Aerial Photo of the Club

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Hey guys. no posts for a little while. been working/away for the last 2 weeks. but im itching to get back into the air. i finished my v2 450 heli this week that i got from wifly. keen to see it fly.

Sat 6th Jan 2010

hey hey. the club lapa is up! looks great(no pics unfortunately) all we need to do now is put on the roof which is going to be composed of long sticks.
been chatting to a guy i work with who has contacts in the road building industry, he says he can perhaps get us a big discount on profesionally built tar runway.

otherwise flying on sat was good. a bit interrupted by 15 seconds of rain. helis flying everywhere. Wifly brought out the v2 hk450 heli which i ordered. very nice. they have improved alot of the niggles the v1 had. ie the spindle is now 4mm so it stands up a bit better to knocks.

the blades it comes with look better. not as thick as the v1's version. so the power drain should be less.

i did an auto with my v1 on sat. bumped down a bit hard but no damage. then i noticed a bit of vibration while flying afterwards. the downwards whip of the blades when it bumped down bent the 3mm spindle slightly.

carried on flying but obviously the vibration is not good for. it. fortunately the spindles are very cheap. but the improved 4mm version in the v2 will improve things quite a bit

tried a set of 335mm blades on my scale. BIG improvement. alot more lift and in descent and braking it doesnt drop out of the sky like a stone so much.

i think for general flying these blades are better than the standard 325mm as they produce more stability and more lift. for 3D stick to the 325mm blades.

Joke of the Week

American Airlines 747 Heavy is busy taxing out of the Berlin AIrport Terminal, comes to a stop at the taxi way.
The Controller in a heavy german accent says: American Airlines 747 why are you not moving.
American Airlines: I dont know where to go.
Controller: WHAT? have you never been to Berlin before?
American Airlines: Yes once...In 1944 it was dark and i didnt stop.

Why Pilots Prefer Aircraft to Women

• Airplanes usually kill you quickly; a woman takes her time.
• Airplanes can be turned on by a flick of a switch.
• Airplanes don't get mad if you do a "touch and go."
• Airplanes don't object to a pre-flight inspection.
• Airplanes come with a manual to explain their operation.
• Airplanes have strict weight and balance limitations.
• Airplanes can be flown at any time of the month.
• Airplanes don't come with in-laws.
• Airplanes don't care about how many other airplanes you've flown before.
• Airplanes and pilots both arrive at the same time.
• Airplanes don't mind if you look at other airplanes.
• Airplanes don't mind if you buy airplane magazines.
• Airplanes expect to be tied down.
• Airplanes don't comment on your piloting skills.
• Airplanes don't whine unless something is really wrong.
• However, when airplanes go quiet, just like women, it's usually not good.

New Product RSS Feed

Hi guys

On the right hand side of the the page you will see a portion called Hobbyking New Products. This section of the site updates automatically from HobbyKing showing us their new products etc.

Nice to have a look at every day or so

Cheers

HE-162 Fighter R/C Ducted Fan Jet Plug-n-Fly

Always liked this WWII jet. ive got a big one sitting at home waiting to be finished. oneday...

This one is available from WiFly on Request. Give them a shout for prices.

A nicely scaled and unusual old-war fighter jet with brushless EDF system.
The HE-162 EDF jet comes 97% pre-built and includes a powerful 30A brushless electric ducted fan system and steerable nose wheel.
This well detailed jet uses a 64mm ducted fan unit to provide fast throttle response.

Specification:
Wingspan: 790mm
Length: 988mm

Wing area: 12.8dm2

Wing load: 47g/dm2

Flying Weight: 600g
Channel: 4ch
Motor: 4300kv Brushless Inrunner
ESC: 30A
Servo: 4 x 9g
EDF: 64mm

Battery compartment size: 83 x 43 x 33mm

Required:
Your own Tx & Rx
Battery 1300mah 11.1V 3S 20C

ooohhh its arrived at last!

wooohoo. HK has just released their copy of the Align 450 Pro. looks to be a stunner for those interested in hardcore aerobatics. cant wait for mine(santa?)

