Roswell Flyer Manual

Neatness and accuracy count. You can build the Roswell Flyer in record time and be the first on your block to defy gravity, or, you can take your time, do a good job, and still be the first on the block to defy the elements. The difference is, you will get much better results from the second option.

Flight time is based on many things, how well the gears mesh together, how well you have sanded the rotor blades to a perfect flying will-, and how accurately you follow all these instructions 3o please pay close attention to these assembly instructions and do a good job. There is a test later, its called first flight.

We are counting on you!
WARNING STATEMENT
The Roswell Flyer is the most exciting R/C product you will own, it is however not a toy. The Roswell Flyer is a very sophisticated flying device that can cause harm to children if not properly attended to. It can cause damage to your personal property if not flown in the appropriate flying area, and of course it can cause you harm if you operate the F;yer in a improper manner.

The Roswell Flyer is run by electric power, while ;seing environmentally safe, the power source is used up -with each flight, as the power decreases, the Flyer is less responsive. Take care to learn the characteristics of the Flyer so that you can be in control of the situation and not the other way around.

AFOT does not accept any responsibility for any damages to humans, pets or personal property due to your use or misuse of this product.

1 Black Composite Frame top 1 Black Composite Round Frame Bottom 4 Black Composite Frame arms 4 Black Composite Motor Mount Braces 4 Plywood motor mounts 4 Aluminum rotor shafts 4 Black Main Gears 4 Aluminum main rotor shafts 4 1/8 inch main rotor retaining clips 8 1/8 id 1/4 OD flanged main rotor bearings 8 3mm X 5mm metal motor mount screws 8 #4-40 X 1/2 nylon rotor mounting screws 8 #4-40 nylon hex nuts 8 1/4 inch threaded nylon rotor spacers 4 Electric motors with pinion gear installed 4 ft Red and Black motor wire 4 Motor noise filter capacitors 2 Clockwise turning main rotors 2 Counter clockwise turning main rotors 1 Main control circuit board 1 Wire antenna 1 Charge Adapter cable 1 8 Cell 600 Mha battery pack 1 square of double sided tape 1 set of Velcro tape 1 Clear plastic packing tray ( has dome and motor covers molded into it)

Note: Some additional screws and retainers may be included as extras, just in case ….

Additional items required: 4 Channel radio Transmitter and receiver 5 Minute Epoxy wire cutters and strippers needle nose pliers Small soldering pencil and solder 100 grit sandpaper 400 grit sandpaper

A special note, TAKE YOUR TIME, dont hurry, we know you want to get in the air quickly but take your time, and make sure that you check things twice before gluing once. Accuracy is important, so TAKE YOUR TIME.

For P-11 four arms, check-fit motor mount brace on end of arrn. If necessary, trim top edge of key on end of arm so that top of brace is flush with top edge of arm. Epoxy in place and let cure. When the Epoxy has cured, double check that the top of the motor mount brace is flush with top edge of arm, if not Band flush.

3. For all four arms, check fit rotor shaft in hole on arm. Apply Epoxy adhesive to rotor shaft about 1 /4 inch below the shoulder clown to about 1/4 inch from bottom of shaft. Push rotor shaft up into hole in end of arm from the bottom. This prevents Epoxy buildup around the top edge. Check to make sure all rotors are square to the top edge of the arm, and that they are all the same. Use one of the gears from step 1 to check the alignment of the shaft by slidi-ng the gear onto the shaft and making sure that the bottom of the gear is parallel with the top edge of the frame. Be very careful not to get any epoxy on the gear or in the bearings. Let Epoxy cure.

For ail four arms, check-St plywood motor mounts on rotor shafts. If any are too tight to easily push clown, enlarge hole in plywood with drill. Apply epoxy to top edge of arm and motor mount brace, making sure epoxy touches the edges of the laminate for strength. Push plywood motor mounts down onto rotor shaft and make sure they are square to rotor shaft. Allow epoxy to cure.

6. Important! The top of the frame (smaller disk with little arms) has a top and a bottom. Mounting it incorectly will make it impossible to mount the controller board. I: you hold the top such that the 1/2 inch wide notch is to the right, and towards you, then the rectangular hole will be directly beyond the notch. Check-fit all four arms into the frame top and bottom. When satisfied of fit, epoxy in place. Make sure to apply epoxy to all matting surfaces. The frame should hold itself together if set on a flat surface, however if it tends to pull apart, use some tape to hold in together until the epoxy cures.

