Aframomum

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JPEE,

I'm at work so can't watch your video until I get home but it sounded like a great success. At least you were able to get 3 packs through before calling it a day.

I have to say that is crazy about the rattlesnake but in all reality I am waiting for the day when I come across an alligator...I hear they are all around. You guys may want to take a long stick to kinda beat the pathway in front to scare off any wildlife in the future, or try and widen that pathway a bit so you have more room to move around.

Well guys, we did have some crazy storms move through the beginning of the week followed by days of windy conditions so no flying for me...feels like a month since I flew. Maybe things will ease up later in the week. Other than that not a whole lot going on. On the brighter side the temps have dropped down in the lower 70's which is very nice and 'spring-like'.

Take care all,

Mark

Aframomum

My Feedback: (10)

JPEE,

Just finished watching your video (did all 7 minutes and 38 seconds ) and have to say...EXCELLENT! You brought this 600 back from a near catastophic condition and got her flying smooth and stable. She looks very good and you do fly way out there don't you?

Now...you need to calm down. I can understand the jittery nerves as I tried flying my 550 in the same area that my 500 went down and my nerves were on edge. I caught your comment on the rocks and I think given a bit of time of trouble-free flying you'll calm down and start to enjoy it again. Bring your foamy plane with you as they are much more relaxing then the heli's.

Was that the first time you guys ran across a rattlesnake coming or going from the field? Scary stuff definitely.

Once again great job on bringing her back!

Mark

evdreamer

John,

That is good your 600 is flying good again.

That is good no one was injured by the snake.

Mark,

That is good you are enjoying the cooler temps.

I just got done installing IE9. It isn't as cluttered as IE8 and seems to be a little faster.

Nick

JPEE

Hi Mark,

My fingers "were not" trembling and that is what was surprising to me. I should have been a little affraid but I wasn't, that surprised me! My only

fear was "if" I had an issue that trying to land on the 20' wide air strip and not in the dirt with the bolders would be a real challenge. My field is

very unforgiving as you have seen. Re the foamy, I did in fact bring my T-28 lol. After I flew the 600-2 my very next flight was the plane to sooth

my anxiousness. Man you must be a mind reader[X(]

I started on 500-2 tonight from the tail boom incident and so far got the new TT inside with the bearing glued on, the new boom in place but! I found

that when the tail rotor shaft got bent it took the bearings and I don't have any in stock. I had to go back to the LHS anyway for the DS10 servo

rebuild kits, so the bearings will go on my list. I thought of you Mark when I asked for replacement gears when I was in there last time and he was

out of the nylons and he brought me MG's YIKES $23.00 or so each! I'll give them the $5.50 this one time crash. If I lose another set then I'll bite the

bullet and go for the MGs.

Other than that they have been talking stormes here and it is cold and cloudy but thats it, no rain. So its just some bench time until Monday, then

they are talking 70's Whooya


Nick, I assume that IE9 is for your tic tac toe?? to make it more harder to beat or is that something for your charger system?

John

evdreamer

John,

I was talking about Internet Explorer 9.

Nick

rotarydoc

Hey guys,

I've been absent for a few days, had to go to Mazda training, in NJ Wednesday and Thursday, just got back last night, and back to work today, but at least I have the weekend off this week. I thought I was done with all of my instructor-led training, but they decided that even the Master Techs need a refresher course on electrical systems. We use CAN systems in new cars these days (Controller Area Network) which is basically the way that all of various electronic modules in today's vehicles commnicate. All of the modules are on a common network, and it's kinda hard to isolate problems with them, so the training was good to have.

JPEE,

Your maiden on 600-2 looked great! I'm glad it went smooth for you. I will finish watching the video later, it was buffering a bunch, stop/starting, I'll try again later.

Sorry you found more bad parts on 500-2, hope you can get it squared away, sounds like with the weather you'll have some time on your hands this weekend to work on it.

Mark,

Yeah, the weather here is not very spring like either...it's like 40 degrees and raining tonight...supposed to be nice by Sunday though, so maybe a bit of flying then, if I can find an open field....

Nick,

I played around with the Beta of IE9 a while back, and it looks nice. However, I found out that my Norton Security program will not work correctly with it, the toolbar for it won't work with IE9 yet, I checked with them, so I'm going to wait a bit.

It's suppposed to be real nice. The coolest thing is it supports HTML5 websites, some of which are very cool....I tried a couple when I had it....

See how this one looks, I think it's a cool one, but I can't tell, because I don't have IE9 now..

http://www.360cities.net/london-photo-en.html

Glenn

rotarydoc

Nick,

I almost forgot that Safari (Apple's web browser) also supports HTML5, so I checked out that site on the Macbook Air....and it looks fantastic!!

Very cool 360 degree effects.....the future of the web for sure!

