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.