WiFly will be stocking them soon. estimated price around R799, maybe less, maybe more.

some details below

99% parts are compatible with the Align T-Rex 450.

Features:
Newly designed head block with high rigidity and stability.
Single piece integrated design of main bearing block and servo mount.
Single piece integrated design of anti-rotation guide and gyro mount.
Single piece integrated landing gear.
Highly stable flybar control system.
High precision bearing mixing arms.
Newly designed high resolution swashplate.
Single piece battery mount with integrated canopy mount designed to bring CG closer to disk plane.
Highly rigid frame with single piece carbon side and bottom plates.
Highly efficient Belt driven tail design.
Weighted tail rotor blade grips to repel centripetal forces.
Straight-up in-frame rudder servo mount for improved geometry.
Newly designed aerodynamic canopy.
Newly designed high strength main blade grips.

Spec.
Length: 635mm
Height: 230mm
Main Rotor Diameter: 710mm
Tail Rotor Diameter: 158mm
Motor Drive Gear: 14T
Main Drive Gear: 150T
Autorotation Tail Drive Gear: 106T
Tail Drive Gear: 25T
Drive Gear Ratio: 1:11.5:4.24
Weight(w/o power system): 450g
Flying Weight: Approx. 780g

Required items.
Brushless Outrunner Motor
Servos
Gyro
Receiver
ESC
Lipoly Battery (2200mAh 3S)

Ramblings from the Hangar - Forward Flight in Helis

Hi Guys

some nice articles posted below on hovering and nose in hovering. Once youve got this right its on to the fun stuff. Forward flight.

Now most of you are probably already screaming at the thought of taking your pride and joy and pushing it into the wild blue yonder. but its not that bad...and dare i say it? better than sex! hehehe(hope my wife doesnt read this)

if youre familiar with aircraft youll be pleased to know that forward flight in helis is very similar.

ok. so youve got your heli hovering in front of you at eye level tail facing towards you. you want to start foward flight.(at this point im assuming youve completed the previous lesson on nose in)

slowly swing the nose to the left(left rudder) and push forward GENTLY on the elevator stick.this will start moving the heli off to the left slowly. if it starts moving too fast pull back gently on the elevator stick. try to keep constantly moving forward though. the minute you stop and go back to hover the heli will tend to want to fly back towards you backwards.

ok so keeping the heli moving forward very slowly. once its about 20 feet awy from you slow swing the nose to the right(right rudder) until its perpendicular with you. the heli should now be slowly moving forward past you. when its moved past you and is about 20 feet away. slow swing the nose to the left again(again making sure that its always moving slightly forward) and start on the return trip flying past yourself again. basically you are flying up and down very slowly doing a turn at each end. on the left its a right hand turn. on the right its a left hand turn. this teaches you not to get too used to a specific type of turn.

THE MOST IMPORTANT THING TO KEEP IN MIND. keep moving forward. the tendency to pull back on the stick in a turn(like an aircraft) is strong. but be careful of it. too much up elevator and it will start moving backwards and then things go pear shaped. if this happens. stop. put the heli back into a hover. tail facing you. bring it back towards you slowly. calm down and try again.

Aileron(cyclic) does not really play a large part in these slow circles and movement. only when you start moving forward faster and faster will you bank with aileron, give up cyclic to lift the nose. BUT you still have to swing the tail round to turn it. otherwise you will just end up flying backwards at a bank...not a good recipe.

ok so to sum up. Grab your balls in your hand. get off the ground. start moving forward. doing little circles at each end of a flight path. as you get more and more confident make the circles bigger and bigger. and move faster. the feel for aileron and elevator cyclic will automatically come to you.

remember. if you get into kak. just return to hover. if you panic slam open the throttle and climb. itll give you precious seconds to think. careful not to climb too much as the heli will go out of site.

obviously dont slam the throttleopen if you are sideways heading towards the ground. level the rotors first.

