Another Heli of a Day!

Took to BMF today with my eFlite Ultimate, and my darlings, the EXI siblings, as well as my new HK500cmt. It was one heli of a day! Kenny Chandler, Jerry Gollott, Ron Johnson, and I flew, Greg Reed showed up and visited with us. It was oppressively hot and humid...
 

 

 

Jerry Gollot, and Ron Johnson

 

 

Looking over my bench at lunchtime.

 

 

Kenny out behind his truck brokering a deal for a new motor for his Edge from a guy on the West Coast.

 
I took the EXI 450 Sport out to play. Set her on my heli pad, spun her up, and she threw a tail blade within seconds. Darn... I need to start bringing things like that... Changed out to the EXI 450 FBL with the Tarot ZYX on it, and flew her like crazy. On the third pack I brought her in nose first, hovered her, she got a little close (the wind was blowing down on me), so I flew her back away, and gained some altitude. But when I came in again she got too close, I gave her full up pitch, she cleared well, but got over my head off to my right, and I had no idea what she was doing so close above me, so I dumped her and hit throttle hold. Bent the main and feathering shaft, no other damage. I decided to take her tail blades and put them on the EXI Sport, and took her up. On her second pack she threw her gyro! Total loss of tail control, brought her down to ten feet spinning like a crazy top, and finally just had to hit throttle hold and try to set her down in autorotation. She landed gear down, a bit hard with a lot of yaw rate. Broke the gear, bent the main shaft, and likely the feathering shaft. Everything else looks good! Orientation mishap with the FBL aside, I had such a blast mastering the helis. I am truly getting comfortable with them!
 

 

The bad girls in time out... after their crashes.

 

 
The HK500cmt with the BeastX FBL system flew just sweet! I had only hovered her briefly over a week ago, and she did great. Flying 6S (two 3S 2650mAh packs in series) with a lot of power, getting about 6 minutes of circuits, figure eights. etc. A couple of little tweaks on gyro gain, and I flew her for three packs. So much easier to control her than the 450s, so much more stable and less twitchy. A real joy to fly!
 
It is so exciting having finally moved to fast forward flight with the helis! I ordered some parts (all out of landing gear, skid tubes for the 450s). The Jesus bolt on the Sport stripped its hex head... so I had to cut the bold out damaging the autorotation one-way gear. I had one to replace it, but when I installed it I held it in a pair of pliers to rotate it and I crushed it! I did not realize it was so soft! So I had to order replacements. Put in orders for one set of landing gear, and the one-way gear from AMainHobbies.com, which should arrive before the end of the week. The movers come on Sunday, so I want to have everything repaired before then!
 
Planning on trying to get some more time in tomorrow at BMF with both 500s and the Frankenheli 450 FBL, but have some work stuff to get done first. Oh, I found that the holes I placed for the canopy grommets on the HK500cmt were a bit close with the larger 2650mAh packs, so I had to really pull to get the canopy latched on. I decided to do two things. I ordered a wicked cool Align canopy for $25 on eBay, and I Bondo'ed the holes to redrill tomorrow. I will sand it, and repaint it, then redrill. Come to think of it, the canopy will not be ready to fly tomorrow, so I may only take the HDX500...
 
I am pretty sure that I will be concentrating on my helis from now on: once you go heli, you never go back... not really. Only flew the Ultimate twice. Once to warm up, and later because I felt sorry for her...
 

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