MY HELICOPTER HOBBY PROGRESS.

8-23-2004 (no flying)

Has it really been that long? Well, no. I’ve been flying, but about the time of the last log, I started training which cut into the flight time. Since the last entry below, I had 3 emergency auto-rotations, all of which were instigated by tail rotor failures. The first came when my tail servo froze in flight. I was doing a couple circles at about 25 feet when suddenly the heli slammed nose around. I hit throttle hold and somehow managed to keep orientation on the way down. I landed hard but there was no damage at all. I took out the servo and we found that it was completely fried. Great..there goes a 9253. Fortunately, I had a backup. The next weekend I flew, the tail hub flew off in flight. Again, I managed to get down safely and found all t he pieces of the tail. It turned out that the main grip for the tail slider had a crack in it, and during flight it managed to back itself out. While I was up in the air, I found that I was having to add more and more rudder control. I was in the process of landing when the tail let go, so only had to come down from 10 feet. The third time, one of the tail grips came loose and flew off from 30 feet in the air. This time I lost the tail boom and tail drive belt but that was it. I finally completely replaced the tail assembly and have been flying fine ever since.

The big issue is that I’m now nervous. I’ve gone back to just hovering with a little bit of circle work. I haven’t gotten in the air since the beginning of August due to practice and Pennsic. I’ve done a little bit of simulator work, but not much.

I’m also almost completely done rebuilding the Gasser. And I now have a new Scaler project. I picked up an Agusta 109 .30 fuselage with Hawk mechs. I’ll put my TT36 engine in it and will be modifying the fuse to make it a 109 E Power, and give it a Duke LifeFlight Paint Scheme. I’m getting some help and info from some folks that fly it, which helps tremendously.

Well..that’s it for now. More to come as I get back into flying gear….

3-07-2004 (45° /10-20 MPH very gusty to higher)

Windy. Boy was it windy. We went to the ARCS site this week, because of all the rain that came in on Friday and Saturday. It’s not far from Cataney’s, and is pretty neat. Best thing about it is that it has a permanent shelter. It’s a good thing, too, as we got hit with rain. A weather front decided today would be a good day to move through, and we got periods of rain along with the nice gusty winds.

Today, I pretty much just tried hovering. I was fighting wind all the time and was having a bear of a time keeping her at a fixed altitude. We also fudged with my motor a bit. Todd and John M were helping me mess with it. I kept having issues as I’d give the first couple doses of gas as I throttled up, it’d want to choke itself out. We leaned it up a bit, but then it ran too lean in flight. About the third flight I think we got it, so we’ll see how she does next week. I also had to buy a gallon of go-go juice from Todd too.. I ran out. Fuel shipments due the 18^th ish.

2-29-2004 (25° / 5-10 MPH)

I spent most of the day doing half-circles, controlling the orientation and maintaining tail-in as I did half-circles around me. For the first 4 tanks I practiced that and different orientations. I was able to go fully side-on and hold it, but occasionally I’d lose the directional orientation and had to yank the tail around. I’m going to have to keep practicing that before I can noodge into nose-in.

Finally, just before we left, I fuelled up and did a little forward flight. I just took it forward, turning left and right, and hovered rearward back to me. Once I’m more comfortable with some of the semi nose-in attitudes, then I should be able to do side to side ff. The winds were fairly calm, so I didn’t have to fight much to keep her where I wanted her.

2-22-2004(38° / 0-5 MPH)

She’s back! Well, I spent last week being irritated. I cleaned the parts on the Rap, went through all I could and waited. and waited. And waited. Finally, on Thursday, I drove up and met with Jeff S and picked up a set of frames, motor and other odds and ends that I didn’t have. Friday and Saturday, I rebuild the raptor. I still need a window for the canopy, but that’ll come. I had some questions on resetting the servos, and I did replace 2 of the Hiteks with Futaba 9202’s. I’m also more comfortable with the mechanics now. I have a good idea of what’s “critical” fit and what we can just “get away with.” That confidence will help a lot on the Xcell.

I had a lot of work still to do to finish setting it up. Rich, Jeff, John and Gary all helped out a lot at the site and after about 3 hours of fiddling, we fired it up and tested it. Gary drove and it didn’t take long, maybe 1/3 tank to get everything zeroed out. John got my expo set a bit differently, and I have the pitch set more for flight than for “hover learning” now.

The first thing I noticed when I took over driving was that she’s MUCH more responsive. The elevator (one of the 2 servos I switched out) is much smoother and responsive now. I burned 2 full flights in hover practices.. just working on holding her steady and changing the orientation. I have to figure out the “nosing left” thing…every time I swing rudder to nose left, I lose altitude. I haven’t been able to figure out if it’s the way I hold the sticks or what.. but it’s something to work on.

