Flight Chronicles - The bird's all tuned up

An RC helicopter sure takes a beating when an inexperienced pilot is behind the controls. Funny how you don't even notice how bad it is flying after a while. This weekend I removed all the gunk out of the gears, rewrapped the landing gear in sewing thread and super glue (cyanoacrylate for you Ray), and fixed the gyro mount (it was kind of hanging by rubber bands and sticky pads and bouncing around in the cabin). What a difference, it feels a new bird, kind of like it did when I took it out of the box. Well, at least I think it does, since I am not real sure. When I took it out of the box I could hardly hang 5 seconds of hover time. Now I can hover all day, or at least a full battery charge, tail in of course. I tried left side in and, well, lets just say I need a new set of main blades. But in the mean time cyanoacrylate and packing tape is doing the trick to keep her in the air. Surprisingly, quite balanced as well. I have even removed the training balls. Now it is time to work on forward flight, side hovers, oh, and landings, they are tough. I am up to about 15 seconds on left side hover before I have to bring the tail back in, hopefully that will improve quickly and I won't have to be so dependent on tail in flight. I also need to work on right side in at the same time, I don't want to be better on one side or the other. It is funny how they are so much more difficult on the real thing than they are in the simulator, even Rays fancy simulator is much easier than the real thing. Oh well, I will get there. Tick tocks by Christmas (2015 maybe).

Oh well, I am out, gotta retune the bird from my previous flight. Oh, and I have some video from a bit ago, I will get it posted soon.

-JbJ