Video progress report!

[Tomstoy2]

I lost one cell on the battery. She puffed up HUGE and got so hot I could barely touch it.
I had just got over the top of the fence when the voltage finally stopped producing power and she fell from the sky only a few feet, so I got extremely lucky.
This is why on these things that you select esc programming as ni-cad instead of lipo and soft cutoff.
Better to destroy a battery than have this brick fall out of the sky!

No damage at all. I got lucky again, that the landing gear on X/A is very forgiving.

The battery was a Turnigy and has given me excellent performance in the past.
I would love to get some GenAce 4s replacement batterys, but boy, those are hard to come by!
So, that leaves me with just 2 batterys, which isn't enough.

[jperkosk]

Ufff, looks like the heli gods let you slide cheap on this one

[copterboy]

Here's my latest efforts from today. Think it has been 2 months since I last had a flight, so I was taking it easy doing circuits and 8's mixed up with some easy transitions, rolls and some more practicing of what I've been upto on the sim. Hope you enjoy!!

[copterboy]

Weather was excellent yesterday morning, but a little windy. I was a little hesitant about going out first thing, but determined to get more RL practice. I eventually got bored of sitting around and plucked up the courage to go fly in the wind. Had got to about 2pm by this time.

Edit : Just noticed at 3m40s, when I tried a 4 point tic-tok. It's just a dot in the sky if you don't watch on a 37" TV, but you can just about make out going from ELEV tic-tok into the AIL tic-tok, and then messing it up as it goes out of focus. Not a bad start anyway.



Glad I did, as I felt my RL flying catching up to my sim practice, and the wind didn't seem to affect things too bad. Was able to enjoy a good session, push things a little further, and rushed out for another 2 packs later in the evening. I didn't get the best angle on the 2nd flight, but you can just make out the heli as it keeps popping up at the bottom of the screen. Enough to give you an idea!



EDIT : Sutty, feel like I'm catching up after your words of encouragement!!

[sutty]

What words of encouragement? Don't go blaming me for your low down crazy antics. I assume they were low down, as half or them were below the camera, lol. What I saw was looking very good though. Significantly more confident looking than your shakedown flight of yesterday. Understandable due to the 2 month RL lay off, but still, some excellent stuff there. As for catching me up, as long as you keep up the sim practice, it is inevitable that you will soon go zooming past, let alone catching up in RL, since as you know I am effectively stuck. Maybe getting better at what I can already do, maybe becoming more crash free, and maybe getting much lower, but no new manoeuvres at all. That having been said, I'm happy with where I'm at anyway, and I have more or less given up on sim practice, which is the only way I could properly improve now, so I'll just keep getting out there, and doing what I can do.

Had such a good time on Friday in fact, since the weather was finally actually nice, that I decided to do a progress video of my own. There was some half decent stuff in there too, or there would have been, if any of it had been on camera. Well, some of it was, but not enough for publication, as once again I had failed to line it up properly. Could do with a sure fire way of lining it up, but I can't work one out, as even the hat doesn't always sit in the same place. Then there is the camera on the hat, and then there is the angle of the camera in its mount. Somehow I need a trick whilst looking in the mirror to get a consistent alignment.

Will have another bash soon.

Cheers

Sutty

[copterboy]

Cheers Sutty, I was talking about my RL flying catching up on my SIM flying, not catching upto your level! I just do what I can do and try to enjoy it, which I guess is similar to you. I'm not really bothered about much else, but I think you have retained much more technical knowledge along the way than me!!

The encouragement was something you mentioned the other week when you said you couldn't understand how I could throw it about on the SIM, but not so in RL. Gave me some ambition to push myself along towards that point. I responded at the time saying I just needing time to go out and practice, which I almost gave up on yesterday, due to wind conditions, sitting about till 2pm. Then I thought, is this what Sutty will be doing? No. Will Jerry not fly when there is wind? Heck No!! Did it stop Grant and others trying at the FFFD last year? Freakin no way!!

I just had to man up and do it, despite crashing in windy conditions last time and not wanting another maiden weekend wreck on my hands this time. So glad I went out in the end, as I really enjoyed the buzz from flying like that. Which is why I ended up going out for another 2 packs before sundown. I learned also, that I should just get out there, or probably had it re-affirmed. The main enjoyment from this hobby has got to be RL flying, the sunnier and calmer the better!! As for low down and crazy, I have no-one other than myself to blame for that That first vid was a bit shaky, but 12 packs later and the 3rd vid of the weekend was great fun, and felt totally in control. Can't wait to try it again!!

Glad to hear you had a good weekend to, and good luck working out your camera mount. I just need to pack my head plate out at the top, so it lowers the field of view, but sounds like you have alot more variable's to consider!! I'll try to get a picture of mine to give you some idea's

[sutty]

Well I got through the 4 packs on the 450. Here is one of them just so you know what I've been up to. Don't ask me what happens to the speed of it at about 2:05. It's just another Bloggie annomaly. I haven't done any post processing apart from trimming it at either end, but the original file did it anyway. Shocking piece of kit.

Wind didn't seems as bad as it did for the 250, but then again I don't suppose it would, lol.



