As a relative newbie in the Rotorway community I heard about problems with windshield droop in later kits made from poorly fitting panels and windshields.    I saw a bunch of pictures of what happens if you're not careful if you have the bad fitting kits.   I'm building an A600 Phoenix from two kits, both incomplete which are stripped down to bare bones and starting from scratch. And when I fitted everything from the partial kit I had and matched the drillholes, I had the dreaded droop.   Clearly visible with the naked Eye, and measurable with my levels.  I saw Paul Barroso had a simple jig he used, but then again, he does this for a living so correcting it is pretty cut and dried for him.  I asked him for some additional information on a dimension on his jig but never heard back.   So, I just went with what I saw on his picture.   For me the critical dimension that I never saw anywhere else, build videos, or manuals was the 39" across the bottom of the eyebrow panels he showed on his jig.  I hope it is correct for practical purposes.   For me that was the critical missing piece.  With that, I went about making my jig.   Which i did from scrap laying around the shop and trial and error.   I am building solo mostly so I have to plan for doing all this jig fitting with only my two arthritis ridden hands.


Way overthought.   But I felt I needed to have a good reference so I made sure my lateral drive tubes were level, and since a new build, and the seat back not yet drilled, I made sure the seat back was in proper place and had the necessary shims to bring it to lateral level.  Also measured across the entire cabin as shown with the long bubble level and I laid a straight edge on the inside seat pan edges resting on the forward portion of the pans.  Those two levels, were within .10 degrees of the drive tube lateral levels.   Franken Jig is sitting firm on the seat pan with adjustable legs (the little narrow small vertical pieces circled in red, slide up and down independently with a wingnut on the back to clamp when it's all level).  That extra effort was to be able to have it all in place while I stood back to use human eye leveling as well as actual levels.


The part of the jig that gives symmetrical shape to the top of the windshield is based off Paul Barroso's 39 inches from end to end on the bottom.   I used a French curve from my old drafting set to transfer the curve of the passenger side eyebrow to a piece of large ruled drafting paper from another drawer in my old Pre-Cad days drafting table.   Copied the identical curve onto the other side of the paper (folded it in half for mirror image), cut it out, and laid it on this board as a template.   Cut the board, marked the center at 19.5 inches and starting on each end of the jig, marked one-inch centers.  The vertical lines on the jig are measured not from center, but from the edges and used in conjuntion with the level board resting on the eyebrow cabin pieces.  Those were just so I could measure droop from each side to insure they matched.   The little small board above it is also marked with a frame/rotor system center point.  The problem I found, and it may not be one, is the center of the seat back pan;  (circled in red) well, it’s not centered with the fuselage.   It is pushed as far to the pilot’s side as possible per the instructions and everything I’ve seen and read so far.   Leveled and clamped in this position, the center of the seat pan is almost a half inch to the passenger side of center.


When I put the windshield on using this jig, it fits, works, appears and measures as level.   The holes on the passenger side match, but the pilot side holes in the cabin top will have to be filled and re-drilled.


I have the fuselage centered and laterally leveled.  Plumb bobs from the rear of tail boom, mast, and center of frame at the front all line up.   The bottom line is the droop will no longer be there after I repair all the misaligned holes in the pilot side body.   I’m not entirely sure what I am going to do if anything about the entire seat pan/back being a half inch off center.  While all my plumbs and levels are still in place, I’ll get another set of eyes on it here locally and see if there is anything that can or should be done with the centering issue.   I plan on dropping my Plumbs from each body side and measuring that distance from center to see if it also shows fuselage off center.   Oh well?

I’d be interested in what other may have experienced with theirs.   In the meantime, the body panels will be coming off here very soon and I’ll be moving on.   Have to finish mounting tail boom vertical fin brackets (That’s what I was doing when RotorX folded and the parts dried up).  Then on to flight control installation.    If you have any comments or questions I’d love to hear them.

Below is a list of known Rotorway Insurance providers. Please reply to this thread with your flight experience and insurance premium/coverages so we all have a general idea of what is fair! Also, please reply if you have any other providers to add to the list in any country.

 

I did this conversion a long time ago to see if putting a Diesel Deltahawk engine into a RW would be a good idea. we managed to get it all working and started the testing. for the test we wanted to be safe so we tied down the RW in a tandem trailer still connected to my car and started the engine.
This setup has a centrifugal clutch and an isolating donut style damper with a seperate one way between the engine and the gearbox. I decided to keep the Vee belt drive line to the tail rotor so I replaced the secondary with a simple shaft and from the input to the gearbox we installed a toothed drive pulley driving the shaft to which the standard Vee pulley was mounted.

