Flying…something fails…carnage. There you have it, you officially know everything that has happened to me over the last month. I have to admit that the last month has really tested my dedication to this hobby, as it has been an expensive month. As of right now all three helis are ready to go and I hope this time it can stay that way for a bit. As most of you know I recently toasted a motor in my N5, and stripped a tail pulley in my 7HV. Well this has not been the end of my troubles.
I had finally reached a point in which I was extremely excited to go to the field. I had all 3 of my helis ready to fly and was determined to get in a complete day of flying with no carnage. Unfortunately though, last weekend was one of those weekends where you start Saturday morning with 3 flying helis and come Sunday evening you have none. Funny how quickly that can happen… okay not really all that funny.
So lets start with saturday. I finally had the chance to fly the Compass 115 carbon tail blades, let me say there is a night and day difference from the KBDD’s. So all was going well but on the 4th flight I all of the sudden lose complete power. Now when I say I lost power I mean ALL power: servos, receiver, motor, FBL unit…everything. Usually when this happens a very horrific crash is soon to follow. Luckily for me this was not the case. When this happened I was upright and level, so when I lost power the heli slowly floated down to the ground. Then once it was on the ground it slowly tipped over, I had no control over this since it had no power. I walk over and grab the heli noticing that the blades were shot, but I couldn’t help but wonder what failed. After some testing I came to the conclusion that one of the main leads on my Gens Ace battery had come loose. At first I was a little disappointed but then I remembered I had 225 cycles on this battery. With that many cycles I definitely got my money worth and will be ordering up a couple more flight packs soon.
The N5c was not nearly as eventful, what happened was in flight the heli started to violently shake. I immediately landed and noticed that one of the screws for the boom support braces had sheared. This isn’t a huge deal as I just put in a new screw and it is ready to go again.
As for the Warp 360. I need to start off by saying this is one tough little heli. In flight on Sunday I had the tail servo horn come off in flight. At the time this happened I was doing piro flips. So as soon as I hit throttle hold the blades stopped immediately. The heli went in pretty hard, initially I thought this was going to be a very bad crash. Once I got home and tore the heli down all I needed to replace was one set of servo gears, blades, and rotor hub. Not too bad at all.
I honestly hope this time the worst is behind me. I desperately need a weekend of flying where all 3 helis make it through the weekend. That or I drive one of my helis in because I am pushing it too hard and crash. I hate mechanical failures, I would actually welcome a crash due to dumb thumbs. I guess the silver lining to all of this is at least all these problems are happening during the winter. By the time funfly season is here I should have everything figured out and be ready to go…at least I better be.
-Jessie