Mikado Logo Helicopters -
Updated 14/01/03
Short Report on Mikado's Logo 10
We have had the new Logo 10 kits for a couple of weeks
now but various things have stopped me from getting it flight ready until the
other day, I finished it late on Saturday evening then went down to a local
trading estate (floodlit empty road with no one about) to give it a quick test
flight, I was expecting to have to spend most of this flight playing around
setting it up so had not bothered to even put the canopy on. This
was a bit of a mistake as I had nothing to do to the model in the way of
adjustment, just fly it and quickly ran in to problems by going higher than the
lights at the top of stall turns, with no canopy I kept loosing sight of the
model in the night sky!
One thing was obvious straight away and that was the model was
nice, really nice, the feel of it is a lot like it's bigger brother the Logo 20,
so a lot more stable and a more solid feel to it than other models close to it's
size (Voyager E, Eco 8). I then got a chance to fly
it again in the morning, the fog limited how high I could take the model, so
it's first aerobatics had to be fairly low, I should add at this stage that my
Voyager E has always suffered from very high disc loading so that although it is
fine though rolls, flips, inverted stuff, a simple loop causes the biggest
problem as this high loading can cause the whole disc to be stalled if you are
not very careful, I crashed my Voyager E twice because of this!
Anyway I needn't have worried as the model is fine through
loops or anything else for that matter, it does not have quite the same power as
the Logo 20 but not bad at all for a single pack model, I flew three packs that
day and had no problems with inside, outside and backwards loops, forward and
backwards rolls, tail down inverted pie dishes, smooth low flips, etc.
So far I love it, I'm going to have a lot of fun with this
baby, I plan to play around with different pinion gears to see if I can make it
even better but even if I can't make any improvements from how it is now that
won't matter at all as it is already way better than anything else in it's class
that I have flown! I will fit a Auto unit to the
model in the next few days and try out it's auto performance.
Our model is equipped with the following, Kontronik Fun 600-18
Brushless Motor with a Smile 50-6-18 ESC, 12 cell 2400ma pack, JR Eagle E371
servo's for the CCPM set up, a old 2700G servo on the tail, CSM 540 gyro with
case removed, a JR R700 mini PPM receiver and a 500ma receiver Nicad.
Mikado actually recommend a PCM receiver and I would have
normally preferred to use one but mini JR PCM receivers are not generally
available in the UK, I was a little concerned about possible glitching problems
with PPM but so far not one little glitch has shown up at all! We
had to open out the servo mounts in the side frames a little with a Dremel to
take the E371 servo's, no big deal at all really. The
reason behind using these servo's was purely as they were the only suitable
sized servo's we had in stock over the holidays that could take the 20mm servo
arms needed for a correct CCPM set up!
Update - 14/01/03
I am still running the model in stock form and it is
holding up fine so far but I think in the near future I will treat it to a few
upgrades like the metal swashplate, ballraced mixer arms and thrust bearings in
the head.
What I have changed is the number of cells I run the model
on, although the performance is ok with 12 cells and it certainly does
reasonable 3D with this pack I found it is much more fun with 13 cells so for
the past couple of months I have been running it on 13 cell 2400ma Sanyo packs,
I might even try 14 cells in the future. With 13 cells it is capable of
most 3D stuff including pirouetting loops etc., not bad at all for such a little
model!
I did fit a autorotation unit to it a while back and it
auto's very well including aerobatic auto's, one other little change I made was
to switch from the the Mikado carbon main blades I have used for a long time to
a set of 50cm Razor's, I always knew these would be a good option because of
their thin low drag section but never got around to fitting any until now, the
Razor's don't fly that dissimilar to what I had been using but I did gain a
little head speed (which is good) and about 20 seconds extra flight time.
My very old tail servo which is a JR 2700G out of one of my
main models years ago is starting to die so I plan to replace the gyro and servo
with GY401 and S9253 in the near future and see how this goes.
The very cold winter weather we have had for a couple of weeks causes my uncased
CSM 540 to have drift problem due to cold air blowing directly on to the piezo
sensor.
One little tip for all Logo owners is keep a eye on the
special bent type ball links (#1569) that go up to the flybar control arm (#933)
as these seem to wear rapidly, it's always one side that wears and not the other
for some reason! It is easy enough to cut the plastic balls off and
replace them with steel balls which should complete cure the problem.
It's funny just how much fun I get out of flying this
little model, it always makes me smile, I can go to the flying field with the 10
and my Webra 91 powered Millennium which is a hugely more powerful model and
find myself wanting to fly the 10 more than the Mill at times!
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