Featured on Inside Heli Podcast

Chris and James invited me on to Inside Heli podcast last weekend for a chat about my Mikado helis and what it's like to fly flybarless. I had a great time on the show, and look forward to hopefully doing it again.
Thanks guys!

Over the moon.

Somehow, after weeks of terrible weather, I woke up on Sunday morning and the weather was simply amazing. Clear blue skies and virtually no breeze as far as the eye could see.
Quick negotiations with my wife, and a phone call to my brother and I was on my way, initially to pick my brother and his T-Rex 450 up, and then all the way out west to NHMC in Kumeu.
I was a bit worried when we arrived, as there were about 20 cars parked on the street and three more arrived while we were still sitting in the car eating our lunch. Luckily, although there was a lot of folks present, there was no real queue for space on the flight line.

I think I've pretty much gotten used to flying using pinch, and have noticed that I have a lot finer control and accuracy and my flying has definitely improved. I noticed that I'm not stick banging quite as much, and flying around slower and more carefully with much less control interaction. I'm willing to bet that when I do the maths I'll find that my flight time will have increased also.

My brother is progressing well, and is far in advance of where I was at the same stage. All that sim time is definitely paying off.

Switching to pinch

Over the last week or so I decided to have a go at switching to flying "pinch" instead of "thumbs". I have always flown thumbs, ever since I was a kid flying two channel slopers with my grandfather. This coincided with sorting out Windows on my laptop (which I normally would never use) to get G4 installed and start practising, since the amount of time I have to spend out at the field is greatly reduced at the moment.

One thing I found was that I was over-correcting a lot while flying on the simulator and chalked it up to the Logo and T-Rex models I had downloaded for G4 being unrealistic, so I switched to the "Dominion 3D" and killed it's engine noise and found that after a few hours of uncomfortable flying I felt that I was really getting the hang of things. I was ready to try a real heli.

Yesterday, I took the day of work because I had been up until early in the morning taking my six month old to the emergency room. Around mid-afternoon the weather suddenly cleared, and it occurred to me that I had two fully-charged 6S packs sitting in my lock box ready to go, so I took the Logo 500 for a quick zap. It immediately became apparent that I was actually over-compensating, especially on the cyclic and I was also mixing my inputs a lot more than I do when I fly thumbs-only. I presume that this will come right with practise, and I'm led to believe that flying pinch will give me more accuracy and better control in the long run.