Still flying... Doing much better...

Well I am still terribly addicted to flying RC Helicopters. My newest and favorite Heli is the Align TREX 250. I was flying it in normal mode for a while and a few weeks ago graduated to idle up mode. I only get 5 and a half minutes of flight time but the 20c Turnigy batteries I am running manage the power load and are only a little warm after each flight.

Here is a picture of the airframe of a 250 I got. This is not my heli but mine looks just like this:

I installed the 250SE motor and 750 gryo from Align. 3 Hi-Tek HS65-HB cyclic servos and a JR290 rudder gyro. The little heli is perfectly balanced and the setup is great. I have +/- 10 degrees of pitch on the blades and great authority.

I am working on getting my 450 setup for idle up flight but a little worried about the cheapy ACE RC servos I have on it. I have been assured that the Logictech 2100T gyro I have on my 450 is good enough for the fun pyro's I am doing at speed and at 90 degrees.

Well that's it for now. Thanks for reading...

- HeliDragon

Just purchased a Walkera 4g6!!

OK its been ages. I am flying every chance I get but I thought i would update that I just got a Walkera 4g6. Hope to get it this weekend or early next week in the mail.

I have high hopes for this little birdie!

- HD

Beginning forward flight.

So I have not posted here in a while but I have logged a bunch of flights, mostly hovers, but moving around more and more. Really just what I have been doing, pointing left and flying left, but bringing it back over to my right, tail in. Well yesterday I managed to fly right pointed right, would carefully turn my bird around and fly her the other way. It was really windy but I did it anyway. It was challenging and fun, but I had this problem where I could not maintain my perceived orientation of the heli and twice I almost crashed, once was out in the field and the other time was much closer to me than I would have liked, there is a chance it could have hit me. SCARY. Anyway I just did the post below over on the HeliFreak forums:

http://www.helifreak.com/showthread.php?p=1543580

(I have also pasted it below to stay in this journal. )

--------------------------------------------------------------

OK I am trying to make the transition to forward flight. Basically just trying to fly from right to left and left to right pointed in the direction that I am flying. I managed to do it yesterday several times during my last 2 flights of the day but I am having a lot of trouble with keeping track of my orientation. I have apparently developed a bad habit of using only the skids for orientation, but I should have been looking at the whole heli. As she fly’s the kids looks like they transpose on me. Then I loose orientation and can’t tell if she is leaning away or toward me. If I move the aileron the wrong way, she will of course tip badly on the wrong direction and could result on a crash. But my 450 is so small compared to the 500 & 600 heli’s.

What can I do to help maintain my perceived orientation of my heli? I am currently planning on using a sharpie and carefully paining in a thick black stripe about a 3rd out, another 2/3’s out and a bright red tip on the underside of the rotor blades, maybe on the top too, but using different colors. Was also going to get the solid molded landing skids and paint the left skid red and the right skid green. Also want to get a more visible canopy. I was thinking about paining a canopy some bright colors or just picking up a fiberglass one that has a bright align paint job. I may also paint my vertical stabilizer some other annoying bright color, one color on one side and another color on the other.

Maybe I am going overboard here, but even after a recent mechanical failure, I have 42 flights under my belt and no crashes, yet. Everybody says I will crash eventually, but I am doing my best to keep it from happening for as long as possible, and don’t want it to happen because I could not tell what direction I was pointed. I mean I am only flying like 50 feet away at most. It was also suggested that I fly on my simulator without the “binocular” view, keeping it as real as I can. Meanwhile I am still using the orientation trainers in my simulator as often as I can.
Any advice or feedback would be greatly appreciated.

- HeliDragon

Outdoor flight with new E-Flight Blade mSR at Bayside RC Club

Saturday (8/29/09) I took my TREX out to the Bayside RC Club in Fremont and was able to run 3 packs. Big thanks to someone who asks his name not be used on the internet. He knows who he is but I don't think he reads my blog. Him and Youtube user Sterling501 have been the biggest help of all out there.