8. You are now going to cut pieces (as shown in the photo to the right) of double sided foam tape to the approximate size as shown. Remove ONE side of the paper from the tape and place them on the top piece of the frame. ( shown to the right) You most likely know that you do not want to touch the tape with your fingers as they will lessen the stickiness of the tape. Take your time.

9. Locate the Printed Circuit Board (PCB) over the top of the center of the frame such that the battery connector is oriented over the clearance.notch in the frame ring. Insert the 4 servo connectors through the rectangular hole.

10. Note that the PCB has 8 holes around it's perimeter, 4 labeled black, and 4 labeled red. Feed the red and black wires [rom each arm up through the lightening holes just or, Either side of their respective arms so that the wire colors will match up with the indicated labels on the circuit board..

11. Insert all 8 wires up through the PCB and solder them on the top side. Trim any excess wire with wire cutters.

CAUTION, be careful with the soldering iron the frame of the Roswell Flyer is very easy to (lamage with the soldering iron, again Take your lime.

13. For each arm, pull the Black out of the wires, but do not make them tight. Set this assembly aside for now.

14. For all four main gears, install two 1/2 inch nylon screws through the two opposing small holes in the web of the gear such that the threaded end is on the same side of the gear as the gear hub. Thread a 1/4 inch nylon spacer onto each screw and tighten snugly. Do not over-tighten. Finger tight is good, dont use pliers or other devices that might damage the plastic sleeves or bolts.

16. For all four rotors, smooth out the marks from the 100 grit paper and round of the bevel a bit. Also sand the perimeter of the Made to remove any burrs and slight round the edges of the trailing edge.
Make sure you prep and Band these edges of the rotor blades, failure to do so WILL affect the performance of the Flyer.

18. Make sure each 0gear spins very easily. If you give the
gear a spin, it should continue to spin for at least 10 seconds
thereafter. If one of them does not, check to make sure that
the bearings are fully seated in the gear hubs, and that no

Caution, these little clips are an alien life form all unto
Themselves, they fly off into the carpet, under doors and
generally just get lost if you dont take your lime. WE
have included sonie extras, you won't need them ho wever
if you work slowly and get the hang of f it. The first one
you do is a bit tricky but once you get the hang of it, the
rest will be easy to do.

20. Install all four motors on the bottom side of the plywood motor mounts using two 3 mm X5 mm machine screws. The gears on the motor ends fit up through the elongated center hole in the mount, and engage with the main gear. Make sure that there is a small amount of slop in the gear mesh, about the thickness of a sheet of paper. Tighten the mounting screws being careful not to crush the plywood.

Yellow/Red/Black Throttle (Futaba Channel 6)

Blue wire Elevator (Futaba Channel 2)
Green wire Aileron (Futaba Channel 1)
Yellow wire Rudder (Futaba Channel 4)

NOTE: usine built in antenna:
Warning! The following steps require you to cut the an-
tenna wire on your receiver. This will most likely void the
warranty on the receiver, so make sure that you want to do
this.

23b Solder the 7 inch long piece of music wire into the hole
on the PCB near the round black cylinder. At about 1/2
inch above the PCB, bend the wire over towards the center
of th_- PCB. Now where the antenna crosses t the cc-ILcr Une
of thé dise, bend it so as to align with the rear arm. Cut the
receiver antenna wire long enough to reach the hole marked
"Ant" on the PCB, from the bottom, with about 1/2 inch of –
slack. Strip about 1/4 inch of insulation from the end of the
wire, and push it up through the frame, and into the hole
marked "Ant" on the PCB and solder in place.

WARNING!

25. Set the Flyer on a flat, open surface, (the floor is good) making sure that nothing can catch in the gears. If you have long hair, secure it so that it will not fall into the cgears, and do not wear any lose clothing that might gel caught in the gears.

26. While holding the aircraft down by the center area (PCB) use your thumb to turn on the power switch( small black slide switch). The motors should not corne on, but the LED (little red lioht) should begin ta flash. 1vlove the throttle stick on the transmitter up (increase throttle) the LED should blink faster, If it instead blinks slower, flip the reveres switch for the throttle channel on the transmitter. Note the LED should blink faster with more throttle, and slower with reduced throttle. The motors will NOT turn on at this lime, the Flyer is not yet ARMED.

27. On your radio transmitter set the throttle to minimum, and set the throttle trim to minimum.

For the following steps, push the throttle stick until the motors just start to spin (about 1/3 throttle)

29. The motors should not be turning, or turning very slowly . Move the rudder stick (rudder /throttle stick) to full left, both the left and the right motors should turn on, and the front and rear motors should slow down or stop turring. If the opposite happens, flip the servo reversing switch on the transmitter. The motors should now respond as described.