It was getting late on as I finished up my second flight, and even tho I wanted to get some more in, I couldn’t see enough, so I decided to pack it in. I am MUCH much happier now… Rappy Happy. Me happy. Good weekend!

2-15-2004 (25° / 5-10 MPH)

Well, it finally happened.. I hit in hard. I was working on a little bit of forward flight, and got my first tank thru without too much difficulty. In fact, I actually had a couple of very smooth turns. I began the movement at a 45° angle, and headed forward, then turned back to the left, making a big, loopy S. At the end of the arcs, I essentially hovered backwards to the landing site. The turns from right to left were very smooth, but they were also turning into the wind. The disk acted like a nice stabilizer. When I arced left to right tho, I was side-slipping quite a bit

When I went up for the second tank, I was really hyped. I kept working on tight liftoffs and landings, and then went forward a bit. On the third trip out, I got caught. As I arced into the wind, a gust caught me and the heli re-oriented to nose-in and angled downward. I tried to make corrections, but I ended up just driving hard and fast into the ice on the field. The poor rappy basically exploded on impact. I shattered my canopy, frames, landing gear and blades. The muffler was literally ripped off the engine, leaving a hole in the crankcase. The main shaft, flybar, and feathering shaft were all bent. The tailboom was torqued and unusable.

I was disappointed that I was done flying for the day, but I really didn’t get too upset. We spent some time talking about courses of action: rebuild, buy new, etc… and that’s still being discussed. The guys at the field said they’d look around for the parts I need and I’ll do some searching myself. We’ll see. My biggest irritation is that there’s nothing I can do until the parts come in.

02-13-04 (36° / 0-5 mph)

I got in a couple hours today. Mostly just flying in tight hovers to get comfortable with Rappy’s response to the lack of landing gear. The new clutch is working great, and I’m getting more comfortable with the controls. I’m still just working on just hovering, and still find myself slipping up or sideways. Anyway, it was a nice day and it’s rather different to fly in no wind.. I don’t know WHAT I’ll do in the summer when we get some really nice weather.. heh.

02-08-04 (30° / 0-7 mph)

Well, today was VERY eventful I did flight one with my gear on, and focused on my take-offs and landings. I wanted to softly touch down, and never touch the ground unless I did it on purpose. The head was grabbing my hand a bit and I found out why later. However, the flight went very well and I had good control over what I wanted to do. So, I landed and refueled.

When I went to fire up for the next flight, I had a grinding noise.. and found I had my first major mechanical issue. The clutch had broken. Time for my first bit of surgery on the rappy. I took off the muffler and dropped the engine. Sure enough, one of the shoes was broken. Todd looked at the bell, and felt it looked ok. So, I took off the clutch from the fan (with the help of Jeff Ewing and a pair of channel locks.) When I got the rap, I had a replacement clutch in my repair stuff, so I just replaced it, a little blue locktite on the screws and put it all back together. Jeff Watt loaned me his 15 min epoxy again and John Micelli let me use some of his alchohol to clean the inside of the frames and engine while I had it all out. All tolled, the repair took about 45 minutes, 15 of which was waiting for the epoxy to setup.

The new clutch was amazing. I had always felt the head tugging on my hand whenever I started her, but this time it just hung loose. I did notice that I was having some minor engine starting issues, and was afraid I’d messed something up. Turned out that the glow plug was wearing out. I also decided to try flying without training gear. It was Great!! I was able to maintain control, and kept off the deck unless I wanted to land. The Rap handled wonderfully. The lack of the extra training gear make her hang in the air much better.

I put 2 more tanks through without landing gear, and then when I had some problems with my contacts. I had to take a break. I was going to go out one last time, but I couldn’t get her started. The glowstarter showed no lights.. and it turned out that the glowplug had burned out. Later on in the week I’ll change it out and do some more maintenance on her.

02-01-04 (24° / calm)

I didn’t know what to do today.. it was CALM. The sun wasn’t out like it had been on Saturday, but the wind was practically non-existant. The field was completely covered in snow, with a very thin layer of ice. It was great. I just put the Rappy’s trainingwheels on the ice and she could skitter all over the place, like a waterwalker. I practiced a bunch of takeoffs and landings, trying hard to land in the same spot as I took off.

I had a small mechanical issue today.. the muffler fell off. Well, I lost one of the nuts, so I had to replace it. Jeff Watt loaned me his 15 min epoxy to make the new gasket and gave me one of the nuts. Half hour later, and I was back in the air.

