With the swashplate way down on the mainshaft and tilted way over, the washout levers can over-throw themselves and bind. The next revolution of the rotor head will then tear apart both cyclic servos! This will shorten your flight time and rotor blades considerably.

It helps to make the S4666 links kinda short - this will put the swashplate higher up for a given pitch setting. It also helps to install the S1025 collective upgrade, but it's not really necessary (though at $20, it's no big deal). It also helps to use shorter balls on the inner ring of the swashplate, where the lower washout levers attach.

Bob Johnson, possibly the best-known Futura flyer today, advised making the links from the washout levers to the Hiller levers a bit longer. I didn't hear about that until after I got mine all set up so I can't vouch for it personally, but I figure Bob knows what he's talking about!

There should be no tension in the belt at rest, but there should also not be much slack... How much is too much? I've been advised that you should be able to twist the belt 90 degrees without much force, and this rule of thumb has worked well for me so far.

Be careful to align the engine with the second pulley. If the belt rides below the bottom of the pulley, it will chafe against the sideframes for a couple of flights before it disappears in a dusty cloud, leaving a wad of steel wool it its place (go ahead, ask me how I know). Properly aligned, the belt should last forever.

Bob Johnson, said, "When you fit the cyclic servo arms don't fit the balls to far appart as this will give to much swash deflection and cause the washout mixers to bind. I space the balls 23mm apart on JR 4231 servo's and can use 130 percent ATV; this value and servo spacing will be different for other radios."

My approach was to use wider arms and close to 100% ATV (I don't know offhand). I set the ATVs so the swashplate doesn't bind against the main shaft (i.e. if I turn up the ATVs a couple more percent, the collective will stick when I hold full cyclic). Then I set my "low" dual rate so the swashplate doesn't bind when I have the cyclic stick in the corners.

I spend 90% of my time flying on "low" rates, so I don't have to worry about binding. The added response of high rates can add a bit of zip to specific tricks that don't require the use of cornered cyclics though.

A friend of mine used JR's big white servo wheel, with the ball links mounted slightly forward on each side of the output shaft. This kind of geometry reduces (can probably eliminate) collective pitch changes when you work the elevator servo back and forth. To keep the rest of the geometry right, he had the "strap" mounted under one ball, running across the top of the output shaft, with the opposite end of the strap mounted to the servo wheel slightly *behind* the other ball. The fronts and backs were cut off of the wheels to keep things tidy (yes, this made them into rectanges rather than wheels, if you must know).

I'm using Min Air's upgrade "aileron servo horn" on each cyclic servo. The XL aileron servo rocks just like both of the Futura's cyclic servos, so I figured it would be a good fit. It's very close, but not quite perfect - if they weren't $20 each I'd recommend them. When I find something that does yield perfect control geometry I will let you all know.

Finally, I must confess that I used straight servo horns (and the less-than-ideal control geometry that resulted) for quite a while and never really noticed anything odd. All this business about perfecting the control linkage geometry has more to do with perfectionism than performance!

The maximum amount of positive collective you can achieve is limited by the point at which the washout levers run into the top of the swashplate - this will happen sooner with lots of cyclic, of course. The maximum amount of negative collective is limited by the point at which the washout levers and washout-to-hiller-arm-links overextend and bind. My current setup is good for about 8 degrees in either direction with full cyclic and no binding. I think that this could be increased with some small changes to the lengths of the linkages above and below the swashplate, but I haven't had occasion to experiment yet.

The stock SE canopy is made of the wrong material. It's quite brittle. Mine is wearing a lot of duct tape to hold it together after my last crash. A new one should be here tomorrow, and I'm going to CA or epoxy fiberglass cloth to the inside, around the mounting points and under the front/top lip (forward of the main shaft). There's a fiberglass canopy available, but it's about $115, versus $65 or so for the stock one. I considered getting one, but I'm not sure it would be cost-effective in the long run. Sooner or later I'm sure I'll crash hard enough to smash either of them. :) I wish they'd take a lesson from Kyosho and make a canopy out of whatever my Concept 20 SRX canopy is made of - I've seen those survive all kinds of abuse.

Fortunately, Modelsport now makes fiberglass canopies with high quality and low prices. Most good shops carry them these days.

I'm told not to overtighten the bolts that mount the tail gearbox to the end of the boom. This can put too much pressure on the ball bearing at the front of the gearbox, damaging it over time.

I'm also told to use loctite to lock the second-stage gear/pulley shaft into its bearings. Evidently some people have had galling problems here that have lead to stripped main gears.