Temporary Solution

…continued

Fast forward 11 years to where I stumble across a video on YouTube highlighting some Horizon Hobby aircraft with Spektrum's SAFE technology and a renewed interest in the hobby was sparked. Imagine my surprise after a 25 year absence from the hobby of just how far technology had advanced. "SAFE", "2.4 GHz", "DSMX", "BNF", "LIPo" etc., but I jumped right into the deep end to figure out if the new technology would assist my desire to return to the hobby.

The aircraft that convinced me it was worth a try at flying again was the E-flite Opterra with its self-level feature upon releasing the control sticks. I thought it would be my best bet considering its size and capability of nice slow gentle flight, it's lack of landing gear that would most likely get ripped off during rough landings and its ability to be hand launched and climb out to a safe altitude without any input through the transmitter.

Opterra promo video:

E-flite Opterra™ 2m Wing BNF Basic & PNP (3 min 11 sec)

The next step was to call up my old friend who I helped learn to fly so long ago to get his thoughts and recommendations on getting me back in the air and unsurprisingly he was once again more than willing to help out and he offered me the use of is Real Flight simulator to get started. I knew I would run into the same problem as before with the inability to manipulate the sticks on the transmitter and I needed to find a better way to stay connected to the gimbals.

The first attempt to connect to the transmitter was to remove the ends out of a stylus used to operate the touchscreen on a smart phone or tablet and slide them over the end of the thumb sticks and through the cuffs on my wrist splints. This solution worked fairly well but with one serious drawback: given the proximity to the gimbal assemblies to one another, my hands would contact each other and limit the amount of movement of the gimbal sticks. For example, applying left aileron and right rudder simultaneously was a no-go without interfering with their movement. A different solution was needed to be found if I ever wanted to be able to use the four basic functions of a four channel transmitter.

The second attempt that got me closer to my goal of being able to get full range of both gimbals was to take a 6" long by 1/2" wide piece of Lexan, bend it 90°, drill a hole in the end of it, slide it over the stylus, and attach it to my braces. I should note this is where my cousin enters the story, there will be more about him later. He's been instrumental in the process of getting me flying again and I would go as far as to say I would not be flying without his help. A picture of one of the Lexan adapters attached to my brace is below. Notice the hair scrunchy? I wrap it around my thumb and the Lexan piece to help stabilize any free play in the brace cuff.

After placing my Lexan wheelchair tray over my lap, sticking some Velcro on the transmitter to hold it to the traytop and hooking my newly fabricated adapter to the thumb stick, I was off to the races!


I spent every free moment I was capable of hooked up to the flight simulator not only relearning how to fly, but also regaining 12 years of lost hand-eye shoulder-eye coordination from doing nothing other than dialing my phone and driving my wheelchair. Two of the more surprising aspects of relearning to fly was the low level of endurance I had both physically and mentally. Over the first several weeks I was only able to fly for roughly 5-10 minutes at a time before having to take a 20-30 minute break to allow my muscles to recover. At the end of the day I would find myself completely wrecked mentally from having to focus and concentrate on a single activity. I'm not complaining, the challenge, as small as it was, was very rewarding and I eventually reached an acceptable level of endurance after 6-7 months of training.


to be continued…