LoveToFlyGuy’s Logbook

Well, I was working on getting my flight experiences up to date, but it seems that I just keep falling further behind on my log entries… So enough of that!

Today I’m sitting in my office waiting for my new batch of servos to arrive so that I can finally go fly. You see, last week I had this little “boo-boo” while attempting to hover in the back yard. I looked the heli over after the incident, and all seemed fine, but when I went to spin it up again the heli made “bad noises”… As the rotors spun up, the motor would seem to slip or miss or something, which produced a loud bang/whack sound. Spiiiiiinnnnnnn WHACK!, Spiiiiiiiinnnnn WHACK!, repeat. Confused, I decided to end the day’s flights and put her down for diagnostics & repairs.

When I took a closer look at the motor, I found one of diode thingies had broken off, and was hanging onto the motor by magnetic attraction only. I figured the motor was probably shot, especially since I had seen electrical arcing while in flight (probably from when the diode came off) and the motor was *HOT*. I mean burn your fingertips hot! So… Now I get to order the upgrades that I had been planning to order.

I ordered a Just Go Fly 400DH brushless motor, and a Sonic 35A ESC with BEC last Wednesday, and when they arrived a couple of days later, I was itching to get them installed so that I could JUST GO FLY! I got them all soldered in, making use of a couple of power connectors from an old computer floppy drive for the wiring contacts. I fired it up, and had the same noise come back. Hmmm…

Upon closer inspection, I noted some chewed up teeth on the main rotor driven gear. Time to order parts again… Well, while she’s down for repairs, I might as well level the swashplate with my new Trex levelling tool, right? Yeah, right… Now I find out that I have a dead servo to boot. Hello? helicopter parts house? You carry servos too? Great! I need four… several days later (yesterday actually) the gearset(s) arrive, so now all I need are the servos, and guess what? They just arrived!

Anybody care to guess what I’m doing when I get home?

Wish me success!