I like how he moves on to inverted hovering right on the second lesson, as opposed to other training guides that suggest you should learn inverted flight only later on.
I’ll try Chad’s method first, and if everything fails, I’ll go back to upright flying
I’ve come across a website called MyRCLog.com — it’s a logbook for RC planes, helis and cars.
For each flight you record, it lets you enter what pre-flight changes were done to your model (such as “changed gyro gain to 76%”), what you’ve accomplished on that flight (such as “first time flying inverted!”) and some notes (“blade tracking still off, must measure linkages again”).
It also keeps track of your battery usage, flying fields, flight durations, etc.
I’ve just started using it and here are some screenshots:
I’ve got the heli rebuilt and ready for the maiden flight!
Drove the usual 70km to the indoor gym on Sunday only to find out it was closed (err… I forgot it was Easter!). Then I see a nice park right besides the school, empty and with some nice soft grass, but it was very windy. Hmm… what the heck, I drove all the way here so I’ve got to fly it!
Training gear installed (thanks Andy for lending mine, I mean, his training gear) and off it went!
Blade tracking was bad with the stock CopterX woodies. I’ve replaced them with the $18 Carbon Fibre blades from Hobbyking and tracking improved immediately! I don’t think I’m going back to woodies, unless I’m just hovering.
Shiny $9 fibreglass UK canopy also provided by my beloved Asian hobby store
The tail slider was squeaking a lot and sometimes the tail would blow out when doing hard pumps on the collective (i.e., flying the heli upwards very quickly at full power).
I’ll have to add more grease to see if that solves it. It was squeaking more or less like this kitten:
In summary, flying outdoors was really nice! Good thing the gym was closed!
It’s been a month or so that I crashed my heli and since then haven’t had time to rebuild it.
On that day, I was practicing figure 8 circuits and was doing well for almost 4 hours. During my last flight, when no one else was flying (it was closing time), I decided to use the whole gym for my figure 8 circuits… well, overconfidence kicked in and I lost orientation — oops
So now it’s time to rebuild! I’m building my three additional CopterX kits at the same time, but only two will be ready-to-fly with all electronics installed. Heli #3 and #4 (the crashed one) will be used for spares
Cheap $14 camera from eBay (Hobbyking has it too now), attached with velcro and zip tie on the horizontal stabilizer of my CopterX 450:
Watch out: there are 4 versions of this camera for sale on eBay, but only the one with a microSDHC slot is the good version. There is a video comparison here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LT8rqod3Gj0.
# tail -f /blog/comments