RC India

Guys,
I was looking for a good digital metal gear servo for my mini titan as well as for the HK450 i am planning. What are the best choices, apart from the obvious ( and expensive Futaba 9257 )
On Hobbycity there are so many choices between MKS, Turnigy etc but it would be good if you could share your experience with any of these so I can avoid some dissapointment.

For the tail, Turnigy DS 480, expensive(22 USD) but good. Iam using it. For Cyclic HXT900 or Metal gear is MG14(Rocks), but not digital.

MKS one is rated highly. No experience.

The Align DS420 and DS520 are also good ones.

BTW, when my brother built his intentionally cheap/simple HK450, he used this, as it is really cost effective.

http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/uh_viewItem.asp?idProduct=4697

Depending on your gyro, you might want to go for something better. What gyro are you planning to use on the HK 450 ?

Well, On the HK 450 i am thinking of using the HK-401 cheap gyro.
I am not going to do any 3D or stuff. Just need a basic gyro that can hold the tail well. Based on the customer reviews this $14 gyro should do the job ?

I actually need 2 rudder servos, one for the mini Titan and one for the HK450.
mini titan has the TG6100 gyro, so need something that would work with it . Would any digital servo work ? or do i need to look for anything specific  ?

Vinay, think the specs of the Turnigy DS480 is really good. Its out of stock, but i may go in for that. Rotorzone, i will consider the MKS also.

For the Cyclic on HK450 i a thinking of MG-14 . Havent used them, but they are cheap. Anwar, do you think i should go in for these cheap servos, or should invest in Hitec 65MG ? There is a lot of price difference, but if your think there is a vast difference in quality, i can go for it.

No need for complicated servos on the HK 450, especially for your intended use.  The MG-14s should be more than enough.

I assume this is your "crash without too much guilt/expense" bird, so the gyro you mentioned would also work great.

Gaurav, dont make your life too complicated. if its for hovering then, RCGroups are filled with people with HXT900 Cyclic and HXT500 tail, my 28 USD heli will be the same.

But since you are using the GT version heli, go for MG14s and DS480, HK401B gyro and you can almost 80% compete with the ALIGN Originals side by side in 3D. :thumbsup:

Even the GWS http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/uh_viewItem.asp?idProduct=4697 is good, but not as good as the small beautiful Turnigy DS480.

For a heli with almost all metal parts like the 450 GT, it makes sense to go with metal gear servos (otherwise you can pretty much end up changing servo gears on every crash).  So just keep that in mind, and avoid any "bling".

Anwar, I read a lot on other forums that breaking gears will save other parts of the Heli, what is your opinion on this? :headscratch:

Good question  :thumbsup:

So let us look at what all usually breaks in a heli crash. 

1.  The landing skid :  Can't help that any ways.
2.  Head parts : You can't really help main blades, they will go (assuming you crashed properly ;D) !  Feather shaft and main shaft can go bent (even though they are always metal) so can't help that either. There are still enough plastic parts and linkages on the head even on the MT and GT that it is better to let them pop-off or break, rather than change servo gears every time.
3.  Tail parts : The boom goes most of the time, and some times the boom supports too.  Every once in a while, the tail slider shaft gets bent.  The belt may lose "teeth" from time to time.  But the tail servo being plastic gear does not really help prevent any of these.
4.  Main frame : Can't do much here either, except to go back to glass-fiber or plastic instead of carbon-fiber.

So my experience is that you end up with less parts to replace with the metal version of the helis which use metal gear servos. The expensive ones (blades, frames etc) losses can be minized if you fly in a grassy area, and are able to kill throttle (hit throttle hold switch, not essentially pulling the throttle stick to minimum) before impact.

Aha, glad to hear that, I just have 1 MG14 with me, its really good and solid. My other 3 MG14s are on the way on an airparcel, dont know why all the airmails are reaching me faster than the airparcels. :headscratch: Next time it will be MG14. What you say is way right, I replaced the Servo gears and replacing the Gears and putting the servo back on the heli was way painfull, especially with the pathetic quality of screws on the HK450 series :thumbsdown:. I think I will replace the screws with new ones on every three times I open them. ;D

Any screw that goes into plastic is not really built for frequent replacement. Some CA helps !

On the MT version almost everything is metal, so no worries there, what goes bad in the screw is the screw hex head rounding off as you tighten them. >:(
Last time the screw that held the Main shaft and the rotor head got struk in the anabond and when opening the screw, it rounded off, i forced twisting with a nose plier but the screw broke leaving the whole body behind inside a pool of hardened anabond >:(

Luckily that part of the shaft-head interface had no thread and I had to do a circus opening it up ;D