Cheers

Sutty

[copterboy]

That's a funny annomaly Sutty, you sure you didn't press the 'benny hill' edit button on YT? Still some nice low stuff there, and well done again for doing so in the wind. I would have definately bottled it!!

I'm gutted to realise today my van is going to take another £200 from the future heli fund. Just need it back on the road asap, for work and for pleasure!! I might have a 20 min walk to the nearest park tomorrow, just so I can get my fix!! The wind should drop off tonight and leave a nice prolonged settled spell that is currently set to last till this weekend.

Finally a whole week that will actually feel like summer, and the wind should be nice and calm too!!

[sutty]

I hope so bud, and sorry about the van. It's just one thing after another. Funny though, I measure costs like that in terms of heli fund impact too. If an investment comes in, I think mu ha ha, more heli parts. If an unexpected cost arises, I think, boo hoo, no spares for a while, lol.

Worth the walk I should think, especially if it is going to be nice. Sod's law for me that it will be nice whilst I am away, and will take a turn for the worse come the weekend, despite what the forecasters might have planned for us.

Despite flying in the wind, when we have to, there is no doubt it is much more relaxing and far more fun in general to fly when it is calm, so I hope it keeps their promises. Dont forget I have the benefit of FBL too, so I'm cheating really.

As for being low, I told you, that long grass gives me a lot of confidence. The 250 nearly always survives, and the 450 sometimes. Not that I've had an incident for a while with the 450, touch wood.

Cheers

Sutty

[copterboy]

Done some more investigation on my van, and I think the problem may not be the clutch/cable has gone. My van has an external hydraulic slave cyclinder that will engage/dis-engage the clutch. Maybe £250 on clutch and cylinder, or hopefully £50 on new cyclinder. Keeping my fingers crossed it's the latter.

Just happy I will get to go fly today in the sunshine and non-existent wind (once I have the van sorted). Looks like the weathermen got it right, and the transport gods have given me a day off work Perfect

[jperkosk]

Great flying, Andy
2:05-2:15 looks like the write buffer overfilled on Bloggie, maybe it could be solved by a faster SD card?

[sutty]

Thanks Jerry. As for the card, well I would change it for a super fast one, with more capacity, I already have one, but that was one of the first things I found out about, and immediately hated about the damned thing. There is no SD slot, the memory is built in, so it is stuck at 8 gig. Same for the battery. If the battery fails, etc, send it in for repair, and no upgrade to higher capacity.

IDIOTS!

Cheers

Sutty

[jperkosk]

Yes they are...
My dislike of Sony is only surpassed by my dislike of iCrap product line, for the same exact reason: trying to make everything proprietary and incompatible with everyone else.

[Tomstoy2]

Got 3 more vids here. Music is added, but I forgot to turn off the volumn controls so the motor noise got added. Best view with the sound off.

1st one is a shot I took of the Flatirons, amply named for the rock formations.
It's shot at the National Atmospheric Research Center at Boulder, Colorado. It's a short vid. I got a little freaked out flying over the drop off. I'm recovering from wrenching my false knee so the prospect of recovering from a battery failure, like my last flight, and having to hike down and back up kept me kind of close to where I was standing,,, but it's a beautiful place.

The second one was back home, pushing my sight limits further out. These things do get small in a hurry, but now I have full confidence that if I loose orentation all I have to do is let go of the sticks and she will just hold there until I sort it out.

The last on is what I jokingly call an educational vid.

Enjoy.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vw_aP6aa22A&feature=player_detailpage[/ame]

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIQml2YPv04&feature=player_detailpage[/ame]

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1s3KiL7s2Wk&feature=player_detailpage[/ame]

[Tomstoy2]

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rggoQLWUvII&feature=player_detailpage[/ame]

[Tomstoy2]

Sorry guys, I have no idea what the hell is going wrong with posting these. Pissing me off royally, though!


Ok, corrections made to the 3 vids.

[Tomstoy2]

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJ52_ED5PlI&feature=player_detailpage[/ame]

[sutty]

Well there was nothing wrong with them yesterday. There can't have been, I watched them.

Good stuff Tom. Very nice. You did get pretty far out in the first one. when you turned round you looked small, and you'd been further than that. You must have had the right glasses on.

Cheers

Sutty

[Tomstoy2]

Thanks Sutty, Must have not finished loading on HF when I tried?

Got a couple more cooking at YouTube from yesterday.
My friend Greg and I went for a ride up on the Peak to Peak Highway yesterday. Got up there as a storm was moving in, so the wind was building up as it got closer. After I landed in the soon to follow vid it dumped rain.

The church is called the ' Chapel on the rock'. I really wanted to do a fly around but there was something going on, probably a wedding, and I didn't want to create too much of a distraction, nor put anybody at risk.

[Tomstoy2]

Ok, here it is, plus a comparison between a GP H2 and my buddy's pocket Canon camera.
As I said above, by now the wind was really whipping around. You can see the tarp covering the front of the building really billowing.
10 minutes later, the rain hit and that was the end of flying for the day.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-6Pu0VbwZs&feature=player_detailpage[/ame]

This is a short vid shot on my buddy's Canon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=2ySDePN_HSQ