Upgraded Hawk 36 featuring a Raven CCPM conversion

This page contains three action photographs of my highly modified Century Hawk. The helicopter is powered by the excellent West 36 coupled to a Weston UK Mini-Pipe and runs on 10% Cool Power. The photos were kindly taken by Tom Riley at the Flyin' Fish site on mid summers day 2003.

This helicopter began life as a standard Hawk 30 with no upgrades, and flew in this configuration for almost a year. During this time she flew flawlessly, but needed to be upgraded in order to allow me to begin developing more advanced flying skills.

 
CCPM Hawk 36 

This process didn't take place in single step. First I installed thrust races in the head and fitted SAB carbon blades.

Next the existing cyclic and collective set-up was replaced with a Raven CCPM conversion kit. For increased precision, the original Futaba S3001 servos were replaced with S9202s. What a difference this made, highly recommended!

 
CCPM Hawk 36 The original wire drive to the tail was replaced with a Raven carbon torque tube. The tail servo was moved to the boom (this was actually part of the earlier CCPM conversion), and the tail rotor hub was replaced by the Raven part which incorporates a set of thrust bearings.

Finally, the boom was finished by the addition of a set of smart carbon fins.

 
CCPM Hawk 36 

The swashplate was upgraded to a Quick UK CCPM Scdeau part. Its original ball joints were swapped for longer components, which resulted in a perpendicular drive to the servos.

Finally a set of 3mm X-Cell paddles were fitted to the flybar, and a colourfully painted canopy was obtained from Andrew Payton.

 

There is now probably only one upgrade left to do, swap the GY240 for a GY401/9253 combination. The GY240 is currently driving a S9252, and as this pair work together so well I'm no hurry to make the swap.

Now there is just one thing is left to do, fly her!