Stuboy’s Air Space

Ok, I charged up the heli and gave it a go.

To start off with, im trying a straight forward flight, one pad direction infront of the other… EASY! …. not quite, for a beginner, it’s easier said than done! controlling a landing is difficult to begin with, but you get the hang of landing “softly”, combine that with making it land where you want it to land is a different question.

Here are my first 4 go’s. Im close to the landing target, but need to be spot on before i think about going up a level. (i’ve decided to make levels out of this )

So, Level 1. Up, straight forward, down.

First Go…
Almost made it on the first drop, but she threw a wobbly and I had to go in again. I landed on the edge of the mark.

Second Go…
So close!! I landed first time, but she swung round to the right as she landed and just slipped off the mark.

Thrid Go…
Just a mess really, didn’t make the first drop so had to try coming in again, then she still dropped off the mark.

Forth Go…
Landed straight on the mark, sort of cheated at the end by spinning her round to the left a little.

Once I can master the art of taking off, flying forward 1 metter and landing where I want, i’ll try it the other way around, take off, fly backwards and land.

This sort of practice can be taken to any level I suppose, even to the point of doing it nose in.

Im getting bored of just trying to hold a hover… So I came up with a sort of training game.

 It’s really simple, and very cheap. All you need is two dinner trays, and some red tape

So what you do is. Take your red tape (I use red electrical tape) and stick on a big “H” on the back of your dinner tray. At the top of the tray, stick another single, short peice of tape. You should have something like the image below…

Sooo what now? Well… now you put your heli on one of the home made Heli Pads, and point the nose in the direction of the short single red line.

The idea, is to fly your heli over to the other heli pad, and land ON IT, with the nose pointing in the direction of the short single line.

Hopefully this should start training in some more presision flying and increase the skill level. Once you’ve mastered keeping the nose in one direction from pad to pad, just change the orientation of one pad to a different direction, making you turn the heli in mid flight.

I tried it and found it challenging as a beginner myself!

 When im a little better at it i’ll upload some vids of my flying from pad to pad.

 Give it a go!

Well, after yesterdays crash breaking the main frame at the tail, I had no choice but to rebuild the heli onto a new frame.

I got to work on it a couple of hours after the crash, and the rebuild probably took me about 2 and a half hours. It was actually easier than I thought it would be. Althought when she looked like this…

It was quite worrying!! LOL It was at this point I had to desolder the tail motor from the wires to enable me to begin the rebuild by first connecting the tail boom onto the new frame. You have to remove the wire, because the connector at the frame end is too big to go through the hole that the tail fits into. Good job I can solder really! lol

Anway, got the new frame fitted to the skids, the tail fitted to the main frame and fitted the rear motor wire back in.

Ahh, that’s better! Looking like a heli again already.

Eventually, I finished and she looked like this….

During the rebuild, i decided to try using the battery holder that comes with the extreme skids, I didn’t like the idea of it before because i thought the battery would fall out, so i continued to use my stock holder, however, you can’t really get the battery in very easily with the stock battery holder when the extreme skids are fitted. Mainly because the battery needs to sit forward, and the “arch” in the front support for the skids is SLIGHTLY too small for the battery to go through at the height it sits at in the stock battery holder.

After trying the new battery holder, i found that it’s actually pretty good! Quick to change batteries and probably lighter than the stock holder too… which makes up for the tape im using on the tail boom to hold it together HEHE.

 So, the test flight after the rebuild? Well, the heli flies, but the tail seems to be wagging a little bit, almost like it’s struggling to get power, I might try re-soldering the wires, but I dont see how this would effect it, My soldering is pretty good, since I did it for a living a couple of years back. Maybe it’s poor batteries? They’ve had a lot of re-charging recently and maybe the quality of the power supply to the motors is degrading, she doesn’t stay up for as long as she used to now either… But then again, that could be because im actually getting more air time now instead of crashing every single time i try to lift off.

Well, my battery is probably charged up now, so im off to try some more flights

Today I got in from work early on a friday, straight to more hover practice… It all went really well, exhausted one battery without any incidents… Look outside… no wind!! (at least the tree’s weren’t moving). So I think to myself, i’ll give it a go outside…

BIG  MISTAKE.

Took her up, and she went higher than I wanted, tried to bring her down some, the tail swung out and a gust of wind blew her off course and straight into a brick wall

I checked the heli over and there didn’t seem to be any damage, so I think to myself i’ve had a lucky escape there, better leave outside flying for a while and go back inside. I tried another hover inside and noticed the tail boom bending to the left on take off… stopped, checked the heli over again, and realised that when she hit the wall it broke the main frame where the tail fixes to the rest of the heli! DOH!

