“Going Separates” is a great alternative to using a Piccoboard or various other types of mixing boards for many reasons including:

» Use a Brushless motor for super power and longer flight time
» Higher frequency tail switching for tail motor longevity
» The Ability to use higher current ESCs and Lithium Power sources
» You Select Micro electronics such as Gyro & heading lock options
» Failure in electronics can be repaired using a single component
» Reduce total weight when using a separate brushless controller
» Upgrade to the latest technology as it becomes available
» Use a Heli Radio for fine tuning Rev mix & other parameter
» Improve flight characteristics with Governor mode & much more...

The purpose of this instruction document is to guide you through wiring separates for a micro Heli such as the Piccolo ( instead of using a Piccoboard ) or Hummingbird ( using the Hummingbird board ), this procedure is sometimes called “Going separates”.

The article is divided into to parts. Part#1 explains the inexpensive brushed motor setup with a regular gyro while the Part#2 refers to the high end Brushless motor setup with the Heading Hold Gyro.

Part#1 The Brushed Separates setup
You will need a transmitter with tail revo mix for this set up, one with a 5 point curve is preferred but not necessary. This not a difficult task to accomplish and can be done in as little time as a few hours.
This will be in a brushed motor set up and will be using the following electronics (Image 1 ). First begin by removing all of the casing and then set the two speed controllers out, spread the wires as shown
(Image 2).

 Set the two speed controllers out, spread the wires (Image 3).
Locate the power connectors with the JST plugs and cut them off, making sure you leave enough wire to complete all connections. Using wire strippers, cut a piece of the insulation off exposing the wire and tin them by applying solder while they are touching a soldering iron ( Image 4 ).


By this point, you will want to choose the type of connector to use. On the top, a Dean’s two pin polarized connector is shown. It’s a better connector to use since it provides less current lost. On the bottom is the JST BEC type connector that is common with almost all GWS gear and most others on the market. In this application, we decided to go with the Dean’s.

 With using the Dean’s, you will need some sort of extender piece about 3” long which will make connection a bit easier, you can also omit this piece and wire the ESCs directly to the connector. Look at ( Image 5 ).

After choosing the connector, we solder the two positive (+) leads together and two ground (-) leads together as shown below.

Make sure you slide your heat shrink over the leads before soldering since you won’t be able to get them on afterwards

(Image 6 ). Solder the connector and on to the leads ensuring that the ground (-) lead is soldered on the exposed pin side of the connector.

This is the most common method since it would put the (-) ground on the charger connector as well. Since most manufacturers ground the outer case of the charger, this would eliminate the possibility of a circuit short. The opposite side of the connector will be used on the battery side in this set up, i.e.; positive (+) on the exposed pin. ( Image 7 ).

Lay the ESCs and motors out as shown, this way you can study the layout and confirm all connections are correct before transferring it to the actual Heli. In this case, we were able to use the motor connector on the GWS IC-100 ESC to directly connect to the main motor, pay attention to the polarity so the motor rotation is correct. Of course this can be easily reversed simply by unplugging the connector and swapping it around. The connector for the tail motor in the photo is for display purpose and will have to be soldering directly to the wires on the tail motor.

You can chose to purchase additional connectors and wire your ESC so you can have the accessibility to swap tail motors or ESCs as you need. The RX plug for the tail ESC will plug into the GWS Gyro and the gyro RX plug will be plugged into channel 4 of the RX. The RX plug from the main motor ESC will be plugged into the throttle channel of the RX; channel 3 ( Image 8 )

Please note that you need to pay particular attention to polarity of the connectors against the case of the RX to ensure it’s not shorted out. Damage to the both ESCs and RX can occur if not connected with the correct polarity ( Image 9 ).
Image 9 shows everything laid out before hooking them up to the RX. Please note that you need to pay particular attention to polarity of the connectors against the case of the RX to ensure it’s not shorted out. Damage to the both ESCs and RX can occur if not connected with the correct polarity.

The final set up phase consists of setting the center on rudder/tail stick to fool the tail ESC into thinking that center is actual center stick so that it arms for flight. Follow the below steps and you shouldn’t have any problems getting it to arm.

1.Bring up the REVO mix screen on your TX, center the tail trim.

2.After making sure all connections are correct following, power up by plugging in the battery into the connector.

3.Adjust the first point REVO mix until the ESC arms. Keep all trims and sub trims at 0. This will change from one transmitter to the next by generally try the following values for the first REVO point on you radio:

A. -100
B. -50
C. 0
D. +50
E. +100



Power down and back up to check if it arms without moving the tail stick. If it arms, leave this position for good since it’s not one that you’ll be adjusting. If it doesn’t arm, increase the value a bit more until it just arms and leave it. More than likely, this will be a negative value, the six or seven that we’ve set up had been negative.