Glenn

evdreamer

Glenn,

There are microcontrollers that have a CAN system built in and I was thinking about trying those out, but they are more expensive than the chips I have. I just stick with the 5V version of RS232, since I have a lot of experience with that. Do you know how many addresses the CAN communication can support?

That pic was cool. I wonder how much memory that requires.

Nick

rotarydoc

Nick,

I'm not sure about the specs on our vehicle systems, as far as addresses supported, they don't tell us all that cool stuff... We typically use about 10 modules in the average car, some more, some less...

I do know that it is a 5v system, however. On our high speed network, the high side should be about 2.7 volts, and the low side, about 2.3 for a total of 5 volts. We had one to fix bugged cars for the most part of the class. It was worse than going to work...lol... One of the cars had a dead short on the HS CAN network, and the voltage equalized at 2.5 volts for high and low. Between that and nearly zero resistance beween the two, we found a paper clip in the wiring harness connector to the vehicle's audio amplifier, which is on the network....[X(] We have 2 network speeds, both high and medium speed. (HS CAN, and MS CAN) And they have names like ISO, and SCP, and of course CAN.

That is a cool website. I'm not sure how much memory that takes, but it's very impressive, what you can do with it. I was zooming in on someones apartment balcony, where they were growing some kind of plants and flowers....lol...

I got 2 flights in today on the 450. I found a new place to fly in a pinch. There is a Moose lodge right near my house, but I never flew there because there were usually members around. But I heard that it got purchased, and they are going to build a school there. I've been watching it for about a week, and it seems to be closed. So I tested it today, and no one noticed or said anything. It's not a huge field, but big enough to get some closer in flying with the 450's in a pinch...

I hope to go back there or my regular field tomorrow, if the weather holds out. It was hard to see the 450 against the bare trees...

Mark,

The other day, you mentioned the Blade MCP X...now you have me looking at them.... Evidently they have a huge recall, the blades/grips are flying off, and it can be pretty dangerous. My LHS sent all but one of theirs back to Horizon, kept one for display...I looked at it...seems pretty cool, a lot of the reviews say it's pretty cool, if you can keep blades/grips on it. HH has a modified blade grip design, and is sending them out to existing customers, but no info on a release date for the helis with the new design yet.

And I swore no new helis this year!!!

Glenn

evdreamer

Glenn,

That is cool you got to fly your 450.

I did a quick store charge on my 450 battery yesterday. I haven't flown my 450 in probably a year, so I was glad to see my battery wasn't totally discharged. When I went to charge it the charger didn't read a Voltage off of the balance connector. I switched the charger adaptor and it read the Voltage. There must be an open on my brand new charger adaptor.[:@]

I forgot to mention this, but I installed my new Outrage pipe on Friday. They made some changes to it. They added steel inserts for the screws instead of the threaded aluminum.

Nick

rotarydoc

Nick,

Sorry about your new charger adapter....hope you can fix it...maybe this week's project..

I can't remember if my pipe had steel thread inserts or not, but I think it did. Either way, that is a much better design than having the screws just thread into aluminum.

I never did get around to flying today, had some catching up to do after the school trip around the house. It's almost staying light long enough after dinner to fly then, maybe this week...

Glenn

JPEE

Hey Glenn,

Good to hear you got the 450 out for a stretch. Cool on finding the back up small flying area too.

Nick,
Great news on getting the new pipe for the heli. Sounds like a good improvement too. Sorry to hear the news on the charger adapter, buts that is an easy fix.


Me,
While the weather was very nice today I couldnt get out and fly, just to many other pressing things to do. But tomorrow is mine My packs are charged and I am ready to go.
And I hope I don't see a snake there tomorrow lol.

btw, I almost forgot. I bit the bullit and bought MGs for my Align DS510's on my 500-2 and all I can say is OUCH $$$$ like $22.00 each X 3. I guess we can always go down and stand
in line and eat at the Mission this week.

John

Aframomum

My Feedback: (10)

Hey guys,

Glenn...it sounds like you had a decent training course in NJ...a refresher can help to sharpen some dull areas. And I'm sure having the weekend off was a plus.

I hope the Moose Lodge works out for you although it sounds like you need to fly above the tree line.

I didn't know about the recall for the mcpx until you mentioned it...scary stuff to have a grip fly off (I remember my crash with my old 450 when that happened). It sounds like Horizon made the modifications to the grip and are offering them to current owners. No heli's this year huh? I think I remember myself saying that too. Forgot to mention I really would like to try out the FBL that the mcpx advertises. Plus, having only 1 heli now I have been finding myself getting a bit more nervous doing some maneuvers, esp inverted stuff. I know I can hover inverted but getting over my nerves and holding it for an entire battery is another story. Maybe something with a much less repair price tag would help.

