Heli-Log 5:23:2012

Yesterday was a beautiful day for flying! I had two heli’s to test out and not a lot of time to do it in. I started with the Trex 700 first. Within 5, or so, minutes I blew up the Align motor. Prior to this flight, I had changed all the fuel tubing, moved the header tank lower and stuck it to the side of the main tank. I opened the needles to two turns out and started tuning the motor. Everything was going great, nice smoke trail, had some power, but still on the rich side. Then I decided to perform a few funnels letting it warm up a bit. However, on the third lap around, I noticed the smoke stream narrowed and became lite. I hit throttle and right at that time the motor popped and stopped running! I pulled the back cover of the motor and nothing but grit! I really don’t know the condition of the piston, but can only imagine it has a hole in it.

I haven’t done anything else to it…yet, but I am convinced my Trex 700 is possessed! It doesn’t like Align motors…LoL! If I had the money…I would buy the O.S. 105 and pipe in a heartbeat! I haven’t touched the YS motor in my Rave…after the swap.

In the meantime…My 3D+ is flying fantastically!!! I transferred the setting into the DX8, dropped the gyro gain to 50%. The gain is at 60% and feels great! I had bought some replacement stick ends for the transmitter, due to the soft ends on the DX8, my thumbs kept slipping off the controls! Not good! However, I bought the long ones and now I need to shorten them about an 1/8”…no biggie.

So I put in three flights on the 3D+. Worked on slow pirouetting funnels and 4 point tic toc’s with reversals. Someday I’ll work into pirouetting tic toc’s. Overall, it was a good day! Too bad I didn’t have more time to fly, next time…