And First Repairs

I'm an old model builder from many MANY years ago, so repairs, for me, are a natural part of flying models.  In fact, it's pretty much "THE" part of flying models.  But more on that another time.  Today the repairs were to replace the body (see previous post "First flight, first crash") and one motor.

I did try gluing up, just to see if it would work, but the only CA I have in the workshop right now dries about as fast as furniture polish.  I didn't expect much from the glue-job, as the body of an X4 is full of compound curves and projecting pods.  I didn't really have a way to keep it straight during glue-up, so I wasn't too upset when the glue didn't bond well.

So, after the maiden flight I had to order a new body for Little Red.  Hobbex in Malmö doesn't carry the bodies in their stock, and they could order it to the boutique, but it was at least as fast for me to order it direct home.  Which I did.  In fact, knowing me, I ordered two.  And while I was at it, I grabbed a set of motors. Today the body shell arrived and I set to work replacing it.  It wasn't a difficult task, but it was tedious.  The motors need to be disconnected from the flight controller board to get them out of the old body (I needed to replace on of them anyway) and they construction of the X4 has the motors soldered directly to the flight controller.  The smallest soldering iron tip I have felt about the size of a baseball bat in there on those tiny solder points on the flight controller, but with a little patience (yeah, right) the motors came loose, everything moved to the new body and everything went back together again (Note: Keep track of orientation so that the right motors go back in at the right places).

A comment on the screws on the chassis:

They are tiny.  I mean tiny.  Microscopic is getting close to the right description.  So if you take apart an X4, get the absolutely smallest philips you can get and see if it will work (my smallest phillips in my jewelers set was too big, so I used my fallest flathead screwdriver).  Another tip is to have a plastic tray of some sort to work on, preferably with a raised lip around the edge so rolling screws don't take a nosedive onto a sawdust-covered workshop floor.  Ohh, and even more importantly: don't flail around wildly with your elbows in search of your coffee cup and knock the carefully placed high-lipped plastic tray holding microscopic M1x3 screws onto said sawdust covered workfloor.  Not that that happened to me ... more than the one time.  Fortunately the four screws holding in the battery compartment are of the same size as the outside screws holding the body together and I decided that four screws was probably more than necessary to hold things in place, and two of those screws went to the outside.  Those missing screws are bound to show up sooner or later.

But long story short: The body and motor replacement went well and tonight after the kids are down Little Red will take to the skies again.