The lack of wind made things incredible today. I practiced a bunch of hovers in different orientations. Tail on, 45° to left and right and side-on for both left and right over 4 full tanks of fuel. I didn’t want to quit at all..it was amazing. Good good day. I’m flirting with the idea of taking off my training gear, but didn’t today. I’ll do some more G2 practice this week and maybe soon.

01-25-04 (8° / 5-10 mph)

Cold. Very cold. Very very very cold. But VERY eventful. I got 3 good solid flights in today. At first, the tail rotor was clicking, locking up, and it turned out to be a loose belt. After Todd helped me tighten it up, I was able to fly without a problem. I noticed after each flight, my Gem2k was solid, indicating low batty. Testing voltage came back with 4.88.. which is just fine. Todd and John told me that g2k’s have a problem in real cold. Need to get a voltmeter..

Got 3 good flights in. Wind was a bit of a challenge, and I couldn’t really keep her in a small area, but again, I didn’t crash. I was actually more comfortable when the wind grabbed the disk and was able to recover from a couple of near ditches. I’m really noticing that sluggish push in the elevator now. I might try switching out the servo if it’s like that next week. Other than that, the raptor held up just fine. I was a little unhappy with my takeoffs, as I was all over the place, and I had a couple of hard landings, but nothing bad. I almost am soft enough to feel decent dropping the training gear for tail-in.

The wind meant that I had to do a lot of side-on hovering. I had it almost 90 ° to me and didn’t have much difficulty with it. As soon as I began losing orientation, I just swung the tail in and re-established it. John M. suggested I try keeping the nose pointed into the wind and it really did help. The wind wanted to turn it into a kite with the side into it, and even tho I was flying with different orientation, it was actually easier to maintain.

Jeff Watt got a couple good photos of me flying and also my first vid. I’m definitely looking forward to seeing what I look like to the outside observer. I also got him my OS 61 RX engine. It’ll give him something to play with and he’s going to get me a couple 9202 servos that I can put in the gasser. I call that a good trade.

There was also quite a bit of excitement today. Todd was doing some VERY nice inverted hover. He had his ship literally dusting the snow with the blades. Finally, tho.. the wind caught him just enough, a blade caught the ground and he went in. Repairs were simple: basically a tail rotor set, a couple of links, and he was back in the air. About 5 minutes later, Todd suggested the same to Steve, and.. yep.. you guessed it, Steve went in too. His repairs were also fairly minor. Well, about 10 minutes after that, Todd was back out, and was doing some more inverted, when suddenly it pitched up, pirouetting very nicely and spun straight into the ground. Turns out the tailrotor link went this time. Damage was much more severe: broken frames and some other pieces… so that was the end of that ship for the day.

I had to call it about then. The cold was cutting through to my knee and I had to get warm. But it was definitely a very good day!!!!

01-18-04 (13° / 10-15 mph)

Today was rough. Very cold, very windy and we got hit with some snow showers. On the bright side, Todd brought out the Turbine, and I got to see one up close. It was definitely a cool toy. Granted, it’s one of those “status” things, as it really doesn’t have any application other than the sound. It delivers some good scale power and the “whrrrooomm” as it starts up and flies over is just excellent. It can’t dance very well, tho, so the only real application for a turbine is in a scale fuse, and then it’s one of those “too much money for one’s own good” situations. But anyway.. I wouldn’t argue if someone handed me one. heh.

I actually tried flying. I hooked up the G2K today too, and I’m glad I did. When I powered up the raptor, it glowed solid. Turns out the battery was dead. Jeff had a field charger so we just plugged in and waited for an hour. In the meantime, I watched them tinker on Mike’s machine and get it flyin.

Then it was my turn. I only burned about half a tank of gas. The wind and snow was just too much for me to handle. Twice I got caught hard in the wind and almost lost it. The last time I the strong headwind caught me just right and sent it up about 30 feet. I managed to keep composure and fight the relocation and slowly get back down to the ground. Heck, I even made it into the landing zone. But after two near misses, I wasn’t in the mood to chance it a third time, so I packed her up and headed home.

I’m glad I tried it, however. I went into some tough conditions and didn’t crash. It’s more of that “learn to survive in the tough situations” kind of learning. Hopefully next weekend will have better weather.

I am considering taking the raptor to IceCastle too.. depending on the load I’ll have in my car. heh.

01-11-04 (21° / 3-8 mph)

Got out to the field again today. Couldn’t fly last weekend ‘cuz of the Christmas-travellin’ stuff. I REALLY should have taken the Rappie to Sue’s.. it was 68° and NICE! I could have easily burned several tanks in the back yard. I think I’m going to start packing her along on most of my trips now.

