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Hirobo Lama

It all begin with a myth...

Not a lot of people fly scale helicopters locally, maybe due to the additional care and maintenance for them. Locally, there is a myth circulating, saying that the Hirobo Lama, with a OS 46, is the fastest, most agile "off the rack" scale helicopter. Although I had yet to see one fly, I did not believe one bit of it. Come on! A 46 scale helicopter, with all those body parts hanging over them, a fast flyer?!

One day...

My hobby store owner friend called me, and asked me whether I would like to buy a second-hand Hirobo Lama. He keeps on assuring me that it is fully upgraded (Hmm... he sure knows me!), and since the helicopter is a beauty, he would like to sell it to someone who takes great care of his helicopters like me (Ahh.. some sales talk!). At first, I just don't have an appetite for a scale helicopter, and seriously, I never liked the look of the Lama. Its head is like a bug, and its tail is like an ugly skeleton. After several calls from my friend, urging that someone was making offers to buy that Lama, and he would really want me to have it, I went to his place and have a look.

There it is, sitting on the bench. It was dirty, and I mean really dirty. My friend told me that it was first own by someone who takes great care of his helicopters and installed a lot of upgrade parts, but it ended up with another guy who is new to the hobby, and just buy that Lama for its look. My friend felt sad for the last owner who don't know how to take care of it, and since he already had a Lama, he would not own another one. Close examination reviewed what my friend said is true. The Lama had almost all upgrade parts available, and the one who installed it did not just installed it, but obviously know what he is doing. Although covered with thick dust and oil, all parts and wire are neatly installed. The Lama comes with five JR 517 servos, all cyclic servos uses metal servo discs, and installed with the JR servo reinforcement brackets. The one single feature that this helicopter impressed me is its tail (Yeah, I never like the Lama's tail, but...). The power plant was a OS46FX, and my friend said the 46 was used for just 6 tanks, since the last owner leaned the 32 that came originally with it. The muffler that came with the Lama was from Hirobo which was very small by today's standard. However, it fit nicely onto the body, and any other muffler will require modification on the body, that will disturb the scale look. The details of the original Hirobo Lama tail (those criss-cross iron weld feature) was molded by plastic in one piece, but this Lama was different. The first owner used little plastic rods to re-construct those criss-cross cage features of the tail, and it looked really nice. It came with details like engines, little control boxes, and canopy filled with sits and controls like a real Lama, all painted with great details. After preliminary inspection, I asked about the price for it. My friend gave me an answer, and I immediately looked for my wallet.

Re-constructing the Lama

As usual, I like my helicopters my way, and since this Lama was so dirty to begin with, I went to the extreme and disassembled it to the bare frame, and washed every part. I also disassembled the engine, and soak it with kerosene to wash out any dirt. I did not disassembled the tail, cause I did not want to re-do the first owner's beautifully done work on it. I am glad that my effort was not wasted. During the process, I found that a lot of screws were either lost or loose. The most extreme case was three out of the four engine mounting bolts was lost! I changed the servos to Futaba 9204 on rotor controls and 9205 for the tail. The radio installation proved to be a challenged, as the spaces of the canopy was filled with decoration parts like seats and control for more detailed look, not much of the space is left for receiver, gyro and battery. I ended up using a micro gyro from Grand Wing Tech. Although it only had single rate, I used it for its size, and since I don't think I am going to do much more than hovering with the Lama, single rate is fine. After my work, I ended up with an "almost like new" Lama.

I felt very satisfied looking at my reconstruction of the Lama. However, I took one step to further make it look nicer. Although the Lama came installed with a fully metal head, all G-parts swashplate and mixers, I replaced it with the MRBIII (Three blade) head from Hirobo. The MRBIII head comes as a kit with the head, main shaft, swashplate, wooden blades and radius support arm to convert a Shuttle series heli to three blade head. The head unit is molded in plastic, and is of flapping type. I further replaced the tail with a three blade unit from Quick. Although the real Lama's tail was two bladed, using a three bladed tail matches the MRBIII head, I thought. After these conversion, my parts bin was filled with another set of upgrade metal head for a Shuttle.


*Close up of the MRBIII head*	*Close up of the Quick 3 blade tail rotor kit*

Flying the Lama

At the field, my friends did not believe that the Lama was bought a second handed. Sitting on the bench, the Lama attracted a lot of attentions. A lot of people admired the work I did to the Lama, and the beautiful work on the tail. I did not claim credit to the tail works, but I felt a sense of proud owning it. The engine started at a touch of the starter. I slowly send it to hover for trimming. The muffler dampened much of the noise of the 46, and still provides enough power. Amid all the myth about multi-bladed head, I found that the MRBIII head is actually nice to fly. It gave a very soft cyclic response. Since the original fuel tank was already small for a 32, my Lama only last for about four minutes for each tank. Some said I should add a header tank in the cage of the tail, but I guess I won't want to disturb the nice work on the tail. After two tanks of fuel to get used to the head, I send it to the sky to try for fast forward flight. To my surprise, it was really fast, faster than my 46 Ergos, but not as fast as a 60, I felt. I did not loop and roll the Lama, afraid that if I did anything wrong I will ruin my work. It was one heck of a helicopter, looks nice, flies nice too. I thought in the future I might try to fit in a 4 stroker and try to make it sound scale too. After the first day of flight, I cleaned it up, proudly displayed it at the living room. This was the only helicopter that my girl let me put in the living room as a display, and all the exotic ones end up in the room.

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