this one seems a little more obvious to me than the last, but it’s fun to wrap your brain around it anyway.

so today i got in a few flights that started to actually resemble flight. i’ve realized that many of my previous balance and trim settings have been off, because when i take off, i drift hard to the left and that’s a result of rotor wash, not trim settings. so after hopping around a bit and making the correct trim adjustments today, i was able to take off and hover in place for about 20 seconds. i’m still having some yaw issues that i need to adjust on the gyro and need to find the perfect cg with the battery, but after that’s done, i’ll hopefully be able to hover indefinitely and move on to actually flying around.

in japan almost all of us bought this 9 gram helicopter called the “honey bee”. it’s only a 2 channel helicopter (rudder and throttle), but was all kindsa fun. mike and i even spent an entire afternoon flying them around his place. but since it was only 2 channels, the controls were obviously limited as was the fun ;) so the next step was to go to a full 4-channel helicopter (rudder, aileron, elevator and throttle). i looked around and read up on the affordable and dependable rtf kits and came up with the century hummingbird v4 helicopter. i ordered one, mike ordered one, and assuming i can learn to eventually fly the damn thing, my money is on eric and probably even following suit.

it came in the mail a couple days later and within an hour i was ready to fly it. turns out it’s difficult as hell =p i can fly rc planes, but keeping this thing hovering is pretty insane. my first day with it was pretty much just hopping all over my parking garage, and some hard crashes when i got bold enough to give it some good altitude. i spent an hour this morning trying to perfectly trim everything out, and it seems a bit more stable, but i got a long way to go. anyway, either i’m gonna stay dedicated and in a month be this sweet rc helicopter pilot, or in a month i’ll have gotten back 85% of my return by selling it on ebay.