HK 450 V2 build instructions

About the HK450 v2 CCPM 3D Helicopter Kit

This cheap 450 clone comes without any manual so you’ll have to look for build instructions yourself. This is what I discovered, hopefully this will help you.

This article is about the HK450 CCPM 3D Helicopter Kit (Align T-rex Compat.) Ver. 2 kit.

If you live in Europe or another region with a local HK shop it will pay off to get your kit there. It’s very likely that you will get extra taxes on this kind of bigger packages from abroad. Also shipping from local regions is much faster and cheaper. This is the link for the European warehouse HK450 CCPM kit.

If you want to go even cheaper than that you could buy the HK-450 CCPM 3D Helicopter Barebone kit (Align T-rex Compat.). Be aware that this one has no canopy, blades, etc. EDIT: this kit seems to be removed from the website?

External Resources

For Version 1 there is a very good tutorial available. This can help you to some extend for the V2 version. Same goes for the Align 450 SE V2 manual. Don’t go into detail with these manuals as screws and other details might not match completely.

Required Electronics for the HK 450 v2 Kit

The HK450 V2 kit comes without electronics. You need a lipo, motor, pinion, esc, servo’s, gyro and receiver (and progammable transmitter). These are the cheapest parts available from HK. Please not that the cheap plastic geared servo’s are not suited for extreme 3D performance. By the time you learned how to fly 3D you probably know what servo’s to replace them with anyway ;-).

Turnigy E500 6T 4000Kv 200W Heli Motor (lightweight and good performance)
TowerPro H40A Brushless Speed Controller (comes with pinion and 3 bullet connectors)
Turnigy 2200mAh 3S 20C Lipo Pack (cheap and enough power for sport flying, have a higher C rate for better performance)
Hobby King 401B AVCS Digital Head Lock Gyro
4x HXT900 9g / 1.6kg / .12sec Micro Servo (these fit frame well. For better performance look for digital metal geared servo’s instead)

If you don’t have the standard interchangeable RC gear yet you will also need the following. These parts you only need to buy once and can be used for several models:

Transmitter & Receiver Combo

Turnigy 9X 9Ch Transmitter w/ Module & 8ch Receiver (Mode 1) (v2 Firmware)
Turnigy 9X 9Ch Transmitter w/ Module & 8ch Receiver (Mode 2) (v2 Firmware)

You either buy a Mode 1 or Mode 2 transmitter. This mode is an indication on where the throttle stick is, left or right. The throttle stick is different than the other stick because it can be left at a certain position without having a spring centering it when released. This however can easily be changed by taking off the spring on one stick and putting it back on the other stick. Also in firmware you can choose what channels corresponds to what control.

Also note that this transmitter is very popular and because of that has been on backorder for ages now. The only way to get one is to place a backorder and wait. At the beginning of this year I ordered one and the wait time for the order to get reserved was around 1 month. Add another month for shipping and you’ll be waiting for 2 months! But it’s worth it, believe me.

Battery Charger

Another part you’ll only buy once. The best option for this really is the Turnigy Accucel-6 50W 6A Balancer/Charger w/ accessoires. For that price you have a very complete charger with all the options you’ll ever need. The only disadvantage so far is that it can only charge a single pack. But for that price you can get 2 of them and charge 2 batteries at the same time ;-).

Important note on tools

The screws that come with this kit are either philips or hex. Don’t use a 1.5mm metric hex driver for these screws since it won’t fit perfectly and you will end up breaking the screws. You need an imperial 1/16 inch hex driver instead! In fact many people complaining about the weak screws just use improper tools.

Loctite is needed on all metal to metal parts. But only on metal to metal parts! Don’t use it on plastic since it can damage plastics. For plastic securing you want to use a drop of CA glue. Also if you want to loosen a piece you’ve secured with loctite it can help to heat it up shortly with a soldering iron.

Kit Contents & Build Instructions

Be aware that the packages are well grouped. The screws that are in the package of the landing skids for instance need to be used for mounting the landing skids ;-).

This is al you need for the flybar. The paddles, weights and bar. They go into the head, see trex manual for details. Please note that there are screws in place on delivery. You need to remove these screws first.

Fins are mounted using the black screws with silver washers.

These screws are silver and self taping. These were packaged together with the skids.

These screws came with the heli kit. The pinion and bullet connectors came with the motor. I only needed 2 screws to mount the motor. The other 2 are spares.

The main gear, spacer and the screw for attaching. With this I had some issues. In the tail drive gear, the smallest, bottom gear there is a metal shaft (one way bearing shaft) with a hole that has to align with the hole in the plastic gear. These didn’t align on my parts making it impossible to put the screw through to keep everything together (the black one on the picture). I tried turning it but it was very stiff and only after heating it up shortly I could move it around to align the holes. Problem is I heated up too long causing the plastic to melt and now the shaft isn’t centered anymore.

These bottom pieces are mounted on the tail to hold the tail servo. On top you can see an antenna holder which you won’t need for 2.4GHz, a pushrod for the tail servo and 2 guides for that pushrod.

These small rubbers are needed to hold the canopy in place. On top of the frame you also mount 2 canopy spacers. Near the anti rotation bracket. The next pictures show these installed:

These ball links are needed for the servo’s linking them with the pushrods. For both cyclic and tail servo so you need 4 of them in total. For the HXT900 servo’s you’ll notice that the servo arm holes need to be drilled out. Make sure not to drill out to big of a hole. They still need to be attached securely. On these parts you can use CA (instead of loctite) for securing.

The plastic ballinks have to be put on in the right direction. A letter on one side indicates the side that needs to be up front. Also keep in mind that these links need to be the exact measurements from the manual. Check the manual and correct. They don’t come in the correct size yet, they really need to be adjusted.

These bolts and nuts are needed to mount the cyclic servo’s. See next picture on how to mount the HXT900 as cyclic servo’s.

Here you can see how I took the top of the plastic servo casing off in order to fit them. I also removed the bar on top from the frame. This is kept in place with 2 screws. If mounting these again remind to add some loctite.

Don’t put the servo horns on the servo’s yet. You can put the ballinks on the horns but you’ll have to center the servo’s (with tx sticks centered) before you can mount the arms on the servo in the correct angle.

Picture after installation of all servo’s.

And a picture of how I got wires out of the way of the gears. Rx is up front, ESC underneath.

Anti rotation bracket and tail supports. These are mounted using the black screws with silver washers.

Black screws with silver washers for mounting anti rotation bracket, tail supports, fins and bottom plate to frame/tail.

Tags: heli

Motorcycles & Photography