Saturday was a family reunion but the weather was iffy. So I grabbed my son's Venom Gambler and finally replaced the burnt ESC with the one Venom sent me a few months ago. Later that night when we got around to racing in the back yard, the new ESC started smoking on the first battery after a few minutes. By the time I got the pins off, the top melted off and both red wires melted off their joints (See Attached Pic). I love the trucks, but Venom really killed these with the speed controllers. I think it is time to upgrade to brushless.

Sunday was 40F and no wind when I woke up, so I ran right outside with the SR. I decided to take video of one flight when I noticed the tail wag. So I attached the yellow gyro gain wire to channel 5 and played with different setting on the DX6i. The video below has my results.

After that, I went inside to do the pjacq brushless conversion of my NCPx. I had a little trouble getting the ground wire to solder, but the power and signal wire were easy. Then I soldered the motor to the pins and tested it. Everything worked fine and was spinning the right way. I reattached the servos and main board and the next text failed. I broke one of the motor wires. I fixed it and then continued to repeatedly break motor wires until they were WAY too short. I do not blame pjacq at all. His kit was very impressive. I don't know if it is because my workshop was just above 50F (I didn't feel like turning the heater on) or I was holding the soldering iron there to long, but I just kept breaking one wire in each pair until I was back to the wire insulation. Luckily, pjacq has offered to fix my mistakes. Thanks, pjacq!

Blade SR - Tail Wag before and after Gyro Gain Adjustments (2 min 43 sec)

Spent a lot of time flying yesterday and even had a chance to break out my Gambler and launch it off of a ramp. Time Flys Hobbies has been sponsoring these at the Wyoming Valley Sports Dome and I think I will start going to these regularly. I did go home with a Flyzone Playmate and a Blade 450 3D.

The first video is of my friend Bob trying out the new brushless set up he installed on his Nano CP x. The second video is just key chain cam video from my mQX and even the HZ Champ. I lost track of time when recording with the Champ. Not good for the battery. Skip to around 10:30 in that video to see that landing. I think I was close to scoring a goal on that on.

Brushless Blade Nano CP X at the Time Flys Hobbies' Fun Fly 2/10/13 (1 min 34 sec)

Time Flys Hobbies' Fun Fly - 2/10/13 (11 min 27 sec)

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When I crashed my GP F-86, I was able to put it back together pretty well. But when I attached a battery to it last week, nothing happened. Nothing blinked. Nothing moved. The local LHS is giving me a deal on a new one and this time I am going to use a runway. No more hand launches for me for a while.

So the cold and the wind have me pinned inside as far as the hobby goes. I decided to keep my transmitter by the TV instead of in it's case. Because it is so accessible, I found myself flying a few times this weekend and got in a few hours practicing inverted hovers and landing various intermediate and advanced planes. My son even got in 1/2 an hour. He likes the amphibious planes and helis.

Even in a SIM, it gets a bit frustrating at times. I think I crashed the 130 x about 50 times before I was able to invert hover, hold it, flip it back and land. It took forever to get my mind to believe that down is up, but now I think I have a pretty good feel for it. I am starting to see the value of a good flight sim.

Thursday I am going over to a local veteran fliers house with a few of my little guys. I am hoping to get some tips on the nano. I've seen him fly one and I want to to the things he does.

On a side note, I have been wanting to build something CNC related for a while. The last of the electronics arrived Saturday morning and everything is working. So it looks like I am taking a trip to the hardware store for the final parts from the frame of a sphere-bot (like an egg-bot). After that, I am going to try a small CNC mill and my ultimate goal is a 3D printer. I do have a timeline for the sphere-bot because the kids want to use it to decorate their Easter eggs this year.