Hi Anwar,

Long way to go still ! In fact yesterday and today, I was doing an airshow for my school in Trichy.  The field was a tight field and hence I restricted myself to flying helis!! yeah!! I did about 7 sorties yesterday.. circuits and pirouettes were the only things I was capable of doing!! And the crowd was awed when the heli shoots straight up in the air when you slam throttle while hovering low!! Had a nice time with the Raptor!!

- Chan

Looks like you are doing demos every weekend 

If you can do circuits and pirouettes, combine them into "stall - turns" (I have a feeling you are doing them already!).  First with half pirouette (180 degrees turn), and when you are confident, move on to  1.5 pirouettes (540 degrees) and then to 2.5  pirouettes.  It is a simple yet amazing move, that always catches the eye of the first time audience

Hi Anwar,

Thanks for your help and guidance as for the first time I took the helly high up in the air and was able to fly it the same way as in a simulator did some figure 8's n all it was fun , but I don't know what happend and the helly suddenly zapped down 10 feet and then i regained control but still it got a bit crashed nothing major though I changed the blades n its hovering ok now. The main rotor gear teeth's are a bit worn out may be 10 of them so should I fly it with the wornout teeth or should not take a chance and wait till i get the new one.

Thanks
Amit

Great to hear you are progressing nicely with your flying 

Do not let the initial crashes discourage you. I am saying this because I have seen many people quit helis and go back to flying only airplanes after the first couple of crashes.

When you should wait till you change the gears depends on how bad the teeth are worn out.  If you can hear the noise generated by the main gear changing when the worn out portion comes into contact with the motor pinion gears, then it is better to change the gears. Remember that the broken teeth get worn out even faster, once the nice symmetry is lost.

Overall, if 10 teeth are affected (instead of 2 or 3), you are probably better off changing it.

Make sure you do not point your transmitter antenna directly at the model, especially when the model is a little far from you.  It sort of helps to keep the antenna pointed at about a 30 to 45 degrees angle towards the ground in front of you. This is one possible reason of the glitch.

A glitch in the receiver caused by static discharges is another possibility but that is mostly seen in belted helis.  I believe your Honeybee CP2 has a separate tail motor, so that should not be the case.

Make sure you have enough battery power on both the TX side and on the heli/RX side. Also, make sure the connection of the battery to the ESC is solid.

Hi Anwar,

Thanks for the suggestions.  I have tried the stall turn with just half a pirouette!! But am yet to try the 1.5 and 2.5 pirouette routines!! Would try them next time I fly!!

- Chan

Crashed my yak today !!!
 

Oops

How come it was damaged the way it is ? Looks like the landing gear got ripped off, but the rest of the damage is closer to the tail, and that too on the side, yet the wing seems pretty much unaffected ?

yes.. actually i was flying on 60% expo initially, but changed it to 30% , response completely changed, even after few flights it was not getting into my subconsious mind  
but flying was fine on the airstrip, but when i was conducting demo flight for my juniors in college, the ground is small as compared to airfield and surrounded by trees and homes,
engine was also not giving enuf power, thanks to ASP  
in doing a low pass it touched the ground and i myself cant figure out what happened..
the wings are fine, planning to put it into some scratchbuilt 3d model..

Amir ,
Not very difficult try a scratch build Coro fuse . I did a coro wing for my Tiger 60  and it flew very very well ,I think a  replica fuse will be  quite do able

Sai

HI Anwar,

Yeah i can hear the noice made when the broken teeth mesh with the gear so I will change the gear.
Thanks for the great tip again, I think I was pointing the TX towards the heli for more range but After your suggestion I tried using a lanyard to ensure that the TX remains in one position
Another question: the heli will fly for about 1 min and then it starts to come down even with newly recharged batterieis first I thought it was the battery but when I tried to recharge the battery it got recharged in 1 hour which normally used to take 3 hours. So i still think its the problem with either the motor or toomuch pitch on the blades. I will soon post a video to clear the confusion which will also showme using a pitch gauge for your reference.

Thanks
Amit

hey guys i am very busy with my studies and literally have no time for flight though i am trying just once more before the boards. only one of my planes pulame is in flying order all other are resting dormant anyways i can help anyone call me at 9833036737 and anwar bhaiya sincere request to you can you just help me archive all the topics that have been talked about from today till march end as i think i will be having not much rc until then but after that nearly three months non stop rc guys   so please any way it would auto matically be possible it would be of a lot of help and any body want my planes for these weeks is most welcome come home and take them for just 3 months mind you

oh i will come to chennai tooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

subbu

The regular field day of Friday was converted to a family day (due to seasonal festivities).  Went to the field for about 3 hours on Saturday, without carrying any RC gear (except the toolbox).  Spent the whole time setting up, doing break-in and test flights on a fellow flyer's brand new Trex 700 nitro heli.

Helis of 90 size are a whole different game   About time to get one ! 

Some interesting news amongst all the rare rain in this desert...  I visited the Qatar Scientific Club to renew my membership, and two things noteworthy happened.

1.  I saw them trying to build a quad-rotor aircraft out of commercially available helis !  The model I saw there had 4 Big LAMA helis with their canopies removed and attached to the 4 sides of a square aluminium frame.  Don't have much details on how it is all controlled/connected, as the concerned person was not there.  They did say that the lift provided was not enough (because of the weight of aluminium), so they may try to change to CF sheets/rods and/or change the helis to something powerful like Trex 450s.  Going there again tomorrow morning, will get pictures and some more details.

2. On the occassion of the national day of Qatar (Dec 18), I have been invited to do heli demo flights to an audience.  Not sure of the exact timing and location, but tomorrow I will do a demo flight for the club folks.  No big helis are allowed, so it will be the Trex 450 and Trex 500. 