Nick,

Sounds like your enjoying IE9...think I'll wait a bit before changing over to it. (Let you guys be my Beta testers )

Have you got any flights on the Velocity with the new pipe? Is the new one the same as the old one with just modifications to the threads? Any difference in sound/power? I know different pipes give different power to airplane engines...is it the same with heli engines (would imagine it is)?

How do you go from 14 minute flights to just a measily 4:30 (or so) on your 450? That would drive me crazy! Glad you were able to revive your battery.

JPEE,

How's the snake rangeling going for you? I shouldn't laugh or joke as my wife came home the other day to see a thin black snake go into the garage. I haven't been able to find it so don't know what kind of snake it is yet. Apparently there is a small opening in the bottom seal of the garage door that he was able to get through...going to fix that once I can confirm he's not in the garage.

I hear you on the MG for the 510's...I think I got lucky and got them on sale at AMain for $19...but it seemed they were clearing out their stock at the time. Either way I do know that Monday nights are meatloaf night at the Mission...of course its not the usual steak and lobster your used to but we all have to make sacrifices.

Enjoy your fly day tomorrow.

I did get the chance to fly this morning and it was nice to get back into it. I think I just needed a week off. Now I need some more batteries b/c all I have now is 1...unreal. [:-] Payday is this Friday though, wonder what the mission menu is all next week.

Mark

rotarydoc

Hey guys,

JPEE,

Yeah, the Moose lodge may be a good backup for awhile, until they start building on the land, but hopefully that is a good ways off...we'll see.

Mark,

One of my weaknesses is that I always tend to fly lower, especially in smaller fields like that, so the treelines are often an issue, something I need to work on...

The reviews I read on the MCP X seem to be very good, other than the initial blade grip issue. While not great for doing/learning hard 3D by any means, most agree that it is/can be an excellent way to learn inverted flying with much less risk/expense involved in crashes...

Apparently the FBL system on it works very well, with most reveiws saying it's far better outdoors than the MSR, or of course the co-ax helis ever would. I'd be curious to try one out... Does something that small count as a new heli??

Glenn

evdreamer

Glenn,

I am kind of curious when they came out with this pipe. The steel inserts had a hex side facing the input into the pipe for the pressure tube. Right below the screw hole into the pipe and on the side facing the pressure tube hole is a right angle instead of a curve.

John,

Those metal gears should last a long time.

Mark,

I haven't flown the Velocity since I installed the new pipe. I have been pulling all nighters since Friday to finish my homework from last week. The cylinder part of the pipe looks the same as the old one. I have only used one pipe, so I don't know if other ones would give more power. The manufactures claim their pipes give more power all the time though.

I don't get anywhere near 14min on my Velocity. I did when I was first breaking in the engine and just hovering around. I get about 6.5min on the Velocity. I think I got around 6min on my 450.

That is cool you got some flights in.

Nick

JPEE

Hey Guys............. GOT SNAKE!

Mark I can't even consider having a "maybe" snake in the garage[X(] I have gotten the same way you feel on the fear of crashing.

Lately, I still fly in idle-up but sport flying and a loop now than then, just staying cool. Tied for the expense of dumb thumbs and

mechanical failures.


My buddy is getting his new kitchen (I guess it was contagious) lol so he is down for

two weeks while the contractors are there. He like me is doing as much of his own work as possible. I haven't been flying for awhile, sometime

last week. It's not worrie, I have so much bench work it is not problem. Hey! if I am not flying then I am not crashing is the way I see it


I have just been so busy with none RC stuff lately. In the last three weeks I have both of my daughters birthdays, my grandsons 5th birthday,

my grand daughters church confirmation this past saturday and so on. Man stuffing cash in all of these cards is KILLING ME lol.


Today I drive 30 miles to visit and old work friend who is at his daughters house for a few days ( he lives in Lake Shasta up north ).

He is 90!!! EEK. I have to get the visits in now if ya get my drift.


Good luck with your projects and homework there Nick.

Take care all.. John

rotarydoc

Hey guys,

Nick,

Sounds like they changed a few things on the newer Outrage pipe. Hope it works out well for you when you get a chance to test it.

I'm not sure how much difference pipe design makes on our glow engines (are you really going to notice a 1/10 horsepower gain?) but on larger 2 stroke engines, like dirt bikes, it can make a good deal of power difference, not only more power, but power at different RPM bands specifically...

JPEE,

Sometimes we have to take care of things other than the RC helis, so take your time, and enjoy some of the other things in life....sometimes getting away for a bit is not a bad thing...

No flying here, damp, rain on and off, and windy too...

Glenn

JPEE

Thanks Glenn,

I just keep walking by the helis on three tables in the shop and look away. Like you said I need a break for a day or three LOL

We have gray COLD cloudy skies with wind up to 45 mph for the next few days too.

