I had a bit of excitement today. I was doing some figure 8s in my yard today when I caught something moving out of the corner of my eye.

It was heading towards my MSR really FAST.

Holy crap, a red tailed hawk. It was maybe 10 ft from me. At the last second it flared hard and pulled up. It had used up all its altitude and airspeed avoiding my heli so it started flapping hard right over my head and flew away. I could feel the wind.

Very cool.

Don

If that hawk hadn't figured out MSR wasn't a sparrow and tried to eat it, its view of the universe would never have been the same.

The juveniles aren't too smart. I had one stoop on my 4g3, only to pull up less than three feet from the heli. Not related to helis, but along the same line...when I was in HI, we used to catch young Blue Footed B--bies [the filter won't let me put the two "O's" in, in spite of it being the proper name of the bird...sheesh] while blue water fishing. and they DID NOT like it one bit.

regards,
Bill

Last summer I painted my falcon canopy - used some much brighter colors so it wouldn't blend in with the trees.

First flight I was just doing some slow left to right against the tree line too see how it looked. A female hummingbird shot in and started to follow it. I stopped and went into a hover, she moved in a little, then started to fly away - stopped - came back - flew away - stopped and came back. I think she finally figured out it wasn't a big male humminbird and just flew away.

I have a couple of Barn Swallows nesting under my front porch and a couple of Blue Birds nesting under the rear covered porch...They like to eat the bugs that hang around the pond in my back yard...They don't bother the micro Champ much but they HATE the micro P-51 and will dive bomb it pretty regularly...I just bought an MSR and expect it in a few days---I can't wait to see how the birds react to the new "bird" on the block!!!...

Kevin

At times of the year I can take my helis to my "field" and it doesn't take long before the swallows are flying with me. I think they see it as one of them and are curious as to why it's "feeding" w/o them. Honestly, I'll have twenty circling the field with my heli. Hummingbirds are notorious for checking out the little helis and are fearless. Dragonflies, too.

regards,
Bill

I never knew any of this. Thanks. If I cold get a bunch of birds to follow me, my daughters would go nuts.

Dragonflies buzz my mSR and 120SR quite often.

One day I saw a bald eagle approach from the distance. Not wanting to take a chance, I grounded my 120SR until it flew away.