30. Move the aileron /elevator stick full forward, the rear motor should speed up and the front motor should slow down. If the opposite happens, flip the servo reversing switch for the elevator on the transmitter. This should make i; function as described.

32. Now move the throttle stick forward until the motors just start to turn. Adjust the elevator trim so that the front and rear motors are spinning at about the same speed, or so they corne ,ii at Zhu same time when the throttle stick is pushed forward.

34. Now adjust the rudder trim so that the front/rear and left/right motor pairs run at about the same speed, or come on at about the same time when throttle is applied.

Note: This may all seem a bit complicated but don't worry,
remember we said take your tune, well that is stil! a good
idea. Get to know your f flyer and how it reacts before you
try your first f ight. The Flyer is easy to fly once you under-
stand what is going on when you push those transmitter
sticks. So …yeah , take your time…

35 Disconnect and remove the battery pack

36. Position the frame in front of you so that the battery con-
nector on the PCB is to the rear right of the frame (near you
and to the right hand side). This puts the front arm furthest
from you, pointing away. Install the four rotors using two
#4/40 nylon nuts on each screw. Do not over-tighten. The
front and rear blades should be the ones designed to turn
counter clockwise as viewed from the top. The left and right
blades are to be the clockwise rotating when viewed from on
top

37. We highly recommend that you mark the front arm or
rotor with a highly visible mark. Either by putting colored
tape on the front arm, or a colored dot in the center of the
front blade, or using a marker, color the front blade. This is
necessary in that you must always know which way it is
pointing in order to properly control the flyer.

Never fly this aircraft where damage to property or injury to persons may result if loss of control occurs.

Never leave the Flyer unattended with a battery connected to it. Always disconnect battery when not flying.

Always turn the Roswell Flyer off FIRST and then turn of the transmitter. Failure to do so could cause the Flyer to become airborne and out of control resulting in injury or damage

Startup procedure:

1. Turn the black sliding switch to the off position

2. Connect the battery to the PCB

3. Turn on the transmitter, and make sure that the throttle is fully closed.

4. Turn the switch on the Flyer to the ON position. You should note that the LED will staff i blinking. Make sure at this stage that when you advance the throttle stick, that the LED blinks faster. This verifies the functionality of tire radio link. Return the throttle to minimum.

5 . While holding the Flyer down on the ground at the center, push the arming switch on the Flyer. Be prepared for the motors to turn on at any time! If they come on for some reason, and you can not throttle them back, turn off the switch on the PCB and check the radio and receiver.

6. Back away from the flyer to a safe distance.

?. Slowly increase the throttle until the Flyer gets light, and the adjust the trims on the transmitter, so that i: doesn't icimediately turn or try to fly off in some direction:

The Roswell Flyer flies similar to a helicopter, if you are
model helicopter pilot, you should be up and flying within a
few minutes. If you aren't familiar with choppers, dont
worry the Roswell Flyer is actually much easier than a
chopper.
The trickiest part is getting used to the rotation. Start by giving it just enough throttle to get the aircraft light, and then practice keeping the front arm always pointing forward. Make sure you have a good feel for this before you try and get much higher off the ground.

Wind:
The Roswell Flyer can fly outdoors in a limited amount of wind, however, do to the very lfight disk loading of the Flyer, it will become difficult to maintain station in a moderate breeze.

Ceiling:
Y ou can fly the Roswell Flyer as high as you like so long as you can still see it well enough to control the flyer. However care should be taken not to stay up high too long as you may not have enough battery power to make a successful landing. Also a rapid vertical descent should be avoided for similar reasons.

Discharged battery:
The Roswell Flyer is designed to Nover at about 1/3 to 1/2 throttle with the supplied battery pack in the fully charged state. As the battery approaches the end of its charge, you will notice that more throttle input is required to hold it in a hover. This is how you tell is the battery is running low, and it is at this point that you should be begin planning your landing or at least getting near the spot where you intend to land.

Flight Time:
The Roswell Flyer should be able to Nover for about 3 minutes on a fully charged battery pack, alter that time, it will descend to a point where it will only fly about a foot off the ground. After about ) 0 to 20 seconds, you -ill notice that it takes more than 3/4 throttle to maintain a low Nover. At about this point the Flyer will start to become somewhat unstable and it is at this point that it is best to land and recharge the battery. This period of instability at the end of the battery charge is normal and is caused be the lower battery voltage in the discharged state.

