My father had a Walkera 22E Controllable Pitch Helicopter he was a bit too intimidated by to fly.  So I traded him my 6XM transmitter/receiver for it.  Took it home, balanced the blades and set the rotor head up the best I could and began flying it.

Below is a short video consisting of my “better’ hovers (or attempts to hover).

Enjoy!

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Thats right, I bit the bullet and got a little Electric Heli.   I’ve tried my hand at this before, 2 times in fact, both times failures.

The first two times I went the cheap-0 route and bought an electric helicopter from “China Seller” on eBay.  The first time was back in 2004 with a small Fixed Pitch model made by Exceed which ended up with me selling it on eBay for a large loss.  The next time was in 2007 when I tried to go right to a Brushless, Controllable Pitch bird made by Walkera.  That one ended with me crashing and rebuilding the heli and then selling it to a neighbor… again at a large loss.

This time I did my research though!  While at Nexgen Hobby in Hagerstown, MD the owner demonstrated one of the “ultra-micro” helis he had for sale in the store, an E-flite MSR.    It was a nice bird, seemed fairly stable and easy to fly, so I did some research and came to the conclusion that I was going to get one!

Well, I didn’t get the MSR, I ended up getting a Heli-Max (Great Planes) Novus FP.  Nearly the same size as the MSR, but this bird comes with a full CNC Aluminum Rotorhead, Swashplate and a larger battery.  Not to mention it was 20 bucks cheaper!

Right out of the box, I was impressed with the quality of the little bird, this was not surprising seeing as Heli-Max is a Great Planes company, and they don’t mess around.  The bird came with a 2.4ghz transmitter, 110v wall charger, extra set of main blades and a plastic adjustment tool for the gyro.  The manual is concise and very thorough.  I was able to get an extra battery for free with this package so It worked out well for me!

First impressions of the little Novus is WOW this thing is small!   I immediately started charging one of the batteries and went upstairs to grab a bite to eat.  After about 20mins I checked and the charger’s LED was green, meaning the battery was fully charged.

Following the instructions, I plugged the charged lipo battery into the bird, then turned on the transmitter.  After about 10 seconds the servos (sub-micro digital) twitched indicating a good link with the 2.4ghz tx.

Ok so here we go, me being the nut job that I am dives right into flying this thing.  I’m all over the place and start crashing into things right off the bat.  Luckily I am in my basement where there are lots of soft things to bounce off of like couches, lazyboys and carpet.  After about 10 attempts at hovering I am beginning to get a bit flustered and negative.  What do I do?  I decide to trudge on.  By about the last 2-3 mins of the first battery, I start getting into a decent controlled 10-12 sec hover.  Feeling good now!

While I was flying (trying to) on the first lipo pack, I had the other one charging and was getting pretty pumped up!   The second pack went MUCH better, I was hovering for 20-30 seconds at a time now, getting a nice feel for the bird and noticing that small corrections make a huge difference with such a small heli.  By the end of the second pack I was VERY confident and began meneuvering around my basement.

When the battery is starting to go dead, it’s a pretty deliberate effect, I noticed it was taking almost full throttle to hover and the tail rotor was sluggish, then all of the sudden you arent even lifting off anymore.

Anyway, here are some pics of the little bird.  I’m off to fly some more!

I finished my dad’s newest Duraplane Aerobat this evening.   I set it up as a taildragger as opposed to a tricycle setup.  This plane has a Thunder Tiger .46 Pro and Futaba receiver/servos installed.

After test running my YS .91 the other night I realized, this engine pulls VERY hard, and not having a helper to hold the plane while getting the engine started and warmed up was a dangerous affair.

So I decided to build my own Starting/Run-up stand that I could put in the bed of the old Dodge pick-em-up truck!

A few pieces of  carpet, plywood and pressure treated 2×6s I had from various other projects and VIOLA!  A nice, sturdy (and heavy) stand to that is a perfect fit for my Extra 330s.

Ok so after spending 2 hrs making my self $500 poorer due to needing a set of tires on my car, I drove down to Nexgen Hobby in Hagerstown, MD (http://nexgenhobby.com/) to get some fuel for my YS .91 FZ four stroker I put on my Extra 330s.

I picked up a gallon of Wildcat “Curtis Youngblood” 30% Nitro 23% Full Synthetic Oil for $27.00.  Not a bad price for 30% fuel if you ask me.

