I’ve been in the radio controlled hobby for almost 15 years now. Aside from the occasional minor hobby knife cut, I haven’t had any major accidents. I even prided myself on my safety record. I’m usually very careful when dealing with dangerous items. On Thursday January 5th, my safety record came to an end.

I was helping a buddy setup his new quad rotor helicopter. He was having some issues with it and asked me to take a look and try to figure it out. To work on these, you tweak the software for the flight board from a computer. The motors are normally disarmed when making changes. Even so, it is always recommended to either disconnect the motors from the ESC’s or to take the props off. I was lazy and didn’t do either. This particular problem was that some of the controls were functioning backwards and to trouble shoot it, I was reversing some settings in the software.

We were making headway and almost had it sorted out, when I hit a wrong button. This button caused the two motors on the far side of the copter to go to full throttle. In an instant the copter lifted that side and tilted right at me. I had no time to think and instinctively threw my hands up to stop it. My buddy grabbed the copter from the back and got it shut down. This likely kept the copter from continuing towards me and eating me alive. I looked down and saw blood and knew I had cut my hand. I went into another room to get some paper towels. I thought it was just a minor scrape as I had no pain. When I stopped to actually look my hand, I saw a huge gash down my left thumb right through the thumbnail. Part of my thumb was laying over, I yelled for help and applied pressure to stop the bleeding.

I was going into shock as I started to realize how serious this was. “I almost cut my thumb off” I said as people started to gather. I looked and saw the trail of blood I left, it was a lot of blood. We hopped in a car and headed for the emergency room. On that trip the pain started to set in. It hurt, a lot! When we got to the ER and I was taken to the triage room, between the pain and my imagination running wild with what was going to happen, I started hyperventilating. My ears, legs and hands were tingling, I almost passed out. I had to control my breathing and eventually came out of it.

I was taken back to a room and had the paper towel removed. The blood was soaked and dry now and it hurt like crazy as they peeled it off my thumb. I looked down and by now, the blood had clotted and filled the gap where the cut was. They took an X-Ray to see if I cut through the bone and we found out that it did take the tip of the bone off, but not enough to worry about. They had me soak my hand for while in some soapy water to clean it out some. Then they gave me three shots at the base of my thumb to numb it. The shots hurt almost as much as the cut as the stinging fiery pain went up my thumb. Then everything felt a lot better. My thumb went numb and the pain went away. The doc came in, cleaned out the wound and started stitching me up. It took nine stitches in all and then they wrapped me up.

Two weeks later, I’m still healing but have some feeling in my thumb and I can bend it and use it for some tasks now. I expect a full recovery and it will take some time for the nail to grow back, but all in all I feel very lucky. It could have been so much worse. The copter could gone right past my hands and into my face. I feel blessed that nothing worse happened and really wanted to tell this story to help remind us all to be careful.

This story should serve as a reminder to be diligent, to not get complacent and lazy, to always think about what you are doing. It would have taken me less than a minute to take the props off and that would have saved me days of pain, frustration, and money. Don’t let this happen to you. Stay safe and have fun.

Jason Cole

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“I’ve flown RC planes for 40 years but had not tried helicopters until Santa
brought this one for my 9 year old. Note that the packaging indicates that this
model is for ages 14+, and that is probably right unless your kid is going to
have lots of help and supervision to get this little model flying well. We live
at high altitude (8000 feet), and were already aware that model helicopters are
marginal performers at this altitude.

We initially tried to fly this in the living room and quickly smashed it into
the furniture. Fortunately it survived, but until you learn to fly it well, you
need a much larger space. We were able to gain access to a school cafeteria this
morning and found that the large, open area of the cafeteria gave us plenty of
room to trim it out and learn to keep it under control. After 3 flights in the
cafeteria, my kid is ready to try it in the smaller space of the school hall
way, and then we will take it home and take on the challenge of the living
room.

Be aware that if you live at high altitude, you may not be satisfied with the
performance. We can maintain an altitude of about 5 feet for the first 3 or 4
minutes of flight time, but after that, as the battery discharges, we can only
fly in ground effect, less then 5 inches AGL. It requires about 3/4 throttle to
hover and nearly full throttle to climb out to shoulder height.

Flying tips:
Find a large, indoor, open space for your first few flights. A school gymnasium
or cafeteria is ideal, but a two car garage or other open space will work. A
place with a smooth floor is really helpful because the landing skids tend to
snag on carpet, causing the bird to flip onto its side.

You can charge from the transmitter, but this rapidly drains the transmitter
batteries. I strongly recommend that you use the USB charging cord instead. We
plugged this into the USB power adapter that came with our Kindle. The charger’s
housing glows red when the chopper is fully charged.

Set up the helicopter so that you are standing directly behind it. Keep
yourself lined up with the tail boom so that the transmitter and the helicopter
are both facing the same direction.

