First Flights

April 12th-
Okay it's time to put my money where my mouth is!  It's early in the morning on a sunny but cool day.  Got Jim to do a quick test flight to make sure everything stays where it's supposed to.  Initial minutes I'm jumpy as a newbie should be!  Finally as I get calmed down I keep it in the air for a continuous 3 minutes, wow what a feeling!  Had to land just to get my excitement under control.  After a couple of breaths I took it back up and finished another 3 minute flight- total flight time was 7 minutes,  a VERY LONG 7 minutes. 
As relaxing flying airplanes are, helicopters are more demanding but you get a since of accomplishment when you can walk away from a flight without the need to make any repairs!

Twenty minutes later my pulse and blood pressure have come back down to a point where I can take another flight.  It's hard for me to describe my excitement, it's like hitting that perfect golf shot when everything comes together.  You get the right swing timing you connect with the ball just at the "sweet spot" and it goes right where you dreamed it should go.  That 's  how I can explain it to a golfer, hopefully you non-golfers  can imagine what I mean.
Well here we go again.  The breeze has picked up a little so now I have to keep track of where it's pushing the aircraft as well as which way my sticks are pushing the helicopter.  Thankfully I burn another 7 minutes in flight with just a couple of landings, once to plan how to get it back closer to me and the second time to let the gusts slow down.
All in all day one was a complete success!  Have to say that the Custom Heli Designs tail fin saved me about $80 in repairs!  It kept the tail blades off of the ground on a couple of hard landings.  Anyone new to torque tube helis should really think about getting a thicker, longer vertical tail fin to protect the blades; you will see that they are well worth the investment!  Twenty bucks for the fin as opposed to $20 for the rear gear set, twenty bucks for the front gear set and possibly $10 bucks for the auto rotation gear.

The Build

Well I picked-up a TRex 550E  3G kit the other day and after about 8 hours later I have a flyable aircraft.  I'm using an 8 channel Spektrum receiver with a Dx8.  I put an FMA Co-Pilot II on board to, hopefully, protect me from some beginners mistakes.  I also put a Custom HeliParts heavy-duty 700 vertical tail to protect the tail blades.
My reasoning behind the heavy-duty tail piece is to give me as much protection of the tail blades, and therefore the torque tube gears, during any hard landings I may incur.  Having to remove the whole tail assembly to change the front gears or the auto rotation gear does not fill me with much excitement.
I gave the copter to my friend to program and to test fly.  As a beginner I will start with the physical building of the airframe while waiting to learn the programming of the radio.  A man's gotta know his limitations!! 
It took Jim about twenty minutes to program the radio and another twenty minutes to make sure I didn't make any mistakes during the build.  He then proceeded to put the thing through its paces.  He started out low and slow to fine-tune the radio set-up and then moved on to the 3G portion of the flight.  After some semi-hard maneuvers with nothing falling off, thankfully, he pronounced the build a success and said it was now ready for me to fly. 
After that flight test and before I have had a chance to fly it Jim came back from the Toledo Airshow with the FMA Co-Pilot II.  After a couple of false starts trying to find the best mounting places I added the sensors and control unit to the airframe.  Claiming that if needed to be checked for installation problems, Jim once again put the helicopter through its paces.  This time mumbling something about wanting one for himself.
Well, tomorrow is the day that I take to the air!  Am meeting some local heli flyers at the field early in the morning to get my first chance to burn a battery and getting my first chance to hover my piece of work.  I am making sure that my radio is fully charged tonight and will make sure the Co-Pilot is set correctly and by noon tomorrow I will have my first flight under my belt and hopefully will not need to repair any parts!
Stay tuned for more.

In the Beginning

I am starting this blog as a way to share my experience in learning to fly an RC helicopter to others who might be thinking about trying it themselves AND to entertain my family and friends with my trials and tribulations.
So, here we go...