Thanks Savoia,
Those are the best close ups I have seen so far and give me some thoughts, and Ideas. On the last one where the gaiter has come free, I am particularly interested to see what it is attached to and the control mechanism for it, under the hood as it were.
I may be oversimplifying it, but am assuming that as those levers are attached to a C shaped control arm, then by raising or lowering these levers singularly or in combination, causes the necessary change in blade pitch during rotation to angle the rotor disc and therefore change the direction/lift of the heli.
I am keen to see under the skin how that works, it may not be possible or appropriate to completely replicate in the model as doubtless these systems were controlled hydraulically and I will be using an electric digital servo which are very powerful, have high resolution and are reasonably fast.
I am also intrigued about the rotor head and the various mechanisms on there, the autorotation video you kindly put up shows a couple of weights (which you can see on these stills) rotating outwards, and then whilst still rotating closing to the main shaft.
I'd be really interested in any explanation of the components above my simplistic understanding.
When you see a picture this close, and see that the blades are being held by two admittedly well manufactured and quality controlled pins, it is quite awesome to understand the forces and stresses that may be apparent but are effectively the main reason you are in the air!!!
On models, the relative strengths are much much higher as mass is lower, energy is lower but the tensile strength of the materials remain the same. It always reminds my of my physics teacher explaining how molecules relative strength is at its' peak when you try and pull it apart...... thank goodness!! Additionally the swash plate is a simple mechanism, practically a bearing mounted on the main shaft encapsulated by a disc with ball link connections from the servo and linkage and another encapsulated bearing with ball links to the rotor blade grips, as you hopefully can see in the attached picture.
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/r3r2hffdkizwc4k/wBlFOZD3KP
(ignore the cowl, being prepped for glassfibre moulding practice!)
I really appreciate all your input, you clearly are an expert in the Scout and it is so helpful!
Thanks,
Gaz
PS Is there any easier way to display pictures?