to the standard flybar and plastic 3-D paddles for a more stable setup. At a recent funfly I ploughed it into the ground with just a little over-correction while doing a low roll. Regardless, I'm going to work on the existing setup to tune it more to my liking and this might be achieved by dialing back the revs a little bit.

User Testimonials:

I was planning to do this anyway, but now seems like a good time to solicit user testimonials. Hopefully some idea of the MaxiR SE's flight performance will be given by others while I wait for my swash, hehe. They don't have to be perfect, or positive, and won't be edited except if I catch spelling errors - please send them along to me

Links to comments: Rob Sleath's testimonial Neil Coulombes comments Bob Holkan's testimonial