Hitec 5065 Servos on the Trex 450 Sport

After a recent hard crash that took out two of the Align DS410 servos on my Trex 450 Sport, I decided to upgrade. While I could have just replaced the gears, I had seen a poll on a heli forum that showed that up to 30% of pilots using Align's DS 410 have had problems. My stock servos had served me well for 170 flights, but I figured it might be time to try something different.

From what I had read, the Hitec 65MG's have been the tried and true workhorse for many 450 pilots but the 5065's were the digital version of this servo and I chose to give them a try. All I can say after a dozen or so flights is WOW! Great little servos, really quick, smooth and the Sport now hovers better than ever.

As far as installation, they went in with a minimum of alteration. I had to do a slight amount of filing of the frame sides to get them to slide in but once fitted, I was able to use the stock servo nuts for mounting. One word of caution though, the Hitec servo arms are longer so be sure to trim off any excess length on the right side forward servo arm as it will interfere with the rotating main gear if you give full cyclic and full collective at the same time. Only other difference between the Align and Hitec servos was that the wires on the Hitec are a little shorter but I had no problem routing them inside the frame and to my receiver that I have mounted under the gyro tray.

Over all I'm very pleased with this upgrade. I also changed out the tail servo to a Futaba S9257 which I'll cover in a later post, but the changes have made a tremendous improvement in the stability of the Sport. If your considering making a change from Align's stock servos, I highly recommend the 5065's