Vario Bell 230 Building

It all starts with a big box and a lot of parts....
No clue of the all the work that is to be done. :-)
Started with the retract mechanics, lot's of puzzling and modifying the plywood to make it work smooth.
Saved some weight on the wood construction where possible, it all counts at the end.....

Milling doors, windows, vents and retract openings.
Hell of a job.
Adapting the doors so that they nicely fit the fuselage opening contours.

Adapting and installation of the tail rotor housing.
The tail rotor has to be installed inverted to be scale true, so pitch control on the upper side.
Modification of the rudder control arm bridge, lower the control arm due to the narrow tail boom end.
Solid rock fixture of the gearbox in the tail boom fuselage.
Tail fin fixed straight on the gearbox with the tail boom fuselage in between.

Construction of the wooden baseframe for support of the mechanics.
Alu profile for installation of the Align T Rex mechanics.

I had to rebuild the front gear mechanics due to bad kit parts.
Turning new gear rotation shaft parts for a low friction operation.
The original parts glue'd up during rotation....
Solid aluminum shaft for better attachment to the drive servo arm.

Laminating the retract mechanics to the fuselage.
It is not easy to line up all the wood parts in order to get a friction free operation.
Laminating glue is R&G L 40 min potlife with some Aerosil to make it less liquid.
The wings are reinforced with a glasfiber tape for additional strength to the fuselage.

Glue the wooden baseframe to the fuselage.
Reinforce the front side retract with carbon kevlar layer.
Sides of wood base plate edge filled with epoxy / Aerosil mixture, in order to get a nice filling paste.
This way you get nice clean joint.
Mid section closed with a 0.3mm carbon layer

Adding some reinforcement strips for mechanics topside connection.
Reverse one way bearing for CCW operation
Reinforced insert nuts
Easy acces thru alu supports for rear bolt of mechanic attachment

Modification tailcone due to no good fitting of the original
Inserts for tailcone attachment
Preparation navigation light tail cone
Machining supports for navi light tailboom and doghouse
Unilight lights. (Unilight.at)

Unilight navigation light controller setup
ESC power wiring and connector routing setup
Milling pockets for the door magnets
Additional rotation support for retract drive shaft
Mounting of the door hinges
Clamp ring for main shaft
ESC radio setup
Milling central part for swashplate follower.

Stainless steel main shaft finishing
Machining swashplate follower
Align tri blade head control arm was used.

Wiring and external power off button on the Capacity buffer unit.
Made two lipo supporting plates, wood reinforced with a thin carbon layer.
So the battery weight it directly taken by the alu support frame, and not he fuselage.
Merge the two doghouse parts into one part.
Due to the close circle edge of the head linkage hole to the doghouse parting position i had to glue the two parts together.
Epoxy mixture with Aerosil to make it a fluid paste.