It was 90+ degrees and overall gentle breeze with gusts from time to time. Was fun and challenging to fly in, especially when the wind decided to randomly change direction. Anyway was a good run for the TREX.

Right before everyone left I took out my E-Sky Blade mSR "BNF" and showed it off. It was a bit breezy but was able to fly it a bit and the video below was taken by "Sterling501" using his camera phone. Also handed it to Dante to tried it but it was not in the video. I have a LOT of feedback about the mSR that I will make in another post with a video review of the unit. I am hoping that this review I am working on will help folks who may have what I see are possible common issues that may crop up with this little 1oz (28 gram) fixed pitch heli. Video below and a big thanks to Sterling501 for filming and posting it. Sorry I could not embed it. so just a link. Remember to watch it in "HD".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igLMJFP4TOw

Sunday it was much MUCH cooler, I would say maybe 78 at the hottest point of the day. Sun was strong, but cool winds kept it very comfortable. Donned the sun block and was lucky enough to run 3 packs again (on my TREX) and even though I think it was about twice as windy as it was yesterday, I had a great time flying. I think I may want to dial my Pitch curve back a bit and bring up my head speed a little more. I want to do this to improve handling in wind but I am afraid to touch these settings as they can dramatically effect the way the helicopter flys. Now that I have it dialed in the new aluminum tail assembly is VERY smooth. Has a nice sound to it. A little sort of squeak, but not in a bad way. Also much quieter than the plastic assembly. I suspect it is the improved belt tensioner. Tail assembly is made from Align, Helimax and some other brand I have never heard of. Really don't like the bright blue anodized aluminum the Chinese parts use, much prefer a gun metal grey or the sort of muted blue that Align likes to use.

I think this brings me up to 32 flights and no crashes. This makes me really happy!! Thanks for reading.

- HeliDragon

Stopped my order from Red Rocket Hobbies

OK so it looks like my local hobby store is going to be getting them in today at 3PM. So I killed the order from Red Rocket Hobbies and am going to buy it from the local shop. He says there is a 90 percent chance they will show up today otherwise I can come get one on Monday. I am really looking forward to flying it. I think it is going to help me a lot with orentation. Its what I struggle with most right now.

eFlight Blade mSR ORDERED!!! Yay!

Heli ordered from Red Rocket Hobbies. I raise ain eyebrow at their logo but they seem to run a tight ship and I have been checking their web site every day for almost a month. Anyway it said "IN STOCK" so I ordered one. Will do an unboxing when it arrives. I am really excited to get it and try it out. Sadly I think spare parts are going to be scarce for a little while so I will try and be extra careful with it. Maybe it will come with some extra rotor blades or the blades on the mCX are compatible? Was $162.36 including TAX with free shipping.

Tail Problem Update. FIXED

So yeah, I reversed the linkage arms on the blade grips in the tail and the problem went away. Flew the first pack this way to make sure. Feeling confident I hovered around in my tiny back yard, swinging her around a bit. After that I dialed in 5% expo just now that I know how to do it right and I gotta say, I reeeeeally like 5% expo so I think I am gonna leave it there. Thats 5% on everything but throttle. Flew in the little culdesac at the end of my street to check out the 5% and as I said, I really liked it. If I have time tomorrow I am going to try to tweak my throttle and pitch curves for better control of my bird, especially when there is wind. I think I am about 30 flights or so, no crashes yet!

Major tail problem with new assembly. Pitch/Throttle Curves.

OK so I got a 3rd party aluminum tail assembly for my TREX 450XL. Installed it and as far as I can tell, everything is setup the same. But when I go to fly, as soon as the rotors get fast enough to start providing lift the heli will just want to spin around. I did name some tweaks to my gyro travel but if anything I think I made them better. The 3rd party tail assembly otherwise matched up perfectly with the aluminum Align tail grips that I installed as I was building it (I stripped the plastic ones during the build). My only complaint was that it was really frickin' tight to get onto the end of the tail boom.

