Airdonkey

"Schnell! Schnell! Kartoffelkopf.....!"

It's been a while since I last posted and in the interim period I've had several comments from friends and "well-wishers" pointing out how much they enjoyed my first flight, the one where Airdonkey was flown into the tree.

I now work very hard on discipline and controlled flying to the extent that the chances of me repeating that crash are getting slimmer. For those who need their fix of some hapless cretin with more money than sense trashing an expensive arrangement of electronics, I've identified a similar video. The learner is flying a T-Rex 700 nitro, a large, expensive (and potentially dangerous) petrol-powered helicopter.  As is often the case with heli flying, all is going well, and then suddenly, it's not and it's all over. In this case, the German amateur pilot only has time to shout out "Nein!" before the heli hits the deck. It's obviously an upsetting affair on his part and I know how he feels.

"Schnell! Schnell! Kartoffelkopf...."  

"Quickly, quickly, potatohead...!"
Captain Blackadder to Captain Darling, Series 4, Corporal Punishment

ESky Honey Bee

My mate Andy is off to Antarctica for 6 months and he's entrusted me with his Honey Bee until he gets back.  I unpacked his flight case earlier, assembled the heli and attempted some basic hovering in my kitchen. She's along the same lines as the newly purchased mSR - it's another fixed pitch beginners helicopter, 4 channels, pretty robust, plenty of spares floating around and nicely stable in the hover.  The basic controls follow the standard layout - the main control sticks operate the servos and speed controller, allowing full forward, backward, left, right (the cyclic controls), turning about its axis (rudder/tail) and up and down movement.

First impressions were pretty good after I reversed the tail servo. She should be OK for some outdoor flights when the wind drops.  Hopefully have her doing loops by the time you get back!

Cheers mate, have a good one "down south".

"Tower, this is Ghost Rider requesting a flyby..."

My birthday came and went, thanks for all your messages. My lovely wife gave me a video camera which means I can provide better quality footage than I've been able to previously.  Shame that the flying hasn't improved as much.  In any event, here's the mSR in a little flyby:

Simulator work

The Dominion 3D 90 is proving to be one of my favourite simulator helicopters.  It's a shame that it's a fictional model, created by artists at Knife Edge. In idle up mode it happily flies inverted as you can see here.

Blade mSR

This is the latest addition to the stable, E-flite's Blade mSR. She's a single rotor, ultra-micro helicopter weighing in at less than one ounce and fitting perfectly between the traditional beginner's level co-axial helis (twin-rotor), like my Blade CX2 and the significantly more advanced and difficult to fly CCPM helis, like my Cypher.  A unique rotor head design provides the same inherent stability of co-axial  helicopters, but thanks to a fixed-pitch bell-hiller design the mSR delivers a much more responsive and spirited performance. Put simply she's ultra stable if you let go of the sticks, but very feisty in response to throttle and cyclic inputs.  The mSR is capable of doing loops and flying in a light breeze, but the small size and low weight make it ideal for flying indoors.

My aim is for the mSR to assist with my nose-in hovering skills, which as far as the Cypher goes is proving difficult, requiring lots of confidence and a regular pay cheque.

First impressions are brilliant.  This is a fantastic fun helicopter, which delivers on performance and is robust enough to survive repeated crashes into doors and walls.  And so far I've not managed to break anything, which is very refreshing and pushes the enjoyment/cost ratio firmly into credit. The flight tests are here:

Shot of the day

This is me hovering side-in, in the Alpine meadow photofield.

The Dominion 3D  90 offers the maximum in 3D potential.  Powered by a 90-sized engine, the Dominion 3D 90 is the right choice for practicing intense unlimited 3D aerobatics.

The Alpine Meadow is a study in contrasts, with the flat grassy green of a wide-open meadow framed by the towering stone majesty of the Alps. At their feet, you’ll find rural roads, glistening white chalets and of course, woodland that ranges from single trees to entire forests.

Outdoor fun

Some footage of me flying the Blade CX2 on a very calm day. The video quality isn't great, although I am assured that an HD camera is in the offing for my birthday in a couple of weeks....

Training day

My helicopter training gear has now been removed in line with recent progress. The four quite battered orange ping-pong balls on sticks will now be consigned to gather dust on the top shelf, so confident am I that I can now routinely land gently enough and sufficiently horizontal to avoid catching a main blade on the deck.

Side-in hovering is now quite comfortable.  Although I can do it on the simulator, nose-in hovering in real life still proves to be quite taxing and far from comfortable. More work and discipline is required. And possibly a bigger garden.

But today, it's a minor victory.  The training gear is gone.

Note to self....

