jeffk
07-10-2007, 09:52 AM
Sometimes you just do something so stupid it should get you really hurt bad, and you get away with it unscathed. Last night that happened to me.
I picked up an Axe CP to fiddle with, just flying around the yard. I've been having the usual frustrating stuff with a tail-motored heli and have taken my time to get it dialed in. Last night after reading some tips from some guys here on the Freak, I began to check the swash link lengths and the pitch etc. In order to do so, I had to get the swash at radio neutral, which required me to turn on the TX and plug the battery into the heli.
On my Trex, I'd have unplugged the motor and hit the throttle hold, but it was late and I was tired (probably too tired to be working on the heli). That and the HeliMax TX has no throttle hold switch...
So... With the heli sitting on the kichen table about a foot from my face, I turned the TX on, made sure the throttle was all the way back and the Idle up switch was in normal mode, and plugged the main battery in. Cool. A quick swivel of the cyclic made sure that all the servos were at their neutral point. Guess I should check the travel of the swash, huh? How do we do that? Right. We advance the throttle stick.
I reached over nonchalantly and blipped the throttle up about a split second before my sleep-deprived brain could yell out "Hey Dumbass! STOP!". The heli started to spin up just after I pulled my face out from the line of the rotors and I yanked the stick back down. I sat there for a few minutes after the rotors stopped spinning and thought about how much damage I could have done if I was just a little slower in reacting to my own stupidity. Luckily the NiMH pack I was using had been run down and the heli didn't respond as fast as it could have, nor did the blades spin up as fast.
As it turns out, there was no damage done to either the heli or my face, or to anything else in the kitchen or on the table.
The moral? DON'T work on your heli when you're tired. I did continue working on it last night, but only AFTER I'd made sure I disconnected the main motor and tail motors.
I picked up an Axe CP to fiddle with, just flying around the yard. I've been having the usual frustrating stuff with a tail-motored heli and have taken my time to get it dialed in. Last night after reading some tips from some guys here on the Freak, I began to check the swash link lengths and the pitch etc. In order to do so, I had to get the swash at radio neutral, which required me to turn on the TX and plug the battery into the heli.
On my Trex, I'd have unplugged the motor and hit the throttle hold, but it was late and I was tired (probably too tired to be working on the heli). That and the HeliMax TX has no throttle hold switch...
So... With the heli sitting on the kichen table about a foot from my face, I turned the TX on, made sure the throttle was all the way back and the Idle up switch was in normal mode, and plugged the main battery in. Cool. A quick swivel of the cyclic made sure that all the servos were at their neutral point. Guess I should check the travel of the swash, huh? How do we do that? Right. We advance the throttle stick.
I reached over nonchalantly and blipped the throttle up about a split second before my sleep-deprived brain could yell out "Hey Dumbass! STOP!". The heli started to spin up just after I pulled my face out from the line of the rotors and I yanked the stick back down. I sat there for a few minutes after the rotors stopped spinning and thought about how much damage I could have done if I was just a little slower in reacting to my own stupidity. Luckily the NiMH pack I was using had been run down and the heli didn't respond as fast as it could have, nor did the blades spin up as fast.
As it turns out, there was no damage done to either the heli or my face, or to anything else in the kitchen or on the table.
The moral? DON'T work on your heli when you're tired. I did continue working on it last night, but only AFTER I'd made sure I disconnected the main motor and tail motors.