This morning I went looking for somewhere big and open to fly the helicopters. Having been exploring south of Sudbury last summer I remembered a quarry I had seen down that way. It proved to be a great spot to fly, very quiet, devoid of tall objects to crash into and set in the bottom of a valley. Perfect. I was able to fly fast and high without too many worries. View Larger Map The first flight went well, with the Genius, then I flew the V120D02s, I flew some very fast lengths of the open area, did some turns and was able to bring the helicopter back fairly confidently. Until I eventually did a turn close to the ground and touched the ground, with the helicopter rolled over at 45deg, one of the rotor blades detached from the head and went somersaulting through the air, landing a few meters […]
I am here alone now, Hannah is in the UK so I have been flying my helicopters a lot. I flew them both last night. Today Tigger returned to his home, having been on vacation with one of Hannah’s friends. He arrived back at lunch time, I tried to settle him in a little, but had to return to work. When I got home he was particularly affectionate. Later I took my helicopters out and had great fun, but on my second flight of the Genius I crashed, in fairly spectacular fashion. It was a little windy, so I had initially flown carefully, but having flown the V120 successfully I guess I was a little over confident, and brought the helicopter down from high up, maybe 20ft, in a swoop, with reduced power to try to combat the wind which was giving me too much lift. Down it came, into […]
This evening we went out for a walk at Lake Laurentian, we walked up a very steep path to where there is a look out point, we had no idea it was there, until we got there, the views were lovely. Once we’d been for our walk, I flew my helicopters, took them both and flew them both in the empty carpark. I had great fun, Hannah managed to get a few pictures: Then the mozzies started to come out, we only saw one, and I killed it. So we got out of there, and got that last picture of the sun setting. Hannah spotted a couple of rabbits, now almost all brown, but for their rear ends, which were still white. Very long back legs, longer than I remember a UK rabbit to have. Seemed very hare like to me, but small like a rabbit.
Last night we didn’t do too much, I flew my Genius helicopter a few times, no damage, nothing spectacular, not even worth mentioning here. I made a few heads from my plasticine. A few rather dull ones and this one which was my first and caught my imagination the most. Tonight I took the broken servo off the helicopter. I did this, not because the new one had arrived, but because I have ordered just the cogs for the servo. I got it apart, the teeth that have indeed stripped are on the largest cog, which travels the slowest and thus sees the largest torques. Those cogs are at most 5mm in diameter..
I started to mend the helicopter skis, both were broken. I was surprised to find that one leg is now broken in three (3) places!! I knew that it was broken at the lower end, but the upper end of the leg is part of the battery tray, as shown best in the 2nd and 3rd pictures below. They are all mended in these pictures.
Joel visited the Sudbury office last week and the week before I was in Mississauga with Drew staying at the Golder apartment. So we’ve not been up to a great deal out of the ordinary. I am still trying to fly helicopters as much as I can, I am learning about the programmable remote and settings etc, so I crashed the 120 heli yesterday, breaking a gear wheel that drives the tail rotor. This took a while to fix as I had to take apart much of the tail rotor assembly, having done this I found it hard to push the new gear onto the shaft, and in pushing, pushed the shaft through the gear which is mounted on the far end of the shaft, in the body of the helicopter. With no way to hold the shaft while pushing the new gear on I was forced to disassemble the bottom end of the main […]
So I have bought yet another Helicopter, this time it is a 6 channel, fully collective pitch and 3D capable beast. It’s the next step in my quest. I have had to de-tune the controls to make it flyable, but it’s providing me with a steep learning curve. The new one is slightly larger the Genious FP and a lot more powerful. There is only one motor, the tail is driven by a shaft, which means that the speed of the tail rotor is kept relative to the main rotor. I am going to have to wait for some good weather to fly it outside. Today we have had some very wet soggy snow, it’s floating around zero at the moment, -8 yesterday and meant to be 9 today, but I can’t see that happening. Yesterday Hannah and I fancied a full English breakfast, so short of black pudding we made it for brunch. […]
I broke the tail fin which protects the tail rotor from contacting with the ground. I ordered a replacement part, but being a little tight, I thought I would spend less than $3 on only the part rather than more than $12 on the full assembly, figuring that regardless I would save a little. However I had to buy a soldering iron to complete the job, on which I spent almost $25. Now way over budget, I returned home and started the procedure of stripping all of the tail apart. I had to press the motor from the broken tail fin, in doing so the back came off the motor. I successfully un-soldered the connector as required, and re-assembled and soldered the joints. I tried to replace the back of the motor which houses the brushes, which being so tiny was not easy. Needless say this didn’t go well, I […]
Last week Hannah got some pictures of Tigger hiding out around our apartment: I think I forgot to mention that on our way back from Chutes we saw two transport trucks, with a tank on each and behind that a Land Rover each! This weekend has been cold with a high of -14 today I believe, though the sky is clear and blue, the sun is busy melting the snow. Ramsey Lake has very little snow left on it, the ice is showing through now. There are still ice fishing huts and people driving their trucks on the lake today, so we took a stroll out towards to island. Hannah was very concerned that we might fall through. If we had fallen through we have about one minuet to get out of the water before one is unable to move.. Luckily for us the ice is very thick, easily able to support a 2 tonne truck, and probably […]
Firstly, Chutes, the Provincial Park, which we visited last year in the summer, this is the entry. Anyways, this time it was only a couple of degrees above zero. The snow is becoming like ice pellets, a little wet and heavy, so hard to snow shoe through. We were unable to drive into the park at all, the snow bank at the entrance to the park was about 3′ high, I tried to walk through it but wound up sinking very deep and then struggled to get back out, Hannah stood by and laughed at my predicament. We snow shoe’d down to the “beach”.. Now in the summer it looked like this (just in case you DIDN’T check out the old entry!!): We passed a sign, which we have tried to get pictures of a number of time, but failed until now: Hannah got some pictures of Tigger And lastly, I have been flying the […]
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