4 Seconds of Flight, Maybe 5...

Maybe its the Pentacostal's because that's all I got today flying behind their church. 4 whole seconds to a spinning death. It was breezy again, but not a bad day. I set up the CopterX 250, and spun her up. The first clue was that she wanted to rotate left again while still on the ground, just like before. This time though the tail rotor headspeed was quite adequate. That's when I should have stopped. But I thought... (yeah, I was thinking...), "I can compensate for it", so I throttled up. She went up about 5 feet into a twisting hover with a determined yaw to the left, rolled to the left as she nosed down hard, and continued the 360 right into the dirt as I hit throttle hold. Parts flying everywhere, one blade flying about 15 yards in front of me arcing about 30 feet into the air, the other flew over my right shoulder at head height and winged deadly silent past me 10 yards behind. I just stood there. Yup... I... was... still... thinking...  I went over to the heli about 10 feet away and she was on her side rotor head all twisted, a servo screaming in pain becoming silent as I picked her up... All that excitement in 4 seconds! Booya, this is fun! So I collected the parts pieces, took a few memorial photos and a vid, and put her away quietly.

4 Seconds... A Day in the Life of CopterX 250
"Phoenix" I refer to is the Phoenix RC Flight Sim.
The video is of the after crash walk of shame, not the flight itself.
Its only worth watching if you want to laugh at me.

Being stupid I pulled out the newly airworthy EXI 450. Now it was quite breezy. I set her up, powered her up, stepped back with my finger on the throttle hold, and a voice spoke to me.

"Don't fly..."

I heard it, softly, again and again, quiet, undemanding, persistent. Scenarios of my past flight mis-adventures flashed slowly through my mind. Uncertain, I paused... I looked around at the sky, the beautiful unbroken heli, listening and feeling the wind die down encouraging me. The voice was still there. But now that it had my attention it said, "Its not worth it. Stop for today, we are tired of repairing helis based on your wicked bad flight skills and piss poor judgement. Use good judgement this time, spare us the whining and the gnashing of teeth. Just stop. Just stop this insanity..."

Another moment went by in silence.

Wait a minute... that's not in my head! My 450 is negotiating with me!

Chagrined that either the madness had returned, or that this is what common sense sounds like, I stepped forward, set down the transmitter, pulled off the canopy and disconnected the power. Enough for today. Enough.  Lets go home...

I went home, finished repairs on the ERazor and set up her CCPM, put a new prop on the Cubby (the only one I could get while I wait for the 8x6 slow flyer props to arrive from China. The ones from nitroplanes were $3 with $9 for shipping. To hell with that... so I checked out my LHS and he had one 8x6 prop, but its not a slow flyer... I may regret this).

Then I flew the Phoenix sim on the "true model" settings. I wasn't aware I was flying on "stable, 50% fake" until I read a post on Helifreak... Now the sim flys just like I do. 4 seconds, duck and cover, clean up my trash.

Tomorrow we're flying the Cubby!

"Trying is the first step towards failure!"  ~ Homer Simpson