Travel Fun - Lake of the Woods

It is Sunday night, and we arrived here at Sportman's Lodge a few hours ago. Tom, my father in-law, has brought me up for a few days to do a little fishing.

Tomorrow we head out to fish. The launch leaves at 8:00 a.m. Followed by a shore lunch, cooked up of every thing we catch in the morning, and then a few more hours of fishing. I hope we do not go hungry. Oh hell, with our with out fish, I am fishing and not working. That is not a bad thing.

Any how, I have left a pic of the bay where we are staying. It is at the south end of Lake of the Woods. Across the way is Canadian soil. If we catch a big string of Walleye I will post that later. If not I will be scouring the web for pictures of impressive walleye and super imposing them in to pictures that make it look like I have caught them. I will leave it up to you to figure out which .

Catch you all later, I hope I do not fall over board.

Later,

-JbJ

Flight Chronicles - Forward Flight (Part Deux)

O.K. Forget that last forward flight post. I fixed 'er up and took 'er out tonight for a little fly time. Yeah, I know I said I was going to work towards nose in hover, but I really could not resist a little try. I did a little forward flight, left to right and right to left. Man it was cool. I hit the shepherds hook, the stairs, the tree, the swing, and the steps. None of them were small collisions at all, but damn it was cool. I definitely need a new set of landing gear now. I might as well pick up a main gear too. I have a few sections where the teeth are not going to last much longer. I think it may be time to graduate to a little bigger field. One with less obstacles. Even though it is a chopper, it would be nice to have some recover room. Although the shepherds hook was more of a depth perception issue than anything.

Any night that renders the chopper unusable with out substantial repair is a good night.

Until the next crash,

-JbJ

Internet - AAAaaaahHHHHHH

My internet is sooooooo sloooooooow right now. AAAaaaaarrrrrgggghhhh. I think Spectre's is faster at the moment.


-JbJ

Flight Chronicles - Forward Flight

So I am getting this side in thing down. Cool! I figured I would give it a quick go with some forward flight. I would hover over to my right, say 15' or so, rotate to left side in and do a fly by in front of me. Well, not so fast. As you get further away to the right at left at side in, it turns out to be more like nose in. Woops!. So I have decided to rethink my short term game plan. I wanted to start zipping around left to right, and right to left. That is once I get right side in down. But this new discovery may have changed my thoughts a bit. When flying around, it is easy to get in to a an orientation you are not used too, so I think I may start working nose in hover before I start to fly around. That way I have all my hover orientations covered, so hopefully less situations will suprise me when I start to get in to forward flight.

Until the next calm day,

-JbJ

Flight Chronicles - Head Scratcher

A new rule was created in Jims book of flight rules:

"Though shall not scratch head during flight"

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so here it is.

As you can see, the landing gear has pretty much exploded. I do not completely blame it on this crash alone, for my landing gear has slowly been deteriorating. But this little mishap sure made a mess of it. I think it may be time for a new set.










Oh Well, back to the glue factory,

-JbJ

Flight Chronicles - The video is out

As promised, I have taken a little video of me flying. It is interesting to see yourself fly from another angle. I thought I was much more steady than this. Oh well, enjoy.

You can download the full size video here if you so wish.



O.K. I have tried watching this on the blog, I would download the full video.

-JbJ

Flight Chronicles - It is just to calm to work

I stepped outside to let the doggy do her duty and noticed that it was all too calm this morning. Really calm. Yeah, I need to get to work, but how can I resist, so I rushed Daisy through her process and tuned up the bird, took her out and set her free. What a beautiful morning. By the end of the battery, the little gusts started up, I was just in time. I even had a couple of really sweet left side in flights. I can feel that break point coming, you know, the point where it changes from frustration, to almost normal.

Yeah, it was a good morning to fly, short, but good. If only I were a morning person, I probably could have run 3 or 4 batteries through the bird.

-JbJ

Flight Chronicles - Must... get... side... in... hover!!!

So this side in hover thing has been getting the best of me. I really want to get it bad. So I took out the simulator late last week and started to do some careless recoveries from left side and right side in hover positions. It is coming along very nicely on the simulator, but it is amazing how different it is on the real thing. I know, I have said that a hundred times already. But it really is.

All right, time to try it out for real. This weekend was a bit windy with a few spurts of calm. I attempted to take advantage of Sunday mornings calm, unfortunately I was on the tail end of it. The first battery went well. I was even starting to do a couple of decent left side in hovers (That is almost 20 seconds in my world). By the time I got to the second battery, the wind had picked up a bit more, which with my size heli doesn't require a lot. I decided that maybe the wind was a bit much when I had the forward pitch cranked all the way and yet the helicopter was moving in the opposite direction. I could have given more throttle to compensate, but due to past experiences, I have learned that is bad for a person of my experience. So I packed it up and called it quits. Unfortunately I did not get out again. But fear not, I will not give up.

-JbJ