Here’s the damage…

Lucky for me, in my spares box…

I have a spare frame…

I dont really know where to start on the repair job, I know I have to move everything on the old frame to the new, but in what order.? I just know the tail motor is gonna be tough to move to the new frame because of the connector on the wire… GRR!!

Oh, kinda broke the canopy too

The trials and tribulations of learning to fly!!

AHHhhh, broke a fly bar! I was hovering quite well… when i thought, ok, i’ll take it up a notch. Turned up the RPM and gained some height, but the heli drifted forward, and trying to think about the bring it down and back together, im not sure what happened, but the heli hit the wall and came crashing down doing “the funky chicken” all the way down the wall…

 It landed ON the fly bar… I’ve added a photo of the damage, but to be completely honest im not sure where it’s going to appear on the blog yet haha.
Here it is…

Anyway, I replaced the bar. I use the bars from the training gear, they are longer than the standard bar, and I actually find the heli easier to control with a longer bar… maybe im better suited to the extra sensitivity of the controls? Who knows… seems to work for me anyway.
I’ve also found it doesn’t make much different having the paddles at an angle or straight… the only difference I can see is that I tend to get more lift when they are at an angle, but as far as control is concerned, doesn’t seem to matter too much.

For your viewing pleasure…
Some more hovering…

I’ve noticed that I dont seem to be able to actually maintain a consistant height with the heli, if I leave the throttle after lift off when i acheive a desired height, the heli starts to drop, so I end up having to give it more throttle to keep it up, then it gets too high so I have to drop the throttle again. Is this normal??? Im thinking this is either normal, and perhaps a downfall of a fixed pitch compared to a collective pitch heli, or my batteries are starting to give way already? Im using the stock batteries that came with the heli.

Inconsitant height in flight…

Im upgrading to a LiPo battery soon anyway, so im hoping that will give me mooorree flight time for each session, which I think will help me out a lot in the learning proccess.

 I’ve already stated thinking about upgrades, for when Im more confident with the flights. Carbon fibre rotors, rudder and paddles, 11T pinion? Been reading about the brushless motors too… but that seems to come with a sister cost for the upgraded ESC that seems to be recommended when you upgrade to a brushless motor. I reeeaaally want a fuselage, either the apache or airwolf, most seem to go for the airwolf, so maybe ill go for the  apache to be different.

I have a Walkera Dragonfly #4. It was an early christmas present from my Dad last year, so i’ve have it for around 6 months.

 It’s only in the last week that i’ve really had time to practice more, since my dad’s gone to Canada on a skiing trip

Well, the first few flights have been as expected… ending in crashes. Some bad, most not. Here’s a list of what i’ve managed to break by crashing so far.

•  1 Battery holder
•  1 Rotorhead support (that little strange yellow plastic thing)
•  4 Sets of rotor blades
•  1 Set of standard skids
•  1 Rotor head
•  3 Paddle bars
•  Lost 1 paddle
•  1 Rotorhead Core
•  1 Rotorhead ring

I think that’s about it lol. My tail boom is probably on its way out, but it’s holding up so far.

I found in the past few days, that I find it MUCH easier to fly without the training gear, I dont know what it is, but when the training gear is attached, the heli just sways all over the place and find it very very hard to gain any decent control. So I took it off and went for lift off…

WOW! It’s hovering!! Not very high though…. it wouldn’t lift very high. I soon discovered that the replacement blades that i’d fitted after a previous crash, weren’t very good. Comparing them to the set that I destroyed in the previous crash, the pitch seems shallower and the blades themselfs much more flexible than the originals. So I took a trip up to my local model shop, only to find he doesn’t stock the walkera FP (or Twister FP) blades, only the twister CP blades So I drove about 10 miles to the next place I knew would have the blades I needed, same place i got my last battery holder/standard skids.

I fitted the new blades, much firmer than the replacements, and more pitch! I found that these completely solved the height problem. So much so that I flew it straight into the ceiling! OOPS!

Below are links to a few videos of my first few decent hovers… mistakes made in these flights…. including the ceiling incident.

Oh, I forgot to mention, when I broke my first set of skids, I ordered the Extreme skids from Heliguy (thanks guys), and WOW. I personally highly recommend these for a beginner… I wouldn’t waste money replacing standard skids with standard skids… if you break the first set, go straight for these extreme beauties!! They are SO durable it’s unreal. In the video with the ceiling incident… you’ll notice the heli crashes onto the skids upright, and NO damage occured… the skids took the shock landing very well, and i think they are flexible enough to actually absorb some of the energy in a crash.

Replacement blades not lifting…
Change the blades… lift off!!!
First decent hover…
Crash landing…
Heli… meet the ceiling!

Well… That’s all folks! Hope you liked my first blog! There’s more to say. But I dont want to say it all in 1 blog, so im going to go away and upload some more video’s & photo’s and come back to write another blog with today’s events!