A special note of appreciation to Flying Fngers on HeliFreak for sending me a couple of boxes of 450 parts out of the kindness of his heart! I put one of the main/auto gears he sent me in the repaired EXI 450.
The EXI needs to have its CCPM phased in, as does the ERazor, but that's it and they are ready to fly. But... am I?
I was pretty confident in my basic flying and felt pretty confident I could hover the 450. Everyone says it is easier, more stable than my small FPs, which I can fly fairly well (although I can't seem to control the UFLYS. Thought it was e heli, but maybe its me). I wasn't in complete control of the EXI when I test flew it. And despite mastering the Clearview, the Phoenix sim mde me start all over again with my flying skills. Even I knew that the stock Clearview sim was easier to fly than the real thing, it was just too stable, but my recent work on the Phoenix makes me feel like I have never flown before. This, my concern that my build skills may be less than I believe them to be, and my seeming inability to confidently control the albeit troubled EXI 450 have made me lose confidence. More sim time. When I can fly the 450 on Phoenix, I will take my helis out again. Its a newbie crisis in confidence that only sim time, and then getting out there and flying, will overcome.
On another note, expecting to be in this hobby for the long run, And after some nice educating email exchaanges wtih David Gray of ProgressiveRC, I purchased a 350 watt power supply, an iCharger 208B, 2S and 3S parallel charging and balancing harnesses from him. Big chunk of change... but will make charging a brief wait and mee my needs for the foreseeable future.
Speaking of upgrading... I decided to put a dedicated computer on the 50" in the media room for flying the Phoenix sim and bought an HP p6654y desktop from Best Buy. The stock integrated graphic card was mediocre at best, so I decided I needed a better one. I tried the ATI Radeon 4350 that was on the family computer downstairs, and it worked better. The power supply in the computer is a measely 250 watts, and this card was supposed to be run with a minimum of 300 watts, but it worked fine. I went back to Best Buy Buy another 4350, but got sucked in to "for a few buck more...". I left with a 430 watt power supply and an ATI Radeon HD 5570. I had no idea if I could change out the power supply, but, hey, I did and everything works awesomely! I looked to see if I should just exchange up the HP I had purchased, but this was I still came out $100 ahead and with a better graphics card than the Best Buy had in the store for the money. Very nice gaming computer now!
Sim, sim, sim... then fly, fly, fly!
UPDATE: After flying the Phoenix sim for a couple of hours, I am getting my skills back, and with it my confidence. Hours of alternating 4 squares is making me handle the heli in multiple aspects, controlling speed and precison handling. Enjoying it tremndously! Feeling better already.
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