Learning Nose In Flying with Helis

With kind Permissions of www.littlerotors.com

Lesson objectives:

First steps of nose in Higher altitude nose in hover Learning orientation tricks Developing your nose-in skills

Nose in is one of the more important skills to learn when learning to fly. After all, if you fly the machine away from you, you're gonna have to bring it back aren't you?

Once you've learned nose-in, your flying will really take off. You'll progress a lot faster once you've learned it and you'll find yourself 'less afraid' of the helicopter as you'll be able to deal with it in most orientations.

Learning nose-in isn't that hard if you put your mind to it. Having said that, having a simulator to practise on really makes things a lot easier. I'm going to discuss two ways of learning nose-in, with a simulator and without.

Simulator
Far and away, the best way of learning nose-in is to use a simulator. You aren't afraid to crash the machine and you make much more progress faster. Practise on the simulator each night for a week and at the weekend, get up the guts and just spin the machine around and see how long you can hold it.

Orientation Tricks
Nose-in is certainly different to tail-in, no doubt about that. However, there are a few tricks that I use to help me give the right stick inputs. These are:

• Push towards the low wing.
  When the helicopter is facing you the left/right cyclic controls are reversed. Therefore, if the helicopter is facing you and is leaning to the left (ie the left side of the rotor disc is lower than the right), then move the left/right cyclic control to the left. As you do this, you'll notice that the left side of the rotor disc starts rising towards a level plane. Once the disc is level with both sides, release the stick input.
  
  
• Steer the tail.
  When the helicopter is facing you, the rudder controls are also reversed. I find it easier to steer the tail. This means that if you're hovering nose-in in front of you and the tail starts to drift to the left, apply a little bit of right rudder which will start bringing the tail back into line.
  

Exercises
OK, so those of you with sims will have done a whole lot of practise before you get to the field eh? Well now it's time to get busy!

Now I recommend that you fire up the helicopter and have a fly around just like normal to 'warm up' if you like. Then, once that flight is over, it's time to get serious.

There are two ways I recommend starting nose-in for real. One is to hover the helicopter to a good safe height and spin the heli around so it's facing you, or, to gradually do it by doing figure eights.

Spin and hold
This is the way I learned. Move the helicopter out a safe distance from you (maybe 10 meters or so). Then, once you're there, slowly climb until the helicopter is about 10 meters high. Hold the helicopter in a hover. When you're ready, use the rudder to make the helicopter slowly turn until it is nose in to you.

If you have a heading hold gyro, it's a good idea to do this in heading hold mode. That way you can concentrate on just the cyclic controls and not worry about the tail coming out of line. Then once you have the cyclic controls sorted, learn the rudder controls.

Try and hold it as long as you can, but if you feel yourself starting to lose it, make your escape root more collective as you feed in rudder to bring the helicopter tail in again.

Gradually, you'll find yourself able to hold the helicopter longer and longer. When you get more confident, start decreasing the altitude and bringing it closer.

Figure Eights
How you say? Well, what you can do, is start doing more perfect circles on each side of the figure eight. As each side becomes more circular, as the helicopter passes over the middle point, the helicopter will be more and more nose-in to you. Start out doing normal figure eights as practised earlier, as you become more confident, steer the nose around so it becomes more nose-in to you.

See that the helicopter now moves around the the points instead of over them. After passing around each point, the helicopter crosses the landing pad, as you become more confident, gradually bring the nose around until it is eventually nose in.

Learning nose-in through figure eights is a little harder than the 'spin and hold' routine I used to learn. However, it teaches you better orientation as you fly the transition between tail in and nose-in. With the 'spin and hold' routine, you learn tail in and nose in, but nothing in between.

It's up to you which one you choose, but it is important to learn nose in, it will rapidly develop your flying abilities!

Learning to Hover

With Kind permission of www.LittleRotors.com

The machine is all trimmed, tracked and ready to fly, now it's time for your first flying lesson!