On the way home I got to thinking that the puny aluminum 6×32 Phillips head screws I used to mount the big 4 stroker to the engine mount  just wasn’t enough….so I stopped at Lowes and picked up some 10×24 “Grade 8″ Hex head screws and stainless “nylock” nuts.

Got home and went right to work replacing the mounting screws with the MUCH heftier hex heads.  After finishing, I pumped about a quarter tank of the Wildcat 30% into her and got going.

I followed the directions I found online for these “fuel injected” engines. Open the throttle to full, turn the prop over 10 times, close the throttle to Idle, turn the prop over another 10 times.

I attempted to start it initially with a few flips of my (gloved) hand, but had no luck.  I then proceeded to use my Hobbico electric starter and she fired right up.   Initial thoughts on the engine are OMFG!   I don’t have a tach, so I don’t know what kind of RPMs I was getting but spinning an APC 15×8 prop this engine can put out some SERIOUS thrust.  So much that I could barely hold onto the fuse with my non-radio hand.  Idle is nice and transition to full throttle is superb!

The high speed needle is sitting at 2 turns out right now until I have more time to get her dialed in just right.  It was about 30 degrees out so I got very cold, very quick and finished up after about 3 mins of running.

I cant wait to get this bird out to the field and into the air!

Ok so my father talked me into getting back to my original RC roots of building, flying (and crashing) R/C Airplanes.
He happened to have a few Duraplane parts laying around so I have since built 3 of them, crashed 2 and rebuilt 2. See a pattern here?

Unfortunately the balsa planes (wood) don’t exactly bounce back all that well.

Below are some pics and vids of the planes.

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Durastik flying:

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Crashing a Duraplane Aerobat (engine was tooooo big)

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First 2 flights of the Phoenix Models Extra 330s with two deadstick landings (engine quit).

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So my father got me a helmet cam for my birthday (which is tomorrow), and I strapped it to my motorcycle helmet and recorded my trip home from work today!  It is really cool, all solid state and uses SD Cards for memory.

Here is a vid I threw together in Windows Movie Maker up on Tinypic… NO NOT Youtube! They didn’t like my music (something about copyrights)

Original Video – More videos at TinyPic

Ok so we just got back from 6 days in a beautiful cabin on a lake near Belfast, ME.  To sum up my vacation, I spent 90% of my time in my canoe with my daughter, fishing for bass.

We caught, smallmouth, largemouth, pickerel, yellow perch, and a few other assorted panfish I was not familiar with.  Only kept 4 fish (3 small and one largemouth) and cooked them up on the grill for dinner.

I can’t explain how beautiful it is up there, the weather in August is in the high 70s during the day and the high 50s at night. No humidity, no rain, just plain gorgeous weather (and scenery).

We visited Moosehead state park one day and spent an entire day at Acadia National park another.  Acadia has got to be one of the most beautiful places on earth, the rocky cliffs meeting the North Atlantic ocean with tidal pools absolutely teaming with marine life.  Katy and I found huge starfish, clams, sea cucumbers and crabs everywhere we looked.

The town of Bar Harbor is a nice little vacation spot, not too crowded and NOT commercialized like the beach areas around here (Ocean City, Outer Banks).  Everyone in Maine is polite and courteous.  The one issue I found with them is that they all love the Redsox (boo!).

Here are a few pics.

The lake at sunset:

In the morning:

Acadia National Park:

No realy, I’m just adding more pics.  This time with all my stuff back in the garage.  A place for everything and everything in it’s place.

Ok so after 3 days of painting and carrying heavy objects, I finally finished my latest project: finishing out my garage.

Semigloss “Touch of evening” paint on the  drywall walls, high gloss “Touch of evening” on the concrete walls, “Midnight” Epoxy floor paint on the floor (duh). Flat white on the ceiling.

All in all it came out quite well, I still have a bit of organizing and might put up some new shelves but I think it came out great!  Painting the floor is a long and tiring process of moving everything out, sweeping, cleaning, preparing with acid etching fluid, and painting then waiting almost 2 full days before moving anything back into the garage.

Quickrete Garage Floor paint was my choice, and that stuff is SPENSIVE!  ($70 a gallon). But it sure does add that finishing touch!