Kasama Mixing level

I have always thought that the raptor was lacking in collective pitch since I started using those Funkey FG blades during my raptor 30 days, partly because those funkey's require a degree or two more pitch to equal the feel of other blades. Flying the raptor with the rotor tech 610mm brought the meaning of "pre-historic dinosaur that is severely lacking in pitch" to a whole new level. There just wasn't enough pitch to load the engine enough and there wasn't enough pop. It was fine for most part of the flight, but in situations when you want to push the heli over like at the top of the slapper, it was lacking a bit of push and the stops at the end of each reversal was lacking...

The solution to this - KASAMA. Yet because of my budget and the fundamental design of the raptor, I couldn't see the reason to put a almost $400 head on this heli when I can sell it and top-up the same amount of money to get a t-rex 600N... So instead of the kasana head, I got just the mixing level. With the help of a flying mate who was doing a mass order on some other stuff, the whole mixing level set only cost $46/inclusive of S&H, which is way lower than the 70 odd my local dealer is asking for...

Note the hole spacing difference between the stock and kasama arm...its this little detail that makes a big change to flight feel...

Installation was a simple screw on task, nothing different from the stock.

I choose to have the ball links on the outer hole of both side for 2 reasons.
1. The outer hole on the shorter side gives a more aggressive setting.
2. The inner hole on the longer side that gives the more aggressive setting will cause the long linkage rod to bind against the thundertiger metal hub at full negative collective pitch. The kasama and gforce head don't suffer from this because the tt hub is squarish and fatter at the top.

With the max servo travel possible...

Stock arm gives...
+/-7 for cyclic and +11/-10 for collective

Inner hole on the shorter side and outer hole on the longer side gives..
+/-7 for cyclic and +/-10 for collective

Outer hole on both side gives...
+/-8.5 for cyclic and +/-13 for collective

I had to lenghten the double link by one complete turn because the kasama arm on the stock recommended length gave +12/-14.

Running +/-12 and 7.5 degree for cyclic transform the raptor into another heli. It was extremely punchy and stops and push overs were much cleaner. Rolls seem faster, cyclic was more sensitive to the sticks, loops were larger, FFF was faster, tic-toc was tighter, rainbows were bigger...everything was so much better than before. With my newly rebuilt hyper @1920rpm, there was absolutely no sign of bogging. The whole thing just felt lighter and quicker. It was so good that I forgot all about flight time and landed when I only had half a header tankful of fuel left...

There is one down side though, somehow hovering seems to be quite a bit more twitchy and touchy, but it isn't an issue for me.