In some odd cases you will need to hold the rudder stick to the right or left while plugging in the battery to fool the ESC and cause it to initialize.

4.Interpolating between the first point set the next 4 points increasing by about 10-15% in your value. If you have a lazy Suzanne set up, you can tape the Heli down and adjust the other points until there is no tail yaw with power application. If not, you can get pretty close by powering the Heli up in your hand and “feeling” the movement. By now, the Revo mix should be close to where it needs to be and fine tuning can be done while flying. A word of caution, take great care to make sure you don’t injure yourself to others while powering up in your hand. Make sure all fingers and wires are cleared from the gears and head assembly.


Enlarge the images to the right to view the schematic of the brushed motor separates setup or to view the actually wiring image.

Image of the gear before we start ( Image 1 )

Gear after casing was removed ( Image 2 )

Spread the speed Cont ( Image 3 )

Strip Ends ( Image 4 )

Connectors ( Image 5 )

Soldered ESCs ( Image 6 )

Soldered ESCs with connectors ( Image 7 )

Soldered ESCs with Motors ( Image 8 )

Part#2 The Brushless Separates setup

The purpose of Part#2 of the document is to guide you through wiring separates for a micro heli using high-end gear. This is a great alternative to using a Piccoboard or various other types of mixing boards available. If using the heading hold feature, you will not need any REVO mix, so a 4 channel transmitter could be used. If not using the heading hold feature, a transmitter with REVO mix is required, one with a 5 point curve would be preferred but not necessary. We will also be using the Astro brushless motor, which will provide stellar performance with longer flight times compared to a brushed motor. The JMP HF-100 will provide more precise tail response along with prolonged motor life.

Procedure for wiring:

1.Power leads from both ESCs are connected together, i.e. positive (+) lead of Phoenix 10 with positive (+) of HF-100 soldered together and then soldered directly to the connector or a small lead that’s connected to the connector. Please note that you want to configure the connector in such a way that when the pins are connected, polarities match. The most common practice is to have the positive (+) lead on the battery side on the pin of the Dean’s polarized two pin connectors. This would mean that the charger and all other gear would have the ground (-) lead soldered to the pin. Just double check all connections before powering up to confirm proper polarity. On the Phoenix 10, the motor leads are the three wires, red, black and white wires the are opposite the RX and power leads.


2.Wire the motor side of the Phoenix 10 to the motor, check for rotation and if it’s reversed, swap any two wires. Protect the solder joints by using heat shrink to avoid short circuits. Just double check all connections before powering up to confirm proper polarity. On the Phoenix 10, the motor leads are the three wires, red, black and white wires the are opposite the RX and power leads.


3.Wire the motor side of the HF-100 to the tail motor, this time taking care to match the polarity of the leads to the motor. Check the instructions to locate the motor power leads and not to mix them up with the battery leads. The motor power leads are opposite the three wires, which are the signal, and battery leads.


4.By now, both motors should be connected to the ESC, make sure you leave plenty of wire to shift components around as need for final placement. Now connected the HF9 signal wire to the signal on the input side of the Futaba GY-240. This is the connector that you would use to plug a servo into. The HF-100 is essentially a servo used to move a powered tail if you wanted to think of it that way. In the example a spare servo lead was used, the red and black leads were cut off leaving the white signal wire, this was soldered to the signal lead off the HF-100. With this setup, it will allow you to swap Gyros if needed.

5.Connect the gyro RX lead into channel 4 of the RX.

6.Connect the Phoenix 10 RX lead into the throttle channel of the RX, channel 3.

7.The two cyclic servos will be plugged into channel 1 and 2 of the RX.

8.The hook up should be complete by now, if you’ve got the REVO mix active and plan on running the heading hold mode on the GY-240, it needs to be disabled for it to function correctly.

9.Follow the diagram to the right to confirm everything is connected properly before connecting the battery.

If you have issues with initialization then follow the instructions from part#1 of this document. Please remember that it is always a better idea to setup the Gyro / Radio while the heading hold is disabled
( i.e. REV Mixing in turned on in the radio ) and only when everything is working well then disable REV mixing in the radio and enable HH on the Gyro.
 

Connectors you can use ( Image 9)

Brushless motor and High Auth Motor ( Image 10 )

High End Separate Components ( Image 11 )

High End Components installed ( Image 12 )