WOOHOO it FINALLY Flew!!!!!!

[lrogers]

Yes, that's right, the Freya FINALLY left the the ground this evening! We had some trouble getting the engine tuned, but we finally got it and most importantly, it came home in the same number of pieces it went to the field in! I have some home work to do before the next outting, but it's all minor stuff. When the batteries and daylight finally gave out, the engine was running much smoother, after having several tanks of fuel run through it. It will need probably another gallon or so before it's completely broken in. John did the first flights and I did the final one. I also got another flight with the Sceadu before we started on the Freya and John put on quite a show with his Fury.
The first picture is the VERY first lift off with John at the controls. The second picture (look hard, it was getting dark) had yours truly doing the flying. Man, what a hoot!

[crokett]

Larry,

Cool pictures. Glad it flew without injury.

[gerti]

That's a nice (belated) birthday treat! Cool!

[bmyers]

WAY TO GO LARRY!! If you use more fuel than glue, you're doing ok.

Many more happy landings!

For folks who have not done this, this is the hardest form of R/C flight there is, other than maybe jets. I fly planes but never a real helicopter, augered in many a sim heli tho..

Bill

[Scottydont]

Congrats Larry. You obviously had a better day than this guy. (Click the link for the video.)

Raptor RC Chopper Crash
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Eo1kPmsMDs

[Warren]

Well done and congratulations. That's got to be a great feeling . . . when it finally all comes together. Hope you have many happy hours flying her.

[Ken Massingale]

Congrats Larry
ken

[lrogers]

I've seen that video before Scott. That Raptor is doing the "Funky Chicken". Planes crash and have the decency to just lay there. Helo's crash and often lay there beating themselves to death to increase the repair bill. That poor guy burned the heck out of his fingers on a super-heated clutch bell.

[Pappy]

most importantly, it came home in the same number of pieces it went to the field in!

But were they all stil attached in the right places?????

[crokett]

I've seen that video before Scott. That Raptor is doing the "Funky Chicken".

Dumb question, but once you take your hands off the sticks on your radio, shouldn't the rotor stop turning? Or was that the problem - it didn't. Also, just wondering for this situation is there an extra channel on the radio to add a servo that would kill fuel feed somehow? For a remote fuel shutoff?

[lrogers]

David,
That was not a dumb question at all, it was a very good question.
With the new computer radios, you can assign a switch to move the throttle servo so it closes the carb completely and kills the engine. You can also set up in-flight mixture control so you could lean the engine to the point of killing it. The problem in a crash is that the radio is often damaged, or the servos/battery get disconnected from the receiver so you have no control.
Doing the stuff that guy was doing, he probably had a governor set on the engine so he had it pretty close to wide open. The engine is pretty protected sitting inside the frames so it just continued on it's marry way, at a high enough RPM that the clutch would not disengage. It looked like that one either finally knocked the fuel line off or sucked some dirt/grass into the carb so it died. The new radios also have a fail safe that can be set up. In my case, if signal is lost for a couple micro seconds, the fail safe kicks in and holds all servos at the last postion a good signal was received, except for the throttle servo. It goes to idle so the clutch disengages (centrifugal clutch) and the helo comes down. Since his didn't come down, I assume there was radio damage or the battery got knocked loose in the crash. As I've said before, the helo's are right at the high end of radio control technology and there is a lot to learn. Asking questions is a good start!

[mater]

Congratulations on your first flight Larry. I bet it was fun.