Busy year so far which is a good thing right? Here are a few of our recent shots, Enjoy

-Steve

A buddy of mine had us upgrade his Traxxas XO-1 with the Kershaw 8s power system. Unfortunately today while he was doing some passes to warm up the tires, he hit the curb doing 85mph. Or at least that was the last image froze on the GPS screen as I picked it up 10 ft from the car. Here's the video

Traxxas XO1 Crash - Destroyed by Curb! (1 min 33 sec)

A little while back I posted about getting a job providing aerials for a music video. This was my first time working on a music video, but was pretty fun and I learned a ton. The director/producers ended up using a lot of the aerials, even though it's only for a second or two besides the beginning / ending. I was just surprised at how much actually made it into the video. Heck I even got some "heli operator" recognition in the credit roll Fun to see how it all came together!

INTUITION & EQUALIBRUM - FINISH WITH A KILL (3 min 49 sec)

This is Crystal Park in Manitou Springs, CO. I'm not a big fan of mountain jobs as you almost always have to deal with haze and weird wind patterns. This house was no exception and seeing the hex drop 5-6ft and wobble around fighting it was pretty intense. Fortunately if their would of been a problem, nothing to hit but trees and this house Here are a few of the pictures we liked.

Just realizing I haven't posted many pictures in the blog, so time to change that. Guessing I would say realtors are about 70% of the AP photo work we do. Here's a few of those shots with a recent school renovation shot thrown in

Had the opportunity to work on a music video today, first one I've been a part of in fact. Pretty neat, smaller crew as this was the outdoor part, but interested to see how it will all come together. First time I've flown the rig at 11k feet, engine struggled but went pretty well... main thing is it went home in one piece like the camera

Here's a pic from the road we were using for a helipad.

This is the demo video for Gemini Rope Access. They were the company hired by Santec to ensure rope safety during the bridge inspection. Pretty kewl stuff, aerial parts are towards the end. You can even see the dam in the background

gemini_med (0 min 36 sec)

A buddy of mine from Lake George, CO invited us out for "ice fest" a party of sorts he throws every year on the ice with his family and friends. Since it's another few thousand feet compared to the springs (8.9k) it was also a good chance for us to see how the hexa performed.

Everything went great, the sun was out the day was nice and we had a blast. The wind was the only factor, most of the day it was a steady 7-10 mph and then these wicked 20+ mph gusts would come and make anything not tied down fly away. We put the hexa up and just hoped one of these didn't come, we did get hit with one and amazing to see the hexa tilt 30+ degrees to fight it. Very impressed with this wk-m DJI unit and our hexa's ability to handle it. Towards the end of the night it calmed down for our last few flights, by then a bunch of people had already left

First time working with aerial video from the hexa so learning about editors again... need more time and practice. It is nice to have that to work on though compared to getting vibes out / fixing the camera rig

Lake George Ice Fest 2013 (2 min 36 sec)

Been awhile and always say I'm going to update this so here are a few

Built a 1200mm Vulcan hexacopter rig to replace / backup our stretched 600 rig we've used for 2+ years now. Vulcan 1200 maiden is here:

Vulcan 1200mm Hexa, DJI WKm, Maiden (2 min 53 sec)

This past week I was privileged enough to work on a video project at the Hoover Dam bypass bridge. It's not my helicopter, but I flew a Copterworks AF25b to just under deck height of bridge (900ft), with a RED Scarlet on the front of it. Talk about pucker factor Attaching a few pictures to this post and Special thanks to Robert at UAVProducts.com for his over the phone help on making some last minute tweaks that made this job a success!

Also, watch the classified section. I hope to be doing some shop cleaning and have a few airframes and items that need to go. Happy New Year all!

Steve

It's been forever since I've thought about my plan to post about how I got started into RC I figured I'd get entry #2 going

Well from the Pico Z I started to scrounge ebay for a real RC helicopter. Not knowing anything about fixed pitch vs variable pitch I stumbled across a Wasp V3 - the older blue edition. I was in to much of a hurry though and didn't realy do any research on the heli - I just liked the price and went for it. It was an RTF heli and right out of the box parts were falling off the thing. I got hooked up with a buddy from the east coast (Rob) shortly after finding Rc Groups. Well thanks to Rob we got the heli in some what flying condition but me, well I was not ready for it. If your not fermilar with the Wasp v3 it's a brushless FP helicopter, belt driven tail, aluminum frame, cheap

I could tell you about it but better to show the first few flights

First:

Wasp V3 - First Try at Flying (3 min 38 sec)

Second:
...Continue Reading

Let me start by saying I've never really considered myself a blogger and it took seeing other personal blogs to kind of understand how they work, so here goes nothing. I decided that my blog would be more of a record of sorts that chronologically covers my RC experience. This will include the ups and downs that I went through getting into this hobby that I now love today.

First and Foremost and for the record - it's my wife's fault I'm addicted to RC and it all started on 12/25/2007 when I got this for Christmas.

See attachment...


Yeah it was a Pico-Z micro helicopter. Basically a counter balanced 2 channel heli that you use the throttle / tail rotor to control. You can fly these in a circle really well but actually having control over them depends on how many room fans you have on Usually these things just take off and pyro which is kewl when your new like I was. Adding the included nose weights (lead tape) would allow it to fly forward - but at best this was hit/miss.

I had this till the new year and by then was looking for a real helicopter. Boosted by the confidence I had with the pico-z, flying circles and landing on the coffee table and taking off again I thought I was ready to fly a real helicopter.