JustPlaneChris & Lizeebie

Today was the first bike trip to the local park to fly! We’ve had our Ultra Motor Europa hybrid electric bikes for a few weeks now, but only this weekend did we get to “Pimp Our Bikes” with folding baskets and locking trunks. I didn’t waste any time, and decided to try out the new baggage space by taking the Dragonus to the park to fly. I got a few funny looks on the way there and back from passing cars, but I’m not sure if it was because of the heli on the back of the back, or the shirt.
Oh, and I do actually remember how to fly despite it being 3 weeks since I last had a heli in the air. It sure was good to get out and limber up the fingers a bit!

While I love the way my Century Swift heli flies, the design of the stock canopy and landing gear is… well… goofy.

The landing gear is easily fixed with one of several aftermarket landing gear choices. Right now I have Hirobo Scedeau landing gear on it, but I’ve also seen pictures of T-Rex 600 gear and it looks nice too.

The canopy, however, is not so easy to fix. To my knowledge there are no aftermarket canopies that fit the Swift. What to do? Why make my own of course! Being no stranger to fiberglass and mold-making, it seemed like a no-brainer to carve a plug and make my own.

I’ll post periodic updates here as it progresses, and photos will be added to this Flicker Set. Enjoy!

Just thought I’d share a few videos of my Century Hawk Pro and Century Swift helis in action, as well as the F5B Tiger. They sure are fun to fly!

Century Hawk Pro:

Century Swift:

F5B Tiger:

June 21, 2008 was one of those days that turned out to be more fun than should be legal. The day began very early, and we packed up the car with all my flying toys (and I mean all of them!) and headed to the Lauderdale Airpark RC field in Caldwell, TX. Why so far away? New friend Bobby Barr invited me, that’s why! He had a new Blade 400, and that’s all the excuse I needed to check out another field and go on a road trip. It also gave us an excuse to do some geocaching outside our local area, and that’s always fun too. So, away we went! We arrived at the field around 9:30am and I unloaded the fleet and proceeded to fly everything. The F5B Tiger awed everyone, and the Hawk Pro was a hit too. After flying everything at least once, we headed into town for lunch and then started geocaching. We cached our way back to Austin, ending up with fourteen finds (out of nineteen attempts) and arrived home after 10pm. We were exhausted, but boy it was a fun day.

I was having too much fun to shoot any video, and I only took a few pictures but you can see them in this Flickr set. I’d like to extend a heartfelt THANK YOU to everyone I met at Lauderdale field, and special thanks to Bobby and Mr. Lauderdale himself for the hospitality. It was great fun, and I’ll definitely be back!

As some of you may know, I’m co-host of the AllThingsThatFly.com and InsideHeli.com podcasts, and we are occasionally privileged enough to be asked to do a review for a model distributor. Hobby-Lobby International asked if I’d like to review their F5B Tiger “hotliner” model, and I was glad to accept! The review is now complete, and the model is flying. Wow, is it fun! The full review is posted in the reviews section of the AllThingsThatFly.com website, and you can also view the entire photo collection on Flickr.

First flight video:

Those of you who listen to the AllThingsThatFly.com podcasts may have heard me mention geocaching a few episodes back. It is a new hobby that Liz and I have taken up, and it’s a lot of fun! In fact, there is a podcast dedicated to geocaching named Podcacher, and they even mentioned AllThingsThatFly podcast in one of their episodes. Anyway, Liz and I have had a lot of fun in local and area parks, hiking to find hidden caches. Her brother is also into geocaching, and a few weeks ago we trekked down to Pedernales Falls State Park for a fun hike-cache trip.

The most fun we’ve had though was our First to Find (FTF) experience on June 6. On our way home from dinner at a local restaraunt, we wanted to try out the new software we had installed on our BlackBerry Curves. So naturally, we decided to find a cache on the way home. The software worked well, but before we reached home Liz’s phone chimed with new mail from Geocaching.com alerting us to a newly-hidden cache nearby. Wow, it was only 2.5 miles away, and in the direction we were headed! Could we get there before anyone else? While Liz brought the coordinates up on her BlackBerry (GPS-equipped) I spooled up boost in the Volvo 850R. We arrived at the location, and Liz headed for where she thought the cache was hidden. Suddenly I hear tires squeal as someone literally slides into the parking lot! Yep, it was a fellow geocacher who had also received the alert. We beat them by mere seconds, and logged our first FTF! It was a lot of fun, and we were all laughing at how close the “race” had been to be first to find. Lizeebie sent the Podcacher folks an email with our FTF story, and they talked about it in Show 170. Neat!

Geocaching is a lot of fun for kids of all ages, and it’s a great way to get off the couch and get some excercise and it’s an excuse to play with electronic gadgets. You can find more information about it at Geocaching.com, and be sure to visit our Amazon store to find GPS receivers, books, and other geocaching accessories.

I often agonize over how to do things, sometimes to the point that I start second-guessing myself! How to set up my field box for the Hawk was one of those things. I first decided to buy a complete field box combo, with 12v battery, power panel, starter, etc. But the more I thought about it, the more I decided I wanted to go “cordless” with the starter and glow driver. So, I started researching my options. The glow driver is easy, I just purchased a rechargeable glow driver. For the starter, I saw several “home made” setups with RC car nicad packs strapped to the starters, as well as some “store bought” setups. Nothing really tickled me, but then I read about some guys adapting cordless tool batteries, and decided that was mighty clever! Black & Decker makes the “Firestorm” line of inexpensive tools and batteries, so an investment of $35 got me a flashlight (to cut up for the battery mount), an 18 volt pack, and a charger. The pictures tell the rest of the story. How does it work? Perfectly!

Today was maiden flight day for the Hawk Pro. We checked out a new place to fly, which is a nice wide street behind an industrial building that is quite in the middle of nowhere. No power lines, no trees, and no people. Perfect! And, only eight miles from home too. Anyway, Mother Nature did her best to discourage us with 25+ mph winds, but hey… big helis don’t really care about the wind! The Hawk did great, and I got two tanks of fuel through it, and one flight on the Swift, before hunger and heat encouraged us to pack up and head home. All in all, it was a great day!
First flight video:

Today is my birthday! As a present to myself, I decided I’d get the Hawk Pro finished and at least try to start the engine. When I started fueling it up, I noticed some leaks around the fuel stopper, so I decided it would be a good time to go to a uniflow fuel system, since I had all the parts on hand to do it.
Well, after the tank was fixed, it wouldn’t start so I began with the basics: Fire and fuel. I knew it had fuel (I could smell it on the plug) but what’s this? No fire?!? Turns out the remote adapter had a broken wire inside the insulation right where it connects to the remote bit. Got that fixed and she fired on the first bump of the starter. I tried initially to run it without blades, but with no load on the engine it would scream as soon as the throttle moved off idle. The “pinch test” also revealed it would die instantly when the fuel line was pinched, so the idle was too lean. Several adjustments later and she idles low enough to not engage the clutch, and responds instantly to a bump of the throttle. So I added blades and spooled up to just under liftoff position. Sounds good (smells good too). But it’s stinking hot here today, at 95 degrees and 43% humidity. I’m completely drenched in sweat just from being outside and not even exerting. So, since I have a birthday dinner date in a couple of hours there will be no flight attempts today. I’ll probably get up and go in the morning before the temps reach egg-frying levels and get the tail dialed in and run a few tanks through it to break in the engine.

As you can see, there have been some major changes here at JustPlaneChris.com! Most of the older content about my helis has been shuffled away and will be replaced with new content on a regular basis. If you want to browse the old site content, you can still get to it by following this link.