The Goblin 500 needs a minor link adjustment for drifting, but I was doing 3D at 2400 RPMs and it was awesome.

After the last Goblin flight, I pulled out the 300x. I have been practicing on the 300x all winter in Phoenix and flew mine for 2 batts. Practice paid off because all the 3D stunts I did in the sim felt identical to flying in real life.

Then I pulled out the 130x and over confidence took over. I have been trying to fly closer with it. I saw the tree right after a loop and it was too late. Nothing broke it bent, but that is 2 for 2.

Finally, my son flew the UMX Radian. He was a natural at gliding. I am so proud of him!

I didn't get a lot of flying in this past weekend. Sunday morning I was waiting for a friend to arrive to help me fix a water pipe that suddenly started leaking right into my closet where I keep some planes. The apprentice has some minor stains on the wings and the Calypso had a small shower when the hole stopped dripping and starting misting, but nothing was actually ruined. The pipe is right between a gas pipe and wires, so I'm not touching it. With 1/2 hour to kill waiting for Rob, I grabbed the Carbon Cub SS that wasn't flying right and headed to the field by my house. Sure enough the elevator was way off even though it didn't look it. I was able to land, pinch the elevator down a little and fly perfectly. I was coming in for a landing when I nice breeze came up and I was hover a few feet in the air about 10 feet in front of me. The wind died, I landed and the plane skittered past me and the right wing hit the box and cracked a little. A quick fix, but annoying since it was only the second flight with this one and I usually land much farther away from myself.

Got home. Rob shows up. Pipe fixed quickly thanks to Shark Bites, which I now know work on copper too and not just Pex. I could have fixed that myself had I known. Anyway, up to the 130x that I just replaced the metal A gear (and landing gear) on but it was still slipping. So I slapped a new B gear on and it worked, but there was a lot of head wag. I see nothing with the servos for a minute and then the one...Continue Reading

My son's first communion is next week and his Venom Gambler bit the dust when the frame snapped right under the servo. I just can't get parts for it. He does have a Vaterra Kalahari and Kemora, but I let him drive my new Helion Invictus and he fell in love with it. So I took him the the LHS yesterday to pick out a new 1/10. They had the Helion Dominus 10TR in green, his favorite color, and he proudly carried it up to the counter and them immediately started crying. Being 8 years old, it took me a few minutes get out of him that he really wanted the Invictus. I am so glad I bought a blue one because all they had left was red. He was so happy.

Now mine I already have set up for 3S LiPos and on the drive home I told him I would do the same for him and he immediately said he does not want that and he wants to run the stock battery to go slow and so some crawling. Fine with me because now he has 2 batteries of his own and I don't need to solder on an EC3 connector. I wonder if he will feel the same after we race at the park.

Now about the Invictus we bought. I was worried about it because of the ESC and other issues I read about. But when I opened up and inspected it seems like a lot of previous issues had been addressed. The manual was a little outdated and I had to go online to find the proper ESC programming instructions. The ESC that was in it did not have the same amount of options as the original, but it runs great. My son was going full speed, hitting the breaks to...Continue Reading

The good thing about my RC hobbies is I share them with my son. The bad thing about my RC hobbies is I share them with my son. When the UMX Radian came out, my son saw the display model and said "It is the most beautiful thing ever" which translates to "Buy this". So I did because my son is a really good kid with straight A's. He wasn't around when I got home from work yesterday but the conditions were perfect for UMX gliding. I assembled it, grabbed a 45c battery and my EQ, and headed for the park. I was very surprised at how relaxing gliding is. When I hooked up the GoPro to the computer, I was surprised to find I recorded for 16 minutes! Sure I was way out of range of the camera most of the time, but I did get some footage and decided to make a review out of it.

E-Flite UMX (Ultra Micro) Radian Powered Glider Review, Tips and Flight (9 min 12 sec)

After talking to people about the issues I had with the Goblin the first time I was advised to go over my governor settings again and look at what the Talon 90 was telling me to set my throttle at. I went in and it wasn't telling me anything. Then I switch to RPM governor mode and then it showed me the values. So I set it up for 2000, 2200 and 2400 RPMs. Then I hooked up the Ikon and paid more attention to the TX screen and set my travels to all directions went to 100%. I originally thought that screen was to make sure the inputs were working correctly. I also noticed that my 3 modes were reversed on the switch with 3 being in position one. So I went and reversed the flight modes in the Ikon software and set 3 for low head speeds and auto level and 1 for high speeds. I hovered around for an entire battery and it felt much better. So I took it out for a flight and when I switched it to high speed I quickly found out that I forgot to uncheck auto level on that one . However, I was very happy with the way it performed on stunt mode 1 at 2200 set for sport flying. Over all, I am really happy with my first full heli build and I can't wait to start another one.

SAB Goblin 500 - Flight 2 (4 min 37 sec)

I love my new battery charger enough to do a review of it.

Hitec X4 AC Plus 4 Port AC/DC Multi-Charger (LiPo, NiMH, etc...) Review and Tips (15 min 13 sec)

So for months leading up to Christmas I was paying off my Goblin Combo Kit on layaway. It took another month to get the most of the parts and last week I finally remembered to pick up the last servo wire extender. After hours of tweaking the Ikon FC setting to make sure I understood them, there was no reason to delay any longer. When the power cut out during my first flip, I realized I did not set some stuff up the way I though on the TX. After a little tweaking, Normal and Stunt 1 are good and need more tweaking, but stunt 2 needs a lot of work.

SAB Goblin 500 Maiden Flight & Quick Hardware Review - Near Crash (7 min 25 sec)

I planned to go flying today with some bigger planes at a field, but my son got a call for baseball practice. So small planes at the park it was. I took the AS3Xtra, Beast 3D, Yak 54 180, foamy, Blade 300x, and Blade 350 QX out and flew them for about an hour. No crashes, no drama., all fun.

My favorite moment was a father walking by with his kids as I was getting the 300x ready. The kid said something about the wind taking my heli away and the father agreed with him saying they were a waste. It sounded like they had a few coaxials at one point. Then I took off, immediately went inverted and starting flying circles that way followed by a lot of flips, loops and fast flying. They all stopped to watch. I don't think they were expecting a heli to be flying inverted because they kept talking about that.

Blade 350 QX Flying Over Condella Park - Olyphant, PA (5 min 47 sec)