Crushed it!

Today was a first! I flew 4 packs on a 450 sized heli and enjoyed all of it, even the crash at the end! I have never flown a full 450 flight set, and have never liked them, until today. As a novice heli pilot, even after 10 years of flying them infrequently until recently, I have been flying sport really well, confidently and with error free precision. I am making it a point to fly a heli everytime I am out, and a lot of sim time. Its paying off.

I brought out the MX-Bach to try once again to land her without breaking a prop, the Trex 600e FBL which I fly 10S. I will be doing more 12S though flying sport I don't need those headspeeds, I only have 5 of the 5S batteries, I think 4 of th 6S. I use the 5S batteries for the Trex 500e, though I can also fly it 6S, the latter getting a little tight under the canopy.

Winds were wierd. There was no base wind to speak of, but brisk gusts of 30 seconds to a few minutes would come from all different directions mostly cross winds, so I landed from the south in left and right hand patterns, and from the north.

The 35cc RCGF-USA engine happily swinging a 20x8 scimitar prop. With the taller tail wheel setup and that big prop, its clearing the ground on all three wheels by about 1 inch at best. I have to land her perfectly. Even even keel mains first and she will strike the prop. I am toying with changing to a taller set of mains I have, but today I landed time and again without any problems. We liked each other today! No broken prop!

She can be a nice flier, but needs really low rates and high expos for a sport flier. 

Twitchy if there is any wind or speed. Challenging to fly, but still fun.

Beautiful wierd plane. MX-2 fuse, Sbach wing.

Flew all told about 30 minutes, until I noticed in a preflight that the muffler was loose again. I haven't use JB Weld on this one, but will be. Removed the muffler, cleaned it, painted it with BBQ Grill paint (heat resistent), and will reinstall it tomorrow.

Trex 600e FBL. What a great flier! See her smaller sis behind her.

Nice bits on the 600e.

The EXI/Trex 450 Sport with its beautiful flybar! This plastic head was sweet. Tight and responsive, perfect disk, and flew great. I did find her better on her low to mid rates. On high rates her collective was really touchy and over reactive. I think I need to use 14 degrees instead of 11 to give it better resolution. 

Everything is so small!

At the end of the fourth pack I lost her. Now, I know what you are going to say, but this really was a signal loss. She was starting to become a bit slow to respond, and I was bringing her left to right to land, high to lower when she topped responding to all inputs and just continued right down to the ground as her disk was slowing. The main head is toast, many of he plastic parts great for sport flight, didn't survive the crash. I think I have enough parts to build a nice flybar head. The servos at first glance survived. All three shafts are bent, the featuring shaft is almost 45 degrees off at both ends. The tail shaft is also bent. There is a dent and a barely perceptible bend in the boom. The gears are okay so far. This is going to take a bit of work.

UPDATE: I suspect I flew the pack too low. It was an old one, and signs were the sketchy behavior just before the crash. Need to check the pack. It was a bit puffy.

Last beats of her dying heart...

When I got there the reciever was disconnected from the ESC , likely from the crash itself, so I wasn't able to tell if there was signal loss, but I am pretty sure. I wasn't doing anything but a slow descent in straight line. I haven't ever had problems with Orange recievers. This one is several years old. When I rebuild this I will use a new Spektrum AR620 I have NIB. 

I so enjoyed flying the 450 that I think after rebuilding the Sport here, I will rebuild the waiting 450 FBL with its Tarot XYZ flybarless system and have two of these. I have so many spare 450 parts. I think I am really going to enjoy these!