As to the cause, I THINK I know the problem but I don't think I will have time to try and fix it till Sunday evening at the very earliest. I think that I have my tail grips on backwards, meaning that when the gryo moves to provide right rudder it is actually causing left rudder, the gyro tries to correct by providing right rudder causing even more LEFT rudder so it just spins out of control. I think if I just take the tail partially apart and turn my grips around all will be well. Everything else is the same as far as I can tell, but I have never paid attention to the direction of the blades in relation to the movement of the stick. This would make sense too since I realized that the screws on my blade grips are facing the wrong way.

Otherwise it has been super smooth sailing, or should I say flying. The guys out at Bayside RC have been really helpful in getting my bird flying really smooth. All that is left is to try and dial in better pitch and throttle curves. This is what I was experimenting with last night making sure I had greater head speed and used more pitch control for lift, as this will make her naturally better at dealing with the wind, it will lower my flight time a bit but I am usually only putting 1600mAh back into my packs in an 8 min hover practice session and I don’t hover in one spot. I practice in several locations around my area.

I have also been neglecting my simulator, I need to focus on things I currently can't do at all in reality, like nose in, and 90 degrees right, pirouettes, orbits, circles and figure eights. I will be a happy camper when I can do that stuff comfortably and then start focusing on faster and faster forward flight.

Thanks for reading, will have an update on Monday or Tuesday on my tail issue, oh and check out my YouTube, I posted an amazing video of a monster 1.8 meter 17 pound scale electric heli. http://www.youtube.com/user/helidragon510 Sorry I can't do a direct link as YouTube is blocked here at work. The video is the most recent upload at the time of posting this blog. I have a few videos of the guys at Bayside helping me out that I am planning on posting early next week, in HD of course. But I don't have time over the weekend to do it and I am also waiting for permission from someone.

- HeliDragon

Goodies from HobbyKing arrived!

Earlier this week the canopy, spare parts and 2x 2200mAh 20c Zippy Flight Power Batteries I ordered arrived from China. I was not super impressed with the canopy. It was ultra cheap but has a textured surface. I think I'll try and paint it. The Zippy batteries are good and strong. They came with Deans connectors on them already and after a few flights each seems just as strong as the $65 Thunder Power that I got at my local hobby store when I got my 450XL kit. Pics below. Click on the picture for a higher quality version. Doing this post from my iPhone and it mangles the pics a bit.

Oh. So they say 10-45 days shipping from China actually took about 14 days total including the weekend. Everything was well packaged. Anyway the prices are great and even though Hobby King is half way around the world they do seem to try their best to get it to you asap. I am sure your milage may vary. Anyway kudos to Hobby City/Hobby King.

















-- Post From My iPhone

A good weekend in Fresno

Went to Fresno to hang with friends and decided to take my TREX with me. Came the closest to crashing than I ever have before but managed to get her horizontal for a harder-than-I-would-like landing on the training gear.

Managed to get some 90 degree flight in (pointed left) only on thr first flight as every other flight it was just way too windy to do anything other than "tail in" hovering for me but not outside what the heli could handle.

I think the scary part is when I am a few feet or maybe 5 feet off the ground and there is a sudden gust of with. You have to reduce head speed or the heli will move higher. But the slower the head speed thr harder she is to control.

This is how I almost crashed. I had her 6 feet in the air and despite the wind was sliding waaaaaay left and waaaaaaay right, nosing into the sweeps a little. But a strong gust hit it as I was moving a little too fast sweeping left an up it went. I had to greatly reduce throttle to bring her down, another strong wind gust and the heli starts to pitch over. I do my best to stay calm and try not to over react. Applying throttle and gettig her horizontal I was able to swing her around and plop on the training gear/skids. Ouch, but she was OK.

Other than that I finally cut my window and applied it to the canopy. Also added a few stickers so my bird isn't what I call a "plane white tee" any more.