Hovering is the most important flying skill to learn. You take off in a hover and you land in a hover. If you can't hover, there's no hope for you :).

The amount of time taken for people to learn to hover varies from person to person. Some people pick it up within a few flights, others never progress much past it. It's all up to you.

Now, you want to learn to hover, so strap the training gear back onto your helicopter and go through all the procedures you have to do (checking heli, getting your frequency, range checks etc) before flying.

Now that all that's done, crank up the heli and carry it out to a designated hovering area that's obstacle free. Make sure you're not in the way of anyone, or anything and set your helicopter down on the ground.

How, make sure your transmitter aerial is fully extended and walk about five meters behind the helicopter. You always want to be behind the machine when you're learning, otherwise you will get disoriented.

Your first hops
OK, so now you're standing about five meters behind your machine which is sitting there burbling away, waiting. Take a few deep breaths and slowly start moving your throttle stick forward. You'll hear the engine start winding up and the rotors will start turning. It's all on now!

Keep advancing the throttle stick slowly and as you get around mid-stick, the helicopter will probably start to get 'light on its feet'. Don't worry, your training gear will stop it falling over.

The aim of these first few flights is to get a 'feel' for the helicopter. You don't want to be a hero and try and fly around cause 90% of the time the heli will bite you on the ass. Little steps...

You'll probably notice that the heli will be moving around on it's training gear, and may or may not be where you first put it down on the ground. Don't worry about that, just try and get a feel for what the helicopter feels like when it's about ready to take off.

Gradually start advancing the collective until the helicopter is just off the ground. Don't let it climb too high though cause you'll probably lose it. Just get it to the point where it's lifting off the ground. While it's off the ground, use your cyclic controls to stop it drifting around. If it starts moving off and you don't feel you can bring it back, just drop the collective slowly and it will settle on the ground (now you know why you brought the training gear!).

By now, sweat will be pouring down your legs. Don't lie, I know it is. Walk up behind it and try again, and again and again and again. Keep trying until you can keep the helicopter within a two meter radius. If you can do this in one tank of gas, good on you, if it takes ten tanks, who cares? As long as you're having fun!

Controlled tail in hover
OK, so now you can keep you machine in within a two meter radius, you're doing good! The story is now to try and keep the machine in one place.

So, lift off again, and try to anticipate it's movements and correct for it. Helicopter's have natural tendencies to wander off to the side on take off, so try to counteract this when you lift off.

The exercise now is to take off, hover for 10 seconds in one spot and land again in the same place you took off. Keep doing this until you can confidently take off and ascend vertically, hold the machine in a hover about five feet off the ground for ten seconds, then put it back down in the same place.

Keep trying until you can do it!

Moving around
Now you can hover pretty well, it's time to start moving things round a little. Pick a spot about about 4-5 meters away. You're going to take off from your present spot, hover over to your new spot and land.

The purpose of this exercise is to get you used to the cyclic controls.

So spool up the helicopter and take off like you practised earlier. Once you're about 5 feet off the ground. Slowly and gently move the cyclic stick slightly in the direction of your landing spot. Don't give it too much stick else it'll take off on ya! Feel free to walk behind the helicopter if it makes it easier for you.

The best way is to give the cyclic a slight nudge in the direction you want to go then back off nearly straight away. The helicopter will start sliding in the direction you gave it, but if you keep holding in the same amount of cyclic you gave it, it's gonna pick up speed pretty quickly, so back off.

Now your machine should be sliding towards your new landing pad. As it gets near the new pad, slowly feed in a bit of opposite cyclic (ie opposite direction to where the helicopter is heading) to slow the helicopter down. Once it's at a stop, slowly descend until the heli is on the ground.

Congratulations! Now keep doing this until you can confidently move the helicopter from point to point and set it down accurately.

Here in New Zealand, the Clubman class of competition is mostly made up of maneuvers that judge your precision hovering skills.

Controlled side on hover
Good, so you can take off, hover, move to a point, hover and set it down ok? It's time to start working on your orientation.

