I never thought I'd ever see that old Flyzone SkyFly 2 fly again, but fly it did.

My choice of motor and prop seem a bit small; it took forever for it to lift off from a grass field. Once airborne, it flew perfectly! I added an ounce of lead weights to the nose to balance it on the recommended CG since both a 1300 3S and a 2200 3S were lighter than the old ni-cad pack which might have prevented it from rolling off. I'll fool with that once I bolt on the big Turnigy Park 400 (or 450) I'd used in its previous flight attempts. The other electronics have been totally changed with the model now sporting a pair of nearly new Ace R/C nine-gram servos, an OrangeRx receiver and a Spektrum DX6i radio.

The only other hitch was upon landing. It glided in beautifully, but it caught a wheel in the grass and it cartwheeled to a stop, breaking the brand new horizontal stab. The part is discontinued from Hobbico, but I ordered a new one from an eBay seller. I'll fix the one that's on it with some CF rods and some foam safe CA and keep it as a spare. It turned out so well that I don't want it to look like a glue bomb after only one flight.

With some more power on tap than it presently has, I predict it'll be a really fun flyer for a long time to come.

No chance yet to fly one of them, but I now have two "new" models for relatively little time, effort and money.

The rebuilt Flyzone SkyFly 2 is ready to rock and roll! Weather, repaving of the club's runway and a major two-week tennis tournament which put the kibosh on an alternate field all came together to keep me grounded, but I hope to take it up on Sunday...if it doesn't rain. The very stiff control surfaces may have led to the demise of the original servos. No problem! I had two nearly new 9g analogs which not only fit, the control arms had the same splines. Hinging the elevator and rudder of the new tail section with CA hinges was easy enough to do and it stands ready for its maiden flight. I even found the original nose wheel in the parts stash. I thought I'd lost it.

Also reborn is a Rotor Concept HPQ1, better known as the LotusRC T380. It was my first big quad, I paid way too much for it, it's been a money pit since then, it's been sitting idle since goodness knows when and that same company has the gall to sell it on Amazon for 400 bucks as I write.

That love/hate relationship really began when the motor driving FETs fell off of the FC like so many rotten teeth. I won't bore you all with details, but it eventually wound up with a new FC from Multirotor Mania and ESCs from Armattan. The motor shafts kept pulling out of the endbells whenever I went to tighten the props, so I paid good money (waaay more than I wanted to spend) to have them pressed back in and secured.

The end result? Quite satisfactory! The PID settings needed attention, especially the proportional since it was constantly over-correcting in hover. Really twitchy. After some tweaks via Cleanflight, it's nearly perfect. The really nice thing is that I now have two models which had some money sunken into them placed back in service.

Pictures to follow.