The past month and a half here in Nashville have been really cold and windy, and it seems like every stormy day corresponds with my days off work. So all my preparations to get outside have been thwarted on my days off by 30 degree weather, rain and floods and thunderstorms.

But finally, yesterday the sun was out, the wind was gone, and the temperature was a perfect 65 degrees. WHat a wonderful day! Wifey and me spent the first half of the day in the garden building a raised bed and preparing her a wildflower project on our front lawn. What this looked like was mostly me digging hard with our shovel, and she chasing around our new 'indoor/outdoor' cat, Eddie, who she rescued from a fleabag existence a couple months ago when she caught him in a feral trap, got him to the vet for neuter and vaccines, and home to recuperate. The irony is that he's the nicest cat we've ever seen. He'll sit on her belly for hours and let her fondle him, rub, pet, roll, pick, play, and pretty much be a mute teddy bear, so she loves him for his compliance. She's decided he can go outdoors but she keeps a close eye on him and has to run and grab him when he threatens to cross the street or wander too far from our yard.

So around 2pm we've finished, I've dug about 20 square feet of sod off our lawn to create the new raised bed prep, and we've transplanted and seeded our new garden. I'll find tomorrow morning that my body will be stiff as a board, but for now I'm free to play!

Goblin 420

...Continue Reading

Spring is nearly here. Thoughts? I'm going big. This year I've got a 700 size heli for the first time, a Soxos Strike 7. It's already built and I've done a maiden flight that went pretty well. The heli is huge. But, always not satisfied, I got a VBar and VControl Touch transmitter, setting those devices up has taken a bit of time. Love how the VControl Touch has a wireless connection option directly to the Heli-X9 simulator. Amazing, and gives you a perfectly set up model ready to spool up and spin. Will maybe post a Youtube video soon ...

This past month was the 1 year anniversary since my first RC helicopter flight attempts. A couple flights have me thinking I must be learning something, because I'm able to do some maneuvers that almost look like inverted funnels, and my half-piro attempts don't always end in crashes (only sometimes).

I am working on making a crash reel with some featured crashes and descriptions of the model and the days, hours, and moments before the crash, along with my best analysis of the why and what and wherefores.

Here's 7 minutes of heaven on a beautiful spring day about a week ago with my orange M2. So much fun!

OMP M2 Inverted Funnels, Half-Piros, Flight Practice (7 min 44 sec)

I always loved flight or "air-ee-oo-planes" as I called 'em at age 5 or so. Because we moved a lot overseas, I never had the chance to build RC airplanes, and I figured helicopters were out of the question. We did build some balsa flyers, including Guillow's Corsair and an elegant tissue paper rubber band flyer with cantilevered wings and a tendency to turn left. Later I got a 72Mhz RC buggy by Tamiya, the HORNET (Anytime Baby!) and had so much fun with that it almost filled my entire imagination. But I always wanted to try RC planes and helicopters.

Last year, my wife worked overseas for a few months, and feeling alone and bored I bought two RC helicopter kits on a whim from Banggood, an Alzrc 380 Devil and a 420 Devil. I bought them both the same day because I wasn't sure which would be better.

I built them over the next month and figured out how to program the imitation VBAR and spent about a month unsuccessfully trying to get off the ground without a mishap. I wish I'd recorded those first few flights because they were scary, funny, and sad, depending on how you looked at them.

In the 11 months since then I've never been longer than a week without getting out to fly. It's really fun! But it's an era that must come to an end at some point, so I'll post some short updates for posterity in this page.