- HeliDragon


-- Post From My iPhone

Big update posted to YouTube

Finally was able to upload all the video I had ready to go for the past week. iMovie '09 would stall during upload but the web uploader worked just fine. Anyway the very first video here is a 90 degree left hover practice in a culdesac near my house. For me this is a big deal as all the controls are basically shifted 90 degrees counter clock wise. Move the stick right and the heli moves away from you, and so on. As a newbie this is a challenge. You can click: HERE to see it in full HD on youtube or watch it below.

The rest of my new videos, being a stunt heli guy that goes REALLY fast and a two parter of a scratch built world war 2 passenger plane. Those are both on my Youtube Site here: http://www.youtube.com/user/HeliDragon510

Flight Journal for August 6th 2009

Got in 2 flights yesterday but it was a bit more windy that I would have liked. Not much to talk about. Filmed the first hiver in HD and got some great video of the heli flying at 90 degrees pointed left. I know its not a big deal to you pro's out there, but for me its a big deal. Ill give it a week then see about hovering pointed the other direction.



Been having a LOT of trouble uploading video to YouTube. Not sure if it is Youtibe, my Mac or my AT&T DSL. Will find out this weekend.



In Other News:

I went to my local hobby shop and checked out the Align 450 Field Case. For $60 I was not impressed.My Heli barely fit and my 2.4Ghz Spektrum DX6i would not fit at all! Per the forum over at HeliFreak (Link to the right) They pointed to the "EXI" Field Case from xHeli.com I got it for $34 (Pictured below).





The Quality of this case is supposedly not super great. But if you don't throw it around too hard I am hoping it will be fine. With the money I "saved" by not getting the Align case I also picked up some extra little parts for my TREX from them. Total after shipping was about $65!

Link to the case: CLICK HERE

Flight Journal for August 5th 2009

Only had time for 1 flight. Set the timer on my transmitter for 9 minutes and got her in the air, just hovering. All these kids from the neighborhood want to watch and they were all around, at a reasonable distance thankfully. I warned them that if it comes at them to RUN AWAY, not to try and block it. RUN! I didn’t mean to scare the kids, but it put them on edge a little, that’s good. On edge means one is ready to RUN if they need to.

Anyway, got her up and realized that I had not started the timer. So I started it anyway and guessed I was in the air for about a min, hoping I would get 10 minutes like last time. Hovered around a bit and decided I would try to fly 90 degrees nose left. I tried this before and could not do it, but I was determined, never mind if I had like 6 people watching me. I turned her nose to the left and it got unstable, or should I say, I did. I got the tail back in centered low only like 6 inches off the ground and tried it again. Better, but I noticed I was holding my transmitter almost in the same orientation as my bird. So I just did that for a bit then she started going backward (to my right to me, but backward to the heli). I was having difficulty with the orientation so I dropped onto the training balls but kept it light, got the tail in and flew it back to low center in front of me. On about the 4 or 5th try I was able to hover one foot off the ground pointed left for a few min, it was mainly because my timer was running low. The Heli always seemed to want to go backward in 90 degree flight. I think it had something to do with the wind, but I got better at dealing with it. I did some diagonal left and rights where I would nose the direction I would drift over too at a 45 degree angle, bring it up tail in and stop way to my right, then nose 45 degrees in the other direction and drift over there. Did that a few times got it back to low center in front of me, tail in hovered there for another 30 sec or so and gently set her down. I would say I got about 10.5 min flight time, or at least rotor time. There would be spots it was on the ground for a sec.

Thanks for reading,

- HeliDragon

Videos about mSR on YouTube

Found some cool videos about the MSR I did not know about. Embedded below.

Youtube Direct Link

Youtube Direct Link

Incase you didn't know, I really want one of these!

Found some more info on the E-Flight Blade mSR

So I am chomping at the bit to get my hands on the Bind and Fly (BNF) version of this little bird. She weighs less than 1oz (28g), should cost $149 without an controller and after many delays appears to be coming out some time early next month. But honestly if I have it in my hands before the 15th I will be surprised. I have my name on the list at my local hobby store.

