500 size CH-54 Tarhe (Skycrane) Build

Got in about 15 flights so far. One of the things I hadn't addressed yet was the castoring nose wheel. For all the flights so far, it has been free to caster with no centering springs. Of course during startup, the aircraft always yawed a bit and I had to taxi to get the wheel re-centered. On my last flight, I applied full tail rotor during spool-up to minimize the heading drift. Wrong move... I stripped out the 45 deg gearbox as it got to flight RPM, luckily still on the ground. No damage noted on the airframe.

2 of the 3 gears in the gearbox were stripped and it was also evident that they needed to be shimmed. The mesh as-is was definitely loose. I ordered some 8mm shims, and after some trial and error, got it shimmed with a much better mesh. Also changed out all the bevel gears for Align parts. I am also adding the centering springs to the nose wheel before the next flight, which will hopefully occur tomorrow.​