The latest crash was horrible. It was a beautiful day and the winds were manageable, or so I thought. The sun was shining brightly and as I approached the helipad I mulled over putting on my sunglasses.  I rejected the idea, figuring that I could keep my back to the sun and avoid any mishap. Somewhat typically, the winds had picked up by the time I was ready to spin-up, and it was marginal whether I should fly or not. I favoured optimism after my latest run of good fortune so I went for it. A huge gust immediately lifted her up to about twenty five feet right over my head, forcing me to spin around, straight into the glare of the sun.  I was blinded immediately, and fearing a crash into the trees, I took evasive action.  My cyclic inputs were too heavy-handed, she pitched violently backwards and swan-dived quickly and upsettingly to the ground, landing directly on the rotor head assembly with a catastrophic explosion of parts.  The entire flight lasted about 5 seconds.

The rotor head assembly was utterly destroyed.  The flybar was so bent it was wrapped around the main hub in a complete circle. The impact was clearly very heavy because the autorotation sleeve (at the opposite end of the main shaft) was cracked down its entire length. One of the servo arms had snapped and another servo had the ball joint forced out of the servo arm. The main gear had around three cm of chewed-up teeth. I've had to replace two main blades, the feathering spindle, spacers and O-rings, flybar control arms, the main shaft, the main gear, the flybar, the centre hub, the flybar carrier, two servo arms, the autorotation sleeve and several bearings.  The motor may have a problem and may have to be replaced. Remarkably, the tail was untouched.

What did I learn?  If there's any perceived danger prior to take-off, stop, and either remove the risk, or cancel the flight. In this case sunglasses might just have saved the day.

Bell H-13 Float Heli

Managed to get 4 batteries in yesterday, without incident, in what may prove to be the last really hot day of the year.  The weather was perfect, with little wind and progress was made with circles and side-in hovering.  Having broken two sets of main blades the day before, I didn't want to push my luck with more nose-in hovering, so I had some fun.  I'm getting there and it's becoming less of an exercise in controlled panic, and more about where I want to put the heli, and how quickly. My recent simulator work is paying off.

This is me flying at Lake Douglas - the H-13 is not too frisky and is good for working on basic manouevres.

Competition time

This is an irritatingly difficult game, but see how far you can fly the helicopter.  My best is a pretty amazing 2168, which clearly reflects my awesome heli flying skills.  The other high scores in the table despite being poor likely reflect excellent photoshop skills rather than any aptitude for flying. See what you can do. There's a prize for the winner.

High score table

1.    2168    Airdonkey

2.    1943    Tim Toon

3.    1738    Dave   

4.    1481    Paul

5.    342      Jo (!)

Paul anecdotally reports a score of over 2000, but the lack of evidence means it cannot be counted. Sorry.

Airdonkey is back....

My spare parts arrived, late, again. The ground crew worked solidly overnight to restore her to full glory. The swash set-up is perfect. The new servo sits like a jewel in the airframe. There are no parts with any damage to them, she is quite literally pristine.  A model maker's ultimate goal achieved.

Which will make it even more upsetting the next time she gets dumped, by me.

More discipline is required. Or it really hurts.

Downtime

I was hovering about 6 inches off the ground the other day and ended up catching a rotor blade, which resulted in an upsettingly spectacular crash and an explosion of parts.  Given that I've crashed into trees and fallen from much greater heights previously, the list of broken components is surprisingly extensive, and expensive.  I've had to replace the following:  a cyclic servo (£20), a seriously bent main shaft (£2.50), the tail boom (£1.99), the horizontal stabiliser mount (£1.99), the main blades (£9.99), the flybar (£0.99), one of the boom supports (£1.99), and one of the boom support ends (£0.50). I also broke the receiver aerial, but this can be fixed with a twist of the wires and some tape. 

Those blades must have some energy in them - the tail boom was absolutely fucked - it was bent nearly 90 degrees and had pulled the tail servo about an inch along the boom!  Ouch.

I wonder if I'll ever get to 3D flight....

"It's not a toy mate..."

Toy helicopters are any helicopter that does not have full directional control, which for all intents and purposes means it does not have a swashplate. Toy helicopters and often quite robust and easy for the beginner to fly, but time spent learning to fly them will not translate well to any more advanced helicopters. Spare parts are often not readily available, meaning that when the helicopter is damaged in a crash, it may be impossible to get it up and running again. Examples of toy helicopters are the PiccoZ.

In collective pitch ("CP") helicopters, the rotor speed ideally remains constant, and lift is varied by changing the pitch of the main blades throughout their entire rotation using a swash plate. This has a number of advantages over fixed pitch helicopters, including better control response, the ability to autorotate, and the ability to fly inverted. The price is a much more complicated mechanical design that is much more fragile than a fixed pitch helicopter. Electric collective pitch helicopters generally start at about 450g (1lb), and the smaller models are perfect for flying in large empty parks. The low mass also reduces the amount of damage done in crashes, and the helicopter can often be back up and running again quickly. The disadvantage of small collective pitch helicopters is that they are strongly affected by wind, limiting the wind they can be comfortably flown in to around 10-15mph. They also tend to have much more sensitive controls than larger helicopters, making them harder to learn to fly. Larger electric helicopters should not in general be flown in public places because, like nitro helicopters, they can be extremely dangerous. Source: RC Helicopter Wiki

Put simply, they're not toys.