John

Aframomum

My Feedback: (10)

Hi guys,

Been a bit busy with my new toy...umm, I meant heli. Seriously though, this thing is so dang small it can be considered a toy...with 2500 RPM spinning parts that can slice and maime. I just got it today and my LHS gave me the updated replacement head but told me that HH is wanting the old ones sent back to get them out of circulation. Can't wait to fly her.

And yes...it does count as a new heli...and my first FBL.

Mark

rotarydoc

Mark,

I'm jealous now!

I just read the review in RC Heli, and they liked it a lot....

Keep us updated for sure!!

When did they get the new head parts? My LHS sent all their mCP's back...I guess they will get new helis with the new head already installed...

Glenn

Aframomum

My Feedback: (10)

JPEE,

I hope you have been enjoying all the time spent with family and your friend...you really do have to include in your life things other than helis...just to get that balance and not burn out. Had to laugh about the putting cash into the cards...our little one hasn't quite figured out what money is yet but oh boy when he does...and besides, his sucker parents seem to spend quite a bit on things he really 'just has to have', or should I say would be really cool for him.

No word on the snake...we put down the rid-a-snake stuff in the garage so hopefully he decided to move on. I haven't seen any signs of him so it was probably a one-time hiding thing. Either way I'm going to fix the tear in the garage door seal so no more of his buddies try letting themselves in.

Glenn,

Just saw your post (don't be jealous, just be converted )...I had been heckling my LHS since Tuesday...they were told to keep the kits (but not sell them) and wait until the new heads arrived and they were to put them on...but I figured to save time I would do the refit myself which they were happy to let me do. I do like my LHS. So I ran over there on my lunch break and snatched it up along with the new head (which they just got today )...so I have some work to do tonight. I think the best part will being able to fly in the front yard - something I would never do with the 550. [X(]

I can't stand the wait...thinking of going to my car during my lunch break just to open the box and take a look.

Nick,

All-nighters aye...I remember those very well. Any time yet to test out that new pipe?

Hope everyone is having better weather.

Mark

JPEE

Hello Mark,

Or perhaps a "congratulations mark" is more in order. Another new toy....... hey it must be nice. Remind me to send you

card with some money in it to help out. lol


Sounds like your LHS really takes care of you as does mine. For me, when I walk in it's like Cheers, hey John waddaya need they ask.


I think rather than open the box and just fly, that you chose to change out the head yourself gives you some of that "build reward" right!


Wow they have a "snake-b-gone", I have never heard of that? I have an idea for you rather than using chemicles that

can harm your household. Just go down to the Pet Shop and get yourself a couple of mice and stake those little buggers out in the middle

of the garage and wait! If you get up in the morning and see their gone, guess what?, your snake is still there


More working around the house today. Painted some base boards and installed them in bathroom. That was one of those things I was "gonna get to",

so today I did. I also attached the vanity cabinet to the wall. It had just been sitting there as I was having second thoughts abouts it's exact location.

I found small leak in one of the water supply valves for sink so a few brisk turns of a wrench and wa la that was done. I just spent a full day of

putzing around the house. The little woman (she is 4'10") a virtual giant, planted flowers and such in the front and back yards in her planters. She loves to garden,

beats having her in the Mall......... LMAO


The 500-600 are sitting here on table both calling me and I have been able to ignore them. But tomorrow I think I'll turn a wrench and see what I can

get done on an RC.

Smiles John

Aframomum

My Feedback: (10)

Hi guys,

Just wanted to include a few pictures this morning of my new mCPx. This is a bunch of fun and will be trying to get some video of it flying in the living room later today. Got some Honey-do chores to do this morning so work first then play!

Mark

JPEE

Good Morning Mark,

Well that little bugger looks like and MCX on steroids! Man the servo and head are huge for that small heli. I guess that's why it performs so well.

What I can't understand is why they do their R&D and then after all of that when it goes retail they find the head issues???? Makes a guy wonder.

I wish you hours and days of fun with the baby. John

evdreamer

John,

Hope the birthday parties turned out to be good.

Mark,

That is a cool looking heli.

I probably won't be able to fly again until finals are over with in 3 weeks. I have a really hard programming assignment I need to work on and another calculus test to get ready for.

I am going to pick up some electronics I ordered for my projects after school today and try and prototype my design before work. I have been working on a Battery Management System for lead acid batteries the past month or two. I used what I learned from the Lithium versions in the past and added to it. This is more precise and the balancer shouldn't be affecting the rest of the circuits now (fingers crossed). This will have a 13.5W load to balance the batteries.

It has been really windy and it is raining pretty good right now. It seems like everyone isn't having good weather recently.

Nick