Today, my first flight, the winds were freezing my hands and I almost dumped it into the ground for lack of feeling. John M. and Jeff W loaned me their flying gloves for the rest of the day.

I put a full tank through without any real issues. The wind had me dancing a bit, but I was able to keep control. I was able to keep it in about a 40 foot circle, something I wasn’t too happy about but I did get some encouragement from the guys at the field. They’re really great about being encouraging and supportive. One of the new heli flyers (Tom, I believe) had a hard landing, breaking the frame mounts for the landing gear. Todd used zip-ties to put them back so he didn’t have to quit. Later on, Tom got caught in the wind and went side-in to the ground. Slightly more substantial damage, but again all the guys were offering help to get it back in the air.

Early on in the second tank, the wind had picked up and I was having a much harder time controlling it. I was bouncing more and ended up spending a lot of time between 5 and 10 feet agl. I came down hard and broke one of the landing struts, but managed to finish the landing without causing any other damage. Considering the angle the gear made, I was pretty impressed with that. I didn’t bring replacement dowel rods, so I was going to quit.

Again, the “duct-tape and wd-40” mentality of the crew saved me. I just shaved off the one and stuck it back in the mount. I’m glad I did, because I was able to burn another tank and a half of gas before it was time to call it. The broken landing gear fell out a couple times after that, but I was able to safely land each time after that anyway, so I’m getting pretty comfortable with it. I still need the gear, as I’m getting caught in unbalanced situations still, but I’m getting there!!!

MUST BURN MORE FUEL!!!!!

01-01-04 (47° / light winds)

Wow..it’s really new years? Well.. today I did it! I made a set of the training gear for the Raptor today, and took her into the air! The wind was very mild and the temps were in the high 40’s. Jeff Galford spent some time talking over my shoulder for my first tank and a half of gas. He checked out the trims and we also set up the kill switch, which was not yet set.

The inputs are twitchier than what I’d been putting into the Simulator. Of course, I’m flying the Eagle on the sim, which is a .60 sized bird, so that makes sense. The .60’s are smoother and need more oompf due to their heavier size. I also tried flying a bit with the “pinch” method, but found that I wasn’t comfortable with it. I might try it again on the sim and see if it’s better.

The collective was still a bit sticky. We think it really is a cumulative effect of some slightly tight linkages. This will loosen up either through use or with some cleaning, which I still need to do. I expect to pick up tools tonight and maybe I’ll take apart/clean the machine next week. Even though it’s a bit sluggish, she still responds well enough for hover practice.

I think my pump is going. I’m having problems getting it to move fuel consistently. I’m not sure what the problem is, but I’ll take a look at it tonight.

Conon is coming over tonight too, so we can talk about soldering tin or brass. I’m working up the Apache designs and I really want to use the scale ports for the exhaust. That means, they a) need to be metal, and b) need to be functional. More on this will be posted on the Apache page.

I’m STILL psyched…I flew!!!

12-21-03

Well.. I did it. For the first time, I drove a heli..and not into the ground!! Well, I had help. I buddy boxed today with Jeff and flew Todd’s shuttle. The wind was hard.. close to 8 mph gusts and that kept smacking me around a bit.

Jeff kept control of the collective, and I had the aileron, rudder and elevator. It was tough, but I did manage to keep it in a 30’ area, with quite a bit of “hopping.” Considering the wind, I’m not too unhappy with it. heh. Now I really want to get the raptor up in the air.

As for Rappie.. her collective is a bit sticky. She’s got a bunch of gunk that I really need to get cleaned out, and I’ll try to get together with Eric and see what we can do. Todd couldn’t tell if it’s the servo or the linkages. Each individual linkage looks ok, although it might be a bit of a cumulative effect. We’ll see what it’s like once I get her all cleaned out.

12-13-2003

I am hoping to get my first “live” flight in this weekend. One of the guys who flies locally has a Hirobo Shuttle that he can buddy box with. A buddy box, is a linked controller where the Slave unit can input signals, but the Master unit, used by the teacher can override any extreme input. This has the effect of protecting the student (and the helicopter) from errors that would normally smash the heli into the ground. With my current level of proficiency in the simulator, I’d still be a bit too nervous to try a live ship. The weather report is calling for snow this weekend, so I’m not sure of the chances..but we’ll see what happens.

I’m also expecting to pick up my first heli this weekend. Again, from one of the local fliers. He’s been focused mainly on airplanes, and is looking to sell off his Raptor 30. He’s got some extra equipment to go with it and we’ve reached a fair price. So, when I can find some time, we’ll trade funds for equipment.