The link for the story (and were this image is linked from) is: HERE

Flight Journal: 1 flight last night...

Only had time for 1 flight last night. I think LiPo batteries work better after a few charges. The first full pack I did I barely got 9 min, but last night (about my 5th flight) I ran for 10.5 min by accident. I got up in the air, tail in. It was a bit windy but I kept it about 10 feet up and even though I know wind is unpredictable, and if it would gust hard enough I probably could not react fast enough to deal with it, I wanted the challenge. After doing my best to hold steady for about 6 minutes I brought it down low and slowly swooped her over to the left (tail in) angling the nose to the right about 40 degrees, and swooped to the right, then brought her up steady. I did the same thing again only I nosed into the left. I did this back and fourth a few times. I was wobbly and it was scary but I didn't crash. My training gear did touch down on more than one occasion.

After that I think I had like 30 sec left on the timer so I took her back to center and held her about 2 feet off the ground, doing half orbits around me. I heard the alarm go off so I set it down on a spot I like to land, and then glanced down at the timer, 30 seconds! “Oh I still have 30 seconds I thought.” So I took her back up for another 2 min and when I did not hear the alarm and noticed I was loosing a little head speed I set her back down and looked at the timer, oops 2min 30 sec! The sun was setting. I Called it a night.

Right now all I want to do is fly forward slowly. Little circles and eventually little slow figure 8's. It’s crazy to think that this machine I am controlling is capable of such speed and power, but all I can do is hover it. It’s like driving a sports car but you can only let in the clutch and idle it around the track at 2 miles an hour. Really boggles the mind. Thanks for reading,

- HeliDragon

I am now AMA insured! http://www.modelaircraft.org/ Got the annual open membership that comes with some kind of magazine subscription too. Yay.

More info about the AMA can be found in the newbie section over at the HeliFreak Forums here:
http://www.helifreak.com/showthread.php?t=63401

These guys helped defend our hobby after 9/11! Amazing!

NwI can fly at the local RC Club. Hoping to get in a few times before paying for a membership there.

Hobby King order is shipped.

Remember a few post back I talked about how I got all this stuff from Hobby King (Hibby City) for less than the cost of my 1 Thunder Power battery? It finally shipped. See below:

from: cs@hobbyking.com
to: HeliDragon
date: Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 7:30 PM
subject: Your parcel has been sent from the hobbycity warehouse!
mailed-by: hobbyking.com

Hello, HeliDragon
Hi This is an email to inform you that your item has been dispatched from our warehouse.
TRK#: xxxxxxxxxxxxx
To:
xxxxx xxxxxx
xxxxx xxxxx Av.
San xxxxxxx, CA xxxxx, US
UNITED STATES
Ph:xxxxxxxxxx

YOUR ORDER ID IS: xxxxxxxxxx
ALWAYS QUOTE YOUR ORDER ID WHEN YOU EMAIL US

YOUR ORDER MAY TAKE UP TO 45 DAYS TO ARRIVE.
IMPORTANT1) To check on the status of your order please log into your account on our website.It can take up to 48hrs for the tracking details to become active within the postal system.2) If you are unsure of the location of your parcel please contact the postal office in your country.3) If your parcel arrives damaged or opened, DO NOT accept it unless you open the parcel in front of the courier/postman to check and count contents, or reject the parcel as being damaged and have it returned to sender and notify us straight away.
Regards
www.hobbyking.com

2 Flights last night.

I only have 1 battery pack right now. (2 Zippy Flightmax batteries from Hobby King on the way) But I had time to fly for 8 min, just hovering, then charge it and fly it again before the sun started to set, so I got 16 min of flying last night. When it was time to set it down I would hover over to the side walk and carefully set it there. I want to do more than "tail in" flying, in the worst way, but sadly I will have to wait.

Woohoo! Had a great practice hover over the weekend up in Sacramento, with a lot of room to move around, I could do a lot more than just stay in one place. I am really happy with this one.