it’s definitely not very clean and i was pretty nervous, but yeh, my first side roll. i had tried this same maneuver a couple of weeks ago and it ended pretty badly, pretty much just tilting over and hitting the ground on the side and exploding. i bought better servos (hs-65mg), took off the flybar weights (stupid that i didn’t do this the first time), and made adjustments to the collective. yee-haw!

i haven’t been updating this or any of my other blogs as frequently as usual because i’ve seriously been spending almost all of my free time building, flying, crashing and researching r/c helicopters. a post or two ago, i mentioned how taka had bought me and r/c helicopter for christmas. after learning how to hover that thing (the axe cpv3), i’ve become addicted. i don’t want to even think about how much money i’ve spent repairing that thing from various, ridiculous and often comical crashes, but each time i do, i learn something new, and tend not to make that same mistake again. i can now hover in any orientation, fly circuits, do pirouettes and most other forms of basic flight, so pretty soon i’m going to move to 3d flight (rolls, flips, flying inverted), and i’m sure that learning process will be just as expensive if not more than my last one.

while i’ve been learning to fly with the axe cpv3 (and also on realflight g4, a simulator that has amazingly accurate physics), i’ve congruently been building an align t-rex 450, a larger, more professional and a woefully more expensive helicopter that most enthusiasts prefer. i’m happy though to learn most of the kinks of flying with my cheaper heli, before i start flying this one probably sometime at the end of the month.

i’m also about to start an electric r/c helicopter blog: miniheliblog.com. that will help keep the helicopter posts here to a minimum and i’m also going to experiment with movable type on the site, just because i’m getting kinda bored with wordpress.

while i’m waiting for batteries to charge, or for replacement parts to be shipped from the hobby shop, i’ve been playing fieldrunners on the iphone. i actually stopped playing for a while when i thought i had a secure position at the top among my gaming buddies (eric, ben and stephan), but stephan came back at me with a ridiculous score, and yesterday i spent a good chunk of my day regaining my crown. i’m sure stephan will take it back any minute it now, so i’m working on a higher score to have ready for him when he does.

edit: so stephan beat my level 104 by getting to level 129. i spent about 5 hours today getting to the same level and we agreed that it’s unbeatable. so for now we’re going to continue our competitiveness on the crossroads map.

at the very end, i was moving my inventory up to the end to try to get in front of the seemingly unstoppable helicopters on level 129 hard.

so i guess this thing is flyable. you both know how small this room is too:

here’s a video taka took of me hovering the helicopter. i’m pretty comfortable hovering tail-in (with the tail facing towards me) but it gets difficult in any other orientation. shortly after this video i tipped over on a landing a broke a blade grip. i swear i’ve been to the hobby shop almost every day this past week :)

for christmas, taka bought me a radio control helicopter that i had been eying at the hobbyshop. i bought an rc helicopter a couple of years ago with mike (the fixed pitch century hummingbird) with poor results. for the life of me i couldn’t get the bird to hover, and forward flight was out of the question. i’m not sure if my success with this new helicopter (the axe cpv3) is a result of it being a better heli, it having collective pitch, or just me having more time and patience to learn to fly it. in either case i’m really enjoying it. i’m contemplating starting a blog dedicated to it, but i thought i’d post a comprehensive, keyword-heavy article here first and see what type of traffic it brings… god knows i have enough blogs.

the axe cpv3 is ready to fly out of the box, and through the end of the year it’s only $159 at hobby people (a store i loathe), normally $199. i think it’s still categorized as a “micro” heli, but in my opinion its closer to a “mini” size. for those not into rc helicopters, this heli isn’t like the air hogs or other rc helicopters that you can buy at a toy store and start flying right away. it takes constant input for the most basic hover, and forward flight takes lots of concentration and practice. it took me about 20 “flights” to get the basic hover down, and i can now keep it within a 2′ diameter circle pretty consistently.

in the very short time i’ve owned it, i’ve already put about as much if not more into upgrades and repairs than the damn thing originally cost, but i have it trimmed out and flying very nicely now. right after i got it, the lipo battery charger conked out and while hobbico is sending me a replacement, i didn’t feel like waiting so i bought a new charger and an extra battery. the other defect i experienced was after about 15 flights or so, the main 3-1 board and one of the servos died. while i sent these parts back to hobbico to hopefully be replaced under warranty, i couldn’t wait, so i upgraded the main esc to the electrifly c-25, and the tail motor with the c-12 coupled with the futaba gy240 heading hold gyro that makes it much easier to fly.

The electrifly c-25 and c-12 speed controllers. You can also see the venting on the heat sink:

Ping pong ball landing gear. You can also see the GY240 gyro in the back:

Hitec HS-55 servo

other small modifications include replacing the servos (after the one died, i figured i might as well upgrade the other two too) with hitec hs-55 servos that are a direct fit for the old ones and have a higher torque rating. these servos are also less noisy than the stock ones. I replaced the foam training gear with ping pong balls after they started to wear, and i dremeled out the cooling holes on the heat sink to line up with the motor (talk about bad design).

now that its setup the way i like it, there’s nothing to do but practice. i can hover tail-in pretty well, but my orientation gets kinda messed up when i hover side in and hovering nose in is completely confusing since the controls become completely reversed at that point. good thing i don’t have to go back to work until January 5th!