Heliguy Forum - RC heli forum

So, last night I noticed the farmer taking the livestock out of the field behind my house...

Today, a pack of woodies arrived to replace the previous five pairs of blades I've written off in various stupid crashes. Really wanting to fly, I found the straightest feathering shaft I had and did my best to make it completely straight, then reassembled the heli - it's sat on the table with the blades/feathering shaft out after its last encounter with terra firma.

I did the usual stuff, checked the blade tracking, and took it out into the garden to give it a quick bit of flying. This all seemed to go OK (apart from one minor incident I got away with). Then the thought occurred to me... there's this field that's completely empty just behind me...

So I went to the open gate of the field, found a suitable spot and lifted off. Unfortunately the battery was nearly out so I didn't get far, and had to land as the ESC reduced the power. But the battery charged before it got dark. Only just, but it was light enough to see what I was doing (well, mostly).

I took off, got the heli about 10 feet up, then throwing caution to the wind, pushed the cyclic forward and gave it a hearty dollop of collective. The heli responded by hurtling down the field at a surprisingly high speed! I did a nice banked turn then started to fly around the field. Awesome! The heli really zips along with frighteningly little control input... and it starts to look very small very very quickly. There was one scary moment, I was turning the heli in to fly back towards me, and got the orientation confused (it looked like it was going tail in), but I quickly realised that an optical illusion was making it seem like it was facing the wrong way (partly due to the light fading, being 9:30pm and overcast) and just let it keep on coming, and I soon could tell it was actually flying towards me as intended (it was getting bigger fast!) Nose in flying is quite easy in fast forward flight, no small corrections needed, it's just like fixed wing flying. I then stepped back away from the field gate, and flew the heli through the gate, then flew it back to my garden at about knee height, following the heli (nice calm evening so no worries about being blown into a rather hard stone wall each side of the lane), and finished the last couple of minutes left of the battery.

Next, I'll have to attach the FlyCamOne and do some high speed ground skimming! I just hate to think of the destruction though if I make an error at speed. It's bad enough crashing from a hover. I dread to think of the carnage of going in at 30 mph!