Exciting days ahead !

Went and did the test flight at the QSC.  There are multiple rows of lamp poles in the parking lot where the flying is to take place which are about 10 ft high, so all action have to be higher than that.  And the event is tomorrow.

What was more interesting is the amount of RC activity taking place at the club, ever since a new instructor (more like a technical resource) took over. Everything from chuck gliders, to many types of foamies, to planes being built from kits and so on. 

Saw a glider that seems to have about 5 meters wingspan (estimate based on counting the tiles on the floor, which are each 60x60cm).

Looks like spending any free time at the club would be interesting !

Hey guys,

I had a ball of a time with my Raptor 50 this Sunday!! No planes!! Took only my heli and had a superb day!! Must be my 10th flight or so with this machine.. And I had finally found the guts to handle the stunt modes as well (of course with a lot of coaxing from Aravind the week before).. I was able to do loops, rolls, pirouettes, stall turns, a bit of inverted flying and also autorotation landings!!  I had about 15 autorotation landings last week.. Take up the heli high and hit Throttle Hold!!

I also made a stupid mistake.  Took it up nice and high and hit throttle hold and I reduced the pitch too much and it came down like a stone.. I immediately took the pitch up again the heli just started falling back (something like a stall)!! Sheer reflexes made me release the throttle hold switch (which proved to be dangerous) and the heli did a pirouette and was shuddering.. Luckily I managed to recover it though it was nose in and then took her up steadied her and then came in to land!! Gave me quite a scare!!

- Chan

The way normally we start training on autos is to go high (like 150 to 250 feet), hit hold, and while coming down, at about 50 feet abort the hold and take the heli back up again.  Then you abort even a bit lower, like 10 feet.  After that, you let it come all the way down, without aborting.

Because learning to safely abort a hold is a critical part of the learning autos.  For planned autos, this is critical (for unplanned ones, you have no choice but to come down!).

Anyways, good to hear that you bailed out (and passed the test of nerves) !   

One mistake people do in planned autos is to go to hold directly from stunt mode, and when they abort a hold, the engine jumps to extremely high rpm.  Always move to normal (non-stunt) mode, then do the planned auto.

Hi Anwar,

Thanks for the tips.  I always go to normal mode before trying an auto.. And I never tried what you mentioned.  I always landed whenever I tried auto (except for that one freak incident!).. maybe i got lucky all the while !

- Chan

yesterday's flying was a show for my friend from qatar, took my new bird gemini biplane to our favorite paddy fields, flew nicely for abt 1 minute then the unexpected happnd , the top wing come off in mid air ,lucky to land safely with the bottom wing, see the pics

santhosh

Glue problem ?  Glad to see nothing bad happened

Well...  2010 is off to a great start...  on the field at 7am

First the minor setbacks...

Windy day, so planned to fly my Trex 600 nitro heli, but it developed a locked clutch problem. On closer inspection, I realized that the clutch lining had worn off, and the arm of the clutch shoe had extended too much.  Time to put a new clutch lining, and probably change the clutch shoe also.  This is usually noticeable in flight itself due to how the engine rpm is translated into blade speed, but some how it went unnoticed.  Time to remove the engine and do some maintenance !

And on to the fun parts...

The next big activity was testing the AXN Floater.  Being a windy day comes with both advantages and disadvantages.  The disadvantage is that you have to struggle a bit with the controls, and the advantage is that you can make aircraft do things that they are not supposed to do.  In this case, we had a lot of fun hovering the AXN Floater, and just taking it up high and then cutting the throttle completely and letting in glide for a long long time.

Although the wind made it tough, we had a lot of fun (and couple of minor crash landings!) trying to grab the plane in the air instead of landing it.  Video of that to follow 

Well im free now a days and its snowing outside. Had some fun in the snow with slash last night. Seriously need chains on rear tires, but I think I will go with zip-tie mod for better fun in snow.

Probably will be doing some snow drifting once i swap the brushless from slash to my fk'05 as its waterproof and the parking lot is smooth and slippery coz of frozen black ice.

Also got a new package from Thunder Tiger for my buggy and its "BRUSHLESS CONVERSION KIT" Sweeeeet!!!!
But its gun metal color, I was hoping for red to go with my rest of the red bling-bling upgrades.
Taking the buggy apart right now to rebuild it with conversion kit. Need to change diff oil to heavier one.
No plans to run it in snow, as my Mamba monster isn't waterproof, so will wait for snow to clear out.

Its so good out thr, everything white covered in snow, if only it wasn't this snowing I would have been flying by trex 450. Want to hook up a camera or something and take some sick pics!!!

Happy New Year to ya all!!!!

Nasty crash of a big Piper Cub on our field    Also some other local crashes in the compilation.

PS: I was NOT there when this happened.

I flew my first RC.
It was an amazing experience. All thanks to sir Manpreet (hangingtough).Who came all the way from his office to the place where i was staying just to share his rc with me (we all know how painful the traffic is in delhi). He guided me on the controls of the rc. It was an utmost joy to hold the transmitter and throttle up the coaxial heli. The moment I increased the throttle i realized that the RC didnt respond the way i expected it to , it didnt go straight up, instead it lifted up and started to drift without my command, thats when i actually realised that i had to actually guide the machine myself, doing a few adjustments here and there on the tranmitter i managed to make it go up vertically (without dirfting away in any other direction), just then i realised one of my biggest passions hatching from its egg. Then the battery died on the RC and i had to return it to manpreet sir.
I hope i get more chances to fly.

Regards
Vaibhav

Congrats !    

It is an amazing feeling, and the beginning of a lot of fun to be had in the future !  I am sure Manpreet enjoyed it just a much, as helping others is just as fun as flying yourselves.