Track and Trace

I just got a shipping notification that my brothers T-Rex 450 and my Logo 500 have shipped. Colour me excited. Will wants to have a go at building the 500, so I think I'll take it around there to get it done.

Now we just wait.

Video of Andy Rummer at LVFF2008.

I can't imagine being good enough to piro in time with music :)

Andy Rummer - LVFF2008 from RCHeliResource.Com on Vimeo.

Another maingear bites the dust

I took the Logo 600 back out to North Shore MAC on Sunday and had three minutes of great performance and then during an inverted, pirouetting, max pitch climb out I heard the sound of mangled plastic and power-off landings.

I was nice and high so I flipped it over, hit the throttle hold and autoed it in from about 100 feet up. I greased it in with only a small bounce. I'd call that a successful save.

I presume that the problem was caused by the gear mesh, which is a hard thing to get right with the herringbone gears and is compounded by the fact that my motor has a 6mm shaft, so the counter-bearing that came in my kit is not the correct size.

Last week my little brother, Tim, came around. He's decided to get into helis and I've ordered him a T-Rex 450SE v2 and look forward to helping him set it up. He went away much pleased because I gave him some of my old gear, 3S LiPo charger, balancer, power supply, pitch gauge, etc.

I wish I had a big brother like that.

Logo 500 on the way.

Logo 600 Maiden Flight
Originally uploaded by jamesotron

I've been flying my vbarred Logo 600 for about three months now, and unfortunately events in my life have conspired against me causing me not to spend enough time with it. However, the flights I have had with it have been enough to put a grin on my face for hours on end.

My setup, for those who are not familiar with it is:

• Logo 600 3D with VBar head.
• Radix 600mm blades.
• Hacker A50-14S brushless outrunner.
• Castle Creations Phoenix 85 HV speed controller.
• Ultimate BEC 6V.
• Futaba S9452 digital servos for CCPM.
• Futaba S9256 digital tail servo.
• Mikado V-Bar.
• Spektrum AR7000 receiver.
• FlightPower EVOlite 10S 5350mAh LiPo packs.

My Logo 500 will be arriving shortly and will have the following configuration:

• Mikado Logo 500 3D with VBar head.
• Rotortech 550mm blades.
• Kontronik Tango 45-10 brushless inrunner.
• Kontronik Jazz 55-10-32 speed controller.
• Ultimate BEC
• Futaba S9452 digital servos for CCPM.
• Futaba GY401 gyro and S9254 digital tail servo.
• Helicommand RIGID.
• Spektrum AR7000 receiver.
• 6S Hyperion LiteStorm VX 3700mAh LiPo packs.

I'm really looking forward to putting this thing together and getting to know the differences between the 500 and the 600 and the VBar vs Helicommand. It will be interesting to see how well the 500 performs on the 3700mAh packs as a lot of people are running larger 6S packs in the Logo 500.

First Post

I had been hoping to provide a report on my Sunday's flying at my local field, NSMAC, but unfortunately whilst the weather was perfect, the combination of my four week old son, my three year old daughter, my dog and my sinus infection provided ample reasons not to go flying. Also, I was out of coffee beans.

The last time I went flying without having my morning coffee, it didn't go so well. That's a nice segue into mentioning that it's probably not a good idea to go flying if you are in any way feeling foggy in the head. Flying helis requires your full concentration the entire time you're in the air. If your mind wanders for even a second then you're going to be in big trouble. Trust me.

So it was with a heavy heart that I switched my charger from charge to discharge and went back to bed. Sometimes it's better to live to fly another day.