The Fine Art of Tweaking:
While thé rotor components of thé Roswell Flyer are care-
fully machined to perform well without much need for ad-
justment, you may be able to make your Flyer even smoother
by tracking and balancing thé blades.

The rotor blades on thé Roswell Flyer are very light and
spin at a relatively low RPM so balance isn't as critical as it
would be on an airplane propeller. None thé less, a well bal-
anced machine (helicopter or Flyer) is a joy to fly.

To balance thé blades on thé Roswell Flyer, loosen thé
screws that hold one of thé motors and pull it back so that
thé gears no longer mesh and thé rotor turns freely. Now
tilt thé Flyer into a 90 degree bank and notice what thé
blade does. If one blade or thé rotors always seems to swing
down, then that is thé "heavy" blade. You can do one of two
things at this point.
1. Sand a small amount of material from thé edge heavy
blade until it balances.
2. Add a small piece of tape to thé light blade until it bal-
ances ( wrap tape half on top and half on thé bottom of thé
blade so it won't peel off

Now return thé motor to its' origine' _ position

That is it, just do the same procedure for all four blades.

Tracking refers to making thé tips of thé rotor blades fly at
thé same level. Making thé tip heights equal implies that
each rotor blade is producing thé exact same amount of lift
and thus help reduce shaking of thé rotor shaft. On most
model helicopters, this is done by adjusting a ball link, but
since thé Roswell Flyer is not bound by thé limits of human
design, a différent method is used.

ï o start with, you need to check thé existing tracking situa-
don, i1 will Ikciy be just fine. 'fo do this hover thé Flyer
high enough and at a safe distance ,so that you can CARE-
FULLY look across thé plane of thé rotor blades. Look at
thé edge of each tip path and see if you see one looks like
one rotor tip or two. If you only see one rotor tip zinging by,
then that blade is tracked adequately. Check all for blades
this way. For those where you see what looks like two rotor
tips, tracking is in order.

To track thé blades you must first determine which one is
flying high. Do this by either marking thé tip of one blade
with a bright marker or put on a piece of bright colored tape
that you can remove after thé process. Now bring the Flyer Pa 15
into a hover again and look at thé marked rotor.

The pitch can be quickly adjusted by heating the root of the rotor right at the rim of the gear, with a heat gun. Heat only until the material just starts to soften. Then twist the blade in the desired direction (don't twist very much just a degree or so) then hold the blade still for about a minute while it cools.

Check the results by hovering again, and adjust as required to get good tracking.

The frame:
The frame of the Roswell flyer is made of a wood based laminate, and mends very well with epoxy. If an arm is broken in a hard landing, you may glue it back together with epoxy. For extra reinforcement, you should apply a small piece of tight weight fiberglass cloth to each side, and epoxy i; in place. Check for crack in the frame alter any hard landing, and do not fly the aircraft if any of the components have been weakened by crash damage.

The Rotor blades:
Do NOT attempt to repair a broken or damaged rotor blade. Always replace with a new blade. Use of a repaired blade will almost certainly.result-in an in-flight blade failure and result in further damage to the aircraft.

If you are new to R/C choppers and planes, in the words of Douglas Adams, DONT PANIC. It is out experience that new pilots tend to over control the transmitter sticks, or just the opposite, they do nothing at all. Some place between too much and too little is that happy place where the Flyer Oies and you have fun. The best place to find the "Flying grove" is to practice in short spurts, Hop the flyer off the ground a few roches, but do so with a purpose in mind. Like, keep the nose point in a certain direction or make the flyer moue right and then set down. Above all else take your time, think about what you are doing, before you do it.

In the GROUND EFFECT the flyer gets pushed around by the wind that it produces. This also creates that cushion of air which the flyer can float on with less power. However flying a few roches off the ground gets to be real boring. You have to get the flyer to an eye level hover. This is where all the fun begins. Until you are comfortable with hovering just above the around, in the ground effect, dont give the flyer too much power.

No doubt you will give the Flyer a bit too much juice and it will rise to a height that will be new to you, this is where the phrase, DONT PANIC cornes into play. The Roswell Flyer, DOES fly, so relax, enjoy and mort of all do something, but not TOO much. A little bit goes a long way.

One final comment, what you put in, by way of control you will most likely have to take out, if you roll to the right, make sure you roll a bit back to the left or the Flyer will just keep going in the last direction that you gave it. Have fun, after all that is what its all about.