British summertime

Summer is disappearing fast and the weather has been terrible lately.  Flying in heavy winds is not advised, as I found out last Saturday, when a sudden gust instilled a quite upsetting panic, resulting in a nose-first dumping from about 15 feet.  The fly bar bore the brunt of the shock but I've got plenty of those in my increasingly large box of spare parts. I otherwise got away with it, but I did note that the lack of decent flying opportunities lately has caused me to regress to hapless rookie again.  The wind aside, I was all over the shop, with everything being very forced and sudden. I need to be out there every day to keep my skills up.

Roll on some calm weather.

"STEP 5–HOVERING AND MANOEUVRES"

Always be ready to correct the drift by using opposite roll. If you get into trouble at any stage, reduce the throttle, land, change your trousers and try again.
Twister CP manual.

Aggers do stop it!

Voted the greatest commentary ever, during the  5th Test, England v West Indies at The Oval on 9 August 1991. Jonathan Agnew describes Ian Botham's freak dismissal where he fell over his own stumps, with the immortal "just couldn't quite get his leg over".

The late, great Brian Johnston desperately tries to maintain control of his hysteria while attempting to sum up the day's play, while Agnew sinks further and further into helpless laughter.

It always raises a smile.

Progress

Having identified that a framework of respect and discipline was necessary for enjoyment of my hobby, I set about learning to fly again. No videos, no photos, no well-wishers, no audience.  Just me and my dumb thumbs, working through battery after battery. It's been steady progress. There's been a couple of minor incidents, some trashed rotor blades and a broken landing skid, but nothing serious. I'm pleased to report that I've bonded with the helicopter. I now know every part of it and it doesn't scare me at all. Flying has become fun. No longer a tense stand-off, I've learned to relax and enjoy the moment.  It's still pretty basic - mostly tail-in hovering and forward flight with training gear - but it's flying and I'm slowly building my confidence. The crashes are becoming few and far between and so much less severe. I've had an entire week without breaking anything. I'm now progressing to nose-in hovering and circles. There's even a couple of videos, here and here, which show my progress.

I'm enjoying my hobby. It's all good.

Introspection

The maiden outdoor flight didn't go to plan. Since then there's been a protracted period of radio silence, the first few weeks being a dark period in which I doubted my ability to re-build and fly the helicopter and actually enjoy my hobby. The initial inspection after the tree incident revealed only "minor cosmetic damage", however closer scrutiny revealed more significant injuries which necessitated completely rebuilding the tail rotor assembly and replacing the main rotor shaft, which was bent. Getting the parts took long enough and I compounded the misery by initially failing to identify everything that was broken, resulting in more orders for spares and more delay. Airdonkey sat on my table, looking forlorn and broken for about 4 weeks. Even when the ground crew were in a position to complete the repairs and get her airborne again, I didn't exactly rush to it. I had also realised that having spent many hours hunched over a table with the build, the 2 minutes of nervous anticipation and the ensuing crushing disappointment upon crashing into a tree didn't represent a good trade-off in the enjoyment stakes. Put simply, I hadn't enjoyed the flying bit yet because it was too difficult and crashes were inevitable. I wasn't exactly enthusing the prospect of an endless cycle of building for hours and crashing in seconds. I also concluded that my fight simulation work hadn't been disciplined enough. Loops and rolls were all well and good on the computer, but the basics were not sufficiently in place when the stakes were high with my real world helicopter. I've learned the following:

• Building the helicopter is time-consuming and demanding.
  
• Crashing the helicopter is all too easy and highly upsetting.
• Diagnosing all the broken parts after a crash is vital.
  
• Repairing the helicopter is expensive and time-consuming.
  
• Simulator work needs to emulate real life flying.
  
• Flying requires a mastery of the basics and total discipline.

I need a new approach.

Beatboxing

One of the highlights of last year was the trip to Boxcon, a convention for beatboxers at London's Southbank Centre. What really blew us away was the obvious raw talent combined with technology, which made the whole thing much more acessible to people such as myself, who are old enough to know better. We particularly loved the workshop which taught us the basics. From little acorns sprout mighty oaks and on that day the act now known as "MC Wood-zee and Deadly Dave" was born.  Check us (and others) out at Boxcon '09, Southbank Centre, April 11th-12th, 2009.

Aside from Deadly Dave showing us how to scratch, the act that made the lasting impression was The PeteBox. The beats and vocals are layered using a loop pedal, which allows whole songs to be built up over time, to impressive effect.  For a good example of the technique, check out this.  For sheer versatility, check out this.  It's clear the boy can sing too. And who needs DJs or bands anymore, when he can do this? Basement Jaxx are finished!