Given the propensity for even a sniff of wind here near the bay my outings have reduced. That said upcoming employment has spurred me on to try and master this thing before I head back to ‘The Man’.

I’ll get the breakages count out the way first and its not too lengthy. I’ve taken to flying the thing without the canopy on as it seems to fly better without it, but the trouble with that is that the main PCB control unit is exposed and thats where the receiver chip sits. It protrudes out at 90 degrees and as such with any nose first based crash is possibly the first thing to hit.

So picking up the pieces of a heavy one I first thought just the receiver chip had fallen out but alas no. The whole socket had broken off the PCB. Best get the soldering iron out.

I wasn’t convinced I could fix this as the socket looked to be a part of the board but low and behold it did solder. Rather than put it back on at 90 degrees it now connected via some wires and taped securely away under the board. A quick replacement of the fourth rotor blade which broke on the same crash and a test flight proved that I was back in the air again.

Progress wise, I’m not going to say I’m proficient yet but certainly I’m in control if it more than before. When conditions are perfectly still I’ve started to attempt ‘manoeuvres’ as the hand/eye co-ordination is much better (theres not much time to think here you have to control it instinctively)  but with even the slightest sniff of breeze its back to trying to keep the thing level and hovering.

Wind typically makes it slowly wander around, so using some stick you try and counter but then the breeze moves around and you counter that and before you know it the things whizzing around in circles sideways quite quickly….. its kind of hard to get it to stop moving when it gets to that point and usually a semi controlled crash halts proceedings! Fun though.