WE decided to not proceed with offering this upgrade, as the power that the engine put out was, in my opinion, way too much for the rotor system, as with the RW tied down to the trailer and 4 separate scales beneath each wheel we could pull and hold full up (+10deg) collective and raise and lower the RRPM via the throttle. at that point 2 of the scales had gone to zero and the other 2 showed we were lifting over 1000kg (2204lbs) I decided I could not trust that the RW rotor system could handle that much power so we abandoned the idea and built a brand new helicopter with the DH engine , the DH2

First I’d like to thank @Orv Neisingh for having a link to his website here.   While scrolling through, was reading about the short lived Elite and wondering what made it so much faster?  Combination of things, or something in particular?

some overall photos of the mods I am talking about.

Hi, 
just wondering re extending the RW shaft, I remember that over the years a few have gone down that path, and I also remember that some had issues with flying i.e. porpoising, at the time it was thought that the cowling of the turbine was the issue.

I simply am looking for results issues and benefits as I have a tentative plan to fit a gearbox with a tail rotor drive (not the RW one) along with a new tail rotor hub and I am thinking a good time to lift the rotor head another 6" or so., Also a new swash plate with a far greater range, (The swash plate in the attached is for a 3 bladed design, and the shown bell cranks were for a full set of push pull rods.)






I also wonder if raising the rotor head without raising the tail rotor might also have something to do with it.

Just thinking out loud, maybe someone with some first hand experience could offer their thoughts??

I'm on a very slow roll to attempt to complete a RotorX Phoenix A600 Kit.    I am melding parts from a an incomplete kit I purchased from the factory prior to their failure, with parts from another incomplete kit another fellow had, with an engine from another fellow.    All together, I believe I have all of the critical parts.    Only lacking in instruments and any lighting/optional type stuff.

Initially, When I purchased the kit in 2022, I was planning on building not only a safe and correct mechanical aircraft, but one worthy of showing off cosmetically, and craft wise   But the three year delay has pushed the entire goal now into just the safe and mechanically correct version, and the cosmetics maybe later (I have two complete aircraft worth of body panels to mess up, one set already not so great).

So wish me luck,  I have shed a bunch of extraneous projects off my plate and am planning on jumping on this project with a lot more time and effort and making serious progress this winter/spring.
Ah yes!   The excitement of unpacking back when I was clueless of the challenges RotorX was going through.   This was prior to the Rotorway Builders group on facebook, and when I couldn't get the forum moderator to approve my membership on ROG forum (should have been a clue things weren't going well).    


Once again, this was prior to the Rotorway Builders group facebook page.  I spent as much time searching the internet for people in my situation looking for some build advice.   Eventually, the ROG forum moderator got around to approving my membership and I was able to connect with a few other new ROTORX builders at my same level of frustration.  Trying to figure out where to split the tub.  Wade at the factory was hard to get in touch with, and eventually I spent some time with him on the phone where he admitted the panels were anything but close.   Gave me a couple of hints and wished me luck.   (Another clue I didn't catch early enought-   Trying to get in touch with anybody at the factory about questions).  Luckily at that time, I was able to communicate with the few aforementioned ROTORX builders on ROG for help.   But eventually, I lost access to ROG when I put in a wrong password a couple times.   Was never able to get the administrator to reset the password.  Gave up on ROG, as by now the Rotorway builders group on Facebook started and I found the ROG forum was so hit and miss most people had given up on it.

RotorX and their crappy fitting winglets.    Little did I know at this time, that I probably should have just left them off, finished off the stabilizers without the winglets.   But spent a lot of time cutting, trimming and reshaping trying to get some semblance of a fit.

About this time in my build; RotorX was - unknown to me, in full fledge melt down.   Employees either didn't answer the phone, or brushed everything off, with company correct speak of, "Wade" is out of the office this week-  We are waiting on parts from our suppliers, we expect them any day---Your group is going to be "next one out".   We all know where that went.   They failed, work stopped on my end as well.

So Here I am 3+ years later.  Getting ready to lower my tailboom down from it's dusty perch where it's been hanging the last three years, put it back on the frame, and continue on.   This pick a few days ago.   I'm getting ready to fit the windscreen.   Waiting on a response from @Paul Barroso about his window mounting jig dimensions.

Just wondering if anyone has experience with running the RW 162 engine above the 4250 for extended time,

I am looking for what would happen IF the engine was run at say 5000rpm, continuously would it make more power, would it explode, would it last?

In this idea I am not using the FADEC system I am using the TBI system which I have proven at the regular 4250 rpm, and my outside scoop cooling system.

But just thinking outside the box.... what if a gearbox was designed with an output at 520rpm but the input around the 5000 would the engine be OK?