The desired outcome of this lesson is to have you being able to hover your machine side on from each side. This starts to become more important so you can progress with your flying.

The way I learned side on orientation is hovering the helicopter to a point that was forward and to the right or left of me. So while it was still tail in to me, I was looking along the side of it. This gets you used to looking at the side of the machine. Make sure you do this from both sides. You don't want to practise a lot from one direction and be useless on the other.

As you become more and more confident with each side, gradually move the helicopter further back towards yourself so you're looking at more of the side of the helicopter and less of it's tail.

Keep doing this until the helicopter is hovering side on to you. Once you're comfortable with hovering the helicopter on each side of you, move it back until it's tail in right in front of you (where you lifted off) and slowly start applying rudder to bring the nose of the helicopter around. Keep applying rudder until the nose is at about a 45 degree angle of what it was.

As you become confident at being able to keep the helicopter stable on this heading, keep feeding in a little bit more rudder and repeat the process. Keep doing this until the helicopter is fully side on to you. Ensure you do this for both sides of the helicopter. It is important not to develop a 'favourite' side.

Higher altitude hovering
Right, you can now hover tail in and side on comfortably. Well done! You can either choose to skip this part and go straight to figure eights, but you'll still have to come back to it eventually, so why not get it done now?

When I say higher altitude, I don't mean 100ft, I don't even mean 50ft. I mean being able to keep a stable hover about 20-30ft off the ground. The aim here is to get used to looking at the helicopter from the bottom.

So, lift off from the helipad as normal and bring the helicopter to a nice stable hover with the skids of the machine at eye height (this is the altitude that competition hovering in NZ is done). Keep it nice and steady. Once you're comfortable, slowly raise the collective so that the helicopter slowly starts climbing. Let it climb for about five feet or so and then stop and try and hold it in a steady hover.
Never let the helicopter get so close that you're looking straight up at it (ie over your head) cause it's likely you'll get disoriented and crash. Always keep it forward of you.

As you get comfortable, climb an additional five feet and repeat the process. Do this until the helicopter gets to around 50 feet or so. Once you can do this, move on to the figure eights!

Sat 30th Jan

The rain gods were smiling apon us. it rained all week and cleared up Saturday. usually the other way around. turned out to be a scorcher at the field.
Nice turnout. the guys did the concrete stands for the lapa. so this week we should be able to start putting up the uprgiths for the lapa. really starting to look good.
The area around the lapa is also going to be paved and hopefully a few tables will be built in the pit area to fix your plane/heli or put your drink on around the braai

flying consisted mostly of helis and then mostly HK450's hehe they are really becoming popular

Fanie flew his normal one, and a flybarless version. it flew nicely just quite sensitive to the type of blades it uses. it seems to prefer thicker blades with a wider profile to the narrow CF blades.
I Flew my Scale Hughes(as per the pic above) quite different flying scale. its obviously alot heavier. so you need to up the throttle curve and pitch curve. in forward flight it racks very nicely(having a big vertical fin at the back) but when hovering the wind does tend to push it round a bit. When coming out of dives etc you have to flare earlier and harder(makes sense since its heavier) but all in all im very happy with it

One thing to note though. if anyone wants to go the scale route. i highly recommend a 50amp+ speed control from wifly. the 40a purple ESCfrom wifly works ok but it gets pretty warm. also a 3000ma pack is useful to make it balanced. otherwise they turn out tail heavy.

I can highly recommend the Scale fuselages from Wifly. The quality is better than align. and they are Cheaper too.

not much plane flying went out. Luie flew his stick around a bit. Louis flew his pegasus trainer and Jimmy/James flew around a little fandango. cute little plane. funny looking.
I flew Louise 3D Groovy. but the motor came loose. burnt out. so it ended up in the feld. no damage apart from a fried motor.

If anyone has more pics pls send them along

Dont forget guys. Club fees are now due. R200 for existing members. R200 joining fee and R200 for new members.