After a few furtive hops, finally did some decent flying today. Took the belt up to about 20 or 30 feet. The new telebee gyro makes a huge difference.

Lots of firsts today. First outdoor hovering sans training gear, first outdoor use of idleup, first reasonably well-controlled hover in wind, and first well-controlled non-panicky climbout/descent. The dog was wagging the tail, rather than the tail wagging the dog, for a change.

Here's a warmup flight in the backyard. Twist ties don't work as well as nylon zipties for camera mounting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ho_4g2Q05fw

Should be flight ready in a day or two. Need to get blade pitch/tracking correctly and get all the wires and electronics strapped in.

Just installed:

• telebee 6g hh gyro
• trex dampers
• blade 400 tail slider
• fma quantum 8ch fm dc rx
• mx 400 main gear
• turntable for tail/gyro setup
• fatmax toolbox for transport/storage

Tried a couple of outdoor flights yesterday. First one had a hard landing but no damage. Second one involved blades tasting earth and a boom strike that took out the struts, horiz stab, main gear, blades and feathering shaft. No obvious head damage. Looks like the gyro got clipped a bit. Might be a fine opportunity to upgrade to a telebee heading lock gyro. Might as well toss in the trex dampers while I'm at it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jG1JuXOTD2s