Death (or not) of a hummingbird

[BuzzBomber]

Well guys, I did this to my hummingbird bell 222 tonight.

[BuzzBomber]

The good news is, for the first time since I bought it, I was able to hover the little sucker for over a minute without losing the tail rotor. This was after the crash, mind you. It was ridiculously squirrely before the crash, and always needed to be trimmed differently from one flight to the next. BTW, the tailboom isn't wavy, that's just the jpeg compression. You can see that the crash totally separated the lexan tailboom from the main fuselage and destroyed the horizontal stab. Contributing factors were the pilot's ineptitude, out of trim condition on the heli, and I'm sure now that a large contributing force was the body. It never seemed to fly "right" with the fuse on it, but I kept it on as a cushion for the mechanics in the event of a crash. This crash, however, totalled out the body, and good riddance says I. Now I can actually control the heli, instead of overcontrolling and chasing the tail around!

[BuzzBomber]

Oh, yeah, almost forgot--Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah , nyah, :p I put the first post in the forum and you didn't!!! :D

[Hogster]

Oohh sorry to see that! I saw one of those body shells on another heli a while back - looks great when it's in the air! I guess yours isn't repairable?

Stick with the heli mate - you'll get it flying beautifully if you persevere! I've got two micro helis and only after a lot of perseverence did they fly like I wanted them to .... now that they do I'm sort of bored with them! :rolleyes: I'm sure I'll pick up the micro-heli bug again sometime ......

[BuzzBomber]

No, unfortunately, this body's shot! I've smacked it up quite a bit before, but this time, it just shattered the tailboom and tore up the opening around the rotor mast badly. It's really funny how much better it flies without the fuselage--much more controllable. The only problem is that now, it's nose-heavy. This is a good thing, because now I can ziptie a piece of foam rubber to the boom to keep blade strikes from shattering it, and it should even out the balance!

[darthdrk]

The body would be salvagable if the tail boom was replacable. Thats why I mold my tailbooms seperate of the main body just in case something like this hapens.

[BuzzBomber]

That seems like a smashing good idea (pun intended). Are you making Hummingbird bodies now too, or arer you referring to those you make for the Corona? From what I've seen of the Corona, the crash that caused this would've been referred to as a 'rough landing'! Them things'r tuff!

Another thought--the heli is so much easier to control now that its a matter of IF I crash instead of WHEN I crash, but I was thinking perhaps a small length of foam rubber zip tied to the boom might be a good idea, so that future boomstrikes don't sever the boom. What d'yall think?

[darthdrk]

There are several that I do for the HB. full bodies I do are Comanche and Dauphins, Pod and boom canopies are Stealth, Hughes 300C, and piranha. I hope to soon offer more.
Sofar Im doing bodies for Micro helis, LMH Coronas, Eco8, Eolo and the Zoom/Zap 4oo.

[BuzzBomber]

I'll have to check it out--I'm thinking of upgrading to a Zoom/Shogun over the winter if things pan out.