Following a thread started by someone on HF, mentioning a lowered head mod that Scott Cherry did, I decided to go ahead and give it a try when rebuilding my E7 after the last crash. I made a hybrid E5/E7 rotor head. I used an E5 main shaft and E5 washout arms. I modified the E7 head block to be able to use the E5 washout arms. First, I made some aluminum plugs and filled in the counter-bored holes where the clamping screws go in. After plugging those counter-bores, I re-drilled the holes at 3.3mm for screw clearance.
Next, I drilled a 3.3mm hole for the Jesus bolt at 90 degrees to the original holes. I drilled it level with the top hole so I could set it as low as possible. I just went ahead and installed it just like the E5 setup. I used some linkages that I had in my 6HV parts bin for the swash-to-blade grip linkages.
It's a nice calm, bright and sunny day today and it warmed up to a balmy 16 degrees F this afternoon so I went and maidened it with the new head setup. So far, it seems really sweet! 6 minutes was about all I could stand so I came back in after one flight. I'm going to charge up the batteries and go out one more time. The first maiden was with some old SAB blades that I use for first flights after repair and I want to give it a go with the Rails on it. Anyway, I think it came out pretty good.
