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Saturday 5 January 2008

Learning to fly! - ESky Honeybee FP

Shortly after christmas I got my ESky Honeybee FP R/C helicopter. My first thoughts were... EXCELLENT! I've always wanted an R/C helicopter, and now I have one! Check out BuzzFlyer (http://www.buzzflyer.co.uk/) which is where I purchased mine from.

DAY 1.
Got it out of the box, and set it all up, never having flown before I decided to put the training set on the bottom which gives it a wider base and makes it "a little" more safe to learn, hopefully avoiding tipping.


I read an excellent Wiki (http://www.eflightwiki.com/eflightwiki/index.php?title=HoneyBeeFP) for the HoneyBee and followed a number of setup basics before I even tried to do anything else (meanwhile the battery was charging!)

Well, my first flight, technically wasn't a flight! I just fired up the heli on my king size bed (as I thought that if anything nasty happens then at least it would have a soft landing. And got it to "hover" (and I use the term loosely) approximately 4mm off the bed (LOL). Did this until the battery was drained, and then put then second battery on. By this time it was already 11:30pm, and as my wife wanted to go to bed an attempt to hover over her would have probably been fatal (for me more than anything!).

DAY 2
Decided to be a bit more adventurous and took the heli out into the garden. I managed to get it airborne for a few seconds from our garden table, and then softly "crashed" into the grass. I re-aligned the main rotor and checked everything (as the wiki says) and tried a lift off from the grass.

Unfortunately the grass is a little long and the tail rotor got caught sending the heli completely side ways and breaking several small components rendering the heli un-flyable. I immediately got onto the BuzzFlyer web site and ordered a crash repair kit.

DAY 3
The repair kit came the following day (BuzzFlyer are efficient and speedy delivery - recommended) so this morning I set to repair the broken bits and pieces and was ready to fly again in a couple of hours.

At this point I decided to go back to the bed method. I have now managed to hover the heli, but not entirely stable, (I didn't realise how hard and frustrating this could be) for about 1 min, jerking madly from side to side and front to back. Then landing (sometimes softly on the bed, but mostly softly against the floor or wall!) and starting again from step one. Boy this is a tough one, but I will never give up until I am whizzing round a field somewhere!

Watch this space, will be adding pics etc soon!

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