building first heli kit, some ?'s

[hellian]

Hello all! I'm in the process of building my first kit, Raptor 30 w/ OS 32 engine. I was wondering, besides the parts that the manual says to, which other assemblies of the heli do I need to apply loctite to. The manual also say to use blue (medium) strength, should I coonsider the red for anything? I'm also looking for a decent transmitter, I'd welcome any opinions. Thanks for any input :D

[tdswan]

Use RED on the fan when you bolt it to the engine. This WILL come loose if you don't use the red. Take it from someone who has been there. Luckily, it didn't cause a crash for me. I discovered it while starting it.

Without getting any into the bearings, you should use a small amount of CA on most of the screws that hold moving parts in the rotor head and other mechanisms on it. As a general rule, almost any screw that goes into metal should have some loctite on it. Heli's vibrate a lot, so it just makes good sense to take extra measures.

Also, make sure your tail rotor mechanisms are as free moving as possible. All of the pitch sliders and such MUST move very quickly, so the more free you can make them, the better.

Make sure you use a ball-link resizer on all of the link ends on the heli as well. A tight link will cause problems.

[Motions]

Like tdswan said, any screw that goes into plastic, use CA. Any screw that goes into metal, use blue loctite.

The only places I use red are the fan and the lower bearing on the start pinion.
I also switch the stock plastic throttle lever with a metal one and used red on that. I had an incident where the plastic lever popped off during hover. Had to set it down and let it run full throttle until the tank was empty.

Also important, use the small nuts on the back of the servo arms to secure the balls. I use blue for this as well.