Biloxi Blues

It is sooooo very good to be back in Biloxi! I moved out of my townhouse last week since my lease was in renew or move mode, and I wanted to continue my job search from home in Biloxi. I went through taking the wings off all my aircraft and had them packed, so they are in storage in New Jersey until my final move, along with the tables and lights, and parts that make up the rest of the flight lab. I did, however, bring home the Pulse 25XT, a 450 Flybarred and my new, yet to be setup and flown Trex 600e Pro, and my toolboxes, and both my transmitters, as well as my charge box and the batteries.

 

Since I can't setup my lab the normal way, and no one eats in the breakfast room, I have taken it over and created a working lab there!

 

 

 

Put the Pulse back together. It needs some cote work. Stopped by the Orange Grove Hobby Shop this afternoon and picked up some yellow, black and white Monokote. Tomorrow I will be making repairs.

 

 

Love this room! The Trex on the floor.

 

 

Brought a small table in from the garage, and storing my toolboxes on top. The Trex 450 clone is in the silver case, and my trnasmitters are in the black case. The cote sealer, heat gun and soldering iron are in a plastic in now, also under the table.

 

I ran into Jason, the prorietor at the Hobby Shop and he remembered me immediately by name, though he hasn't seen me in a couple of years! Contacted my flying buddy, Kenny Chandler, and weather willing, we are flying Monday and Tuesday. It will be the first time I have flown in a year, and in the year before that I got in only a handful of flights. I want to get my flying thumbs back on the Pulse before flying the 450 heli. If all goes will in a week or so I will have the Trex 600 setup and programmed, and will fly it too!

 

I spent the afternoon discharging my batteries. I had forgotten I had stored them charged and never discharged them, so they need refreshing. Some old ones were puffed, one was just non-functional, and they were discarded at Home Depot, but most seem okay. Wonder about how well they will cycle.

 

Tomorrow, the cote repairs! Monday we are flying!

 

Posted with Blogsy

Preflight/Reprogram Tarot ZYX

 

Spent a part of the afternoon revisiting the settings on the Tarot ZYZ on my EXI 450 fbl. In preflight refit I noticed the swash was reversed, though pitch and roll were fine. Along the way the collective and cycli controls on the radio reversed, they were right, but lef was right. Cray-cray. Not sure how I resolved it, but worked the normal-reverse combinations of the swash servos and somehow it resolved. I did re-establish the Pitch servo-Ch1/aileron-Ch2 relationships, as they may have been reversed, and that may have been the problem. I am pretty sure it was fine when I last flew her, kind odd. It was one of those situations where I did a bunch of differnt combinations of fixes and stopped when the problem resolved. I also noted the picth went +/- 18 degrees, and reprogrammed the FBL computer to +/- 14. It was fun relearning the programming, took me a while to remember the collective gets set in the FBL and not the transmitter.

 

I took the heli up to the big bedroom, shooed out the cats that followed, and spun her up. I had made the mistake of charging my batteries when I was flying in Dayton almost a year ago, so my batteries were not stored at 3.8V. I may have rendered them unusable... a couple were puffed, old ones, and I am disposing of them, but the newer ones I think I can recondition. Point being, it ran briefly but between programming and checking her blade tracking at zero pitch, by the time I tried to hover her the battery ran out of juice. I out another battery on he, but i wasn't really comfortable hovering her in the bedroom so just rechecked the setting and made sure she was stable at fill throttle in zero pitch, then shut her down.

 

It was nice getting back to the flight bench! I need to repair the Sopwith the cat landed on, my next project.

 

Need warmer weather, then to find a field and fly!

 

Posted with Blogsy

New Align Trex 600e Pro

My new Align Trex 600e Pro, kittens and banana for scale.

I bought this newly built, never flown heli on eBay at a steal with a new Spektrum Dx7S. The heli is bind and fly with all Align parts, a Castle 80A HV ESC, a Spektrum AR8000 with satellite, Align GP790. It came with two new Fusion 6S 4000 mAh 40C LiPO batteries (might be a tight fit, haven't checked) with EC5 connectors (convenient as that's what I use),, and a new 2S 2200 mAh LiPO receiver pack with Traxxas connectors. I need to vet it, take the head and the tail apart especially, check the gyro and program my Dx8. This version uses a flybar, which I wanted, and I will need to make sure its mechanically set up.

A couple of years ago i bought an Align Trex 600efl (flybarless), and have been byung parts for it. I finally have all the parts and along with vetting the new 600e I will be building the 600efl. That will take a lot of time.

 

Meanwhile I am cleaning up and servicing my other helis and expanding my heli shop (picks to follow)!

 

I am definitely back! Spending my motorcycle money, but I am back!

 

Posted with Blogsy

It's time...

I haven't flown anything since last fall... Fall 2012, back in Dayton. Kenny Chandler called me tonight on his way back from a fly-in in Jackson. He infected me. Again.

 

It's time.

 

 

Posted with Blogsy

Move Day

 

 

It really does help having professional movers. My last move could have gone much better. This time I went with pros, using Berger Transfer and Storage Allied Van Lines of Cincinnati. A crew of three experienced movers had everything packed and on the truck within 3 hours. The lead guy had a lot of experience packing RC aircraft and crafting boxes. The pic above is all my aircraft, except the massive Sopwith Camel, which got its own tailored box. I have no doubt they will arrive fine!

 

The T shaped box holds the Ultimate: I coudn't ge thte wings off without a lot of trouble. No problem, he made a box!

 

Posted with Blogsy

Moving II

Reminiscent of my last move... The planes and helis are off the wall, the wings off the planes that would let me. Hope they all make it.

 

 

 

 

Posted with Blogsy

New Flight Modes

Recently read a thread on Helifreak that discussed flight modes, and I decided to make some changes. RDLohr suggested setting Normal as a start up mode.

 

My previous Normal mode had a throttle curve that went zero to 50% then 75 and 100%. The Normal pitch curve was 40% to 50% (zero pitch) then 75% to 100%.

 

I had only one Flight mode. Throttle curve was 100%-90%-100%, and the Pitch curve was linear 0% (max neg) - 50% (zero pitch) - 100% (max pos).

 

Here are the new curves programmed on my Spektrum DX8:

 

 

 

Normal Mode "Start Up" Pitch Curve: A slight neg pitch, around -4 to zero pitch.

Allows the heli to come up to speed without any pitch.

 

 

 

Normal mode throttle curve. brings the heli up to 90% throttle at zero pitch.

Allows a nice transition to Flight mode, no sudden jump in headspeed when

switching into Flight mode,

 

 

 

Flight mode 1 limits the pitch to around -10 to +10 degrees.

 

 

 

Flight mode 1 Throttle curve. Some like a straight 100% curve. I have done that...The idea is that when there is no pitch the throttle is down 10% to keep the headspeed more constant, That's the thought anyway,

 

 

 

Flight mode 2 Pitch curve: Full -12 to +12 degrees.

 

 

 

Same throttle curve for both flight modes.

 

Practiced these curves on the Phoenix Flight Sim and it works well. I also like that it allows me to bring the headspeed up to full without any pitch. I did this primarily for the smoother transition from Normal to Flight modes.

 

Posted with Blogsy