Set the transmitter to the desired channel (A, B, or C) and pull the throttle
(left control stick) stick all the way back, turn on the transmitter and
receiver. Advance the throttle to full and then pull it all the way back again.
This allows the helicopter to recognize the transmitter.

Notice that all of the LEDS are flashing brightly. Use the two blue buttons on
the top of the transmitter to shut these off. You have a really limited power
supply, and the LEDS suck up a lot of juice. At high altitude, we cannot get the
helicopter off the ground if the LEDs are flashing. I’m thinking of removing
them to save the weight and permanently eliminate the power drain.

Gentle Gentle Gentle on the controls. For your first few flights, advance the
throttle carefully and deliberately. Feel the detent notches in the throttle
stick, and practice advancing the throttle one notch at a time until the
helicopter begins to skitter. If you are flying over carpet, you need to quickly
lift off so that the skids dont drag, but this is really tricky, it is easy to
advance the throttle too far, slam the copter against the ceiling and then send
it crashing to the floor.

Its much better on a smooth floor. When it starts to skitter, about 2 more
notches of throttle will take it to an altitude of about 3 inches. Once the
helicopter is airborne, it will hover, more or less in the same place, probably
yawing slowly in one direction or another. Make very small adjustments to the
trim knob between the two control sticks to straighten out any yaw tendency.

Be ready to chop the throttle when the helicopter gets out of control.

You have NO roll control, only pitch and yaw, so you have to fly purely by
attitude adjustment. Right stick controls your pitch and yaw. Pushing the stick
forward causes the helicopter to pitch forward and then begin to fly forward.
Neutralizing the stick returns to hover. Moving the stick from side to side
causes the helicopter to yaw left or right respectively.

Practice yawing the helicopter to the heading you want and stopping the yaw
when it is pointing in exactly the direction you want. Try to yaw it around the
compass, stopping at each of the compass points.

Once we mastered this, we taped four sheets of typing paper to the floor and
practiced flying from point to point, landing on each sheet of paper.

Downside is that the helicopter takes 30 minutes to charge for every ten
minutes of flight time, but this is simply a limitation of the current
technology. A spare battery pack that can be removed for charging would be a
nice upgrade, but overall, I feel that this is a nice little helicopter, and
probably about as good as anyone has the right to expect at this price.

Experiments we are planning to try: We are going to try removing the body shell
and the decorative tail skid. I don’t think either one has any aerodynamic
purpose, they are just for pretty, and if we can remove a few grams of mass, we
think we can get better flight performance.”

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There’s more to it than just free flight though. People have been hacking them and adding in R/C gear to make them controlled. It all started with our eRC Micro Stik receiver board. It’s a super small and light receiver that has two servos built into it and also a brushed motor esc. The first generation R/C Zoomer was a pure controlled glider. We cut in an elevator and rudder and attached pushrods them from the servos. We would launch the Zoomer as hard as we could and were able to control it around and catch a few thermals. It was fun, but we wanted some propulsion. The next step was to add in the motor system from the Micro stik. You had to be creative and carve out foam for the power system and battery. Now we had a fully function r/c model and the airframes only cost $9.99!

The next step for me is to add in twin 40mm ducted fan units! I’ve started the project and hope to finish this winter. Can you image a twin ducted fan EDF Zoomer zipping around the sky? It will be crazy! I can’t wait. These are just some of crazy things we come up. What have you created lately. I’d love to see some of your hacked up planes. Go to our forum page here and post your mods.

Jason Cole

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Lighting has come a long way since those early years and we now have super bright LED Light Strips.  These things are priced well, come in many colors, are easy to install and INCREDIBLY BRIGHT.  You can put them on planes, helicopters, Multi Rotor Copters, or anything you like. I have a hard time finding anything better to light up my models.

The key to lighting your aircraft is color. You’ll want to use several colors and apply them so that you can maintain orientation in any attitude. You are, after all flying in the dark, so you’ll want to be able to see an outline of your plane or at least know where the front, back, and sides are. Use contrasting colors for left and right and front and back to help with that. Another tip is to never look away. That can be hard at a show with many night flying models in the air, but keep you eyes on your plane, lest you lose it. My favorite night flying object right now is my Quad Rotor copter. It just looks so cool in the air. It’s easy to see and fly and people love seeing this little UFO flying in the sky.

If you’d like to give it a shot, go ahead and get some LED Lights and apply them to your favorite airplane. Don’t let the sun tell you when to stop flying. Night flying is so much fun and the best part is, you can fly anytime , no matter what.

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I can’t explain why I like to fly so much. It all started I suppose as a little kid. We lived on 40 acres and I remember having all sorts of flying toys. Foamy wal-mart gliders, boomerangs, and my favorite was a foam toy with 3 sides that you threw like a boomerang but would end up spinning like a top while floating down. I would chase after that thing for hours. I’m hooked on R/C for life, flying doesn’t get old or boring for me. There is always something new to try like multi rotor helicopters or any number of new airplanes. The sky really is the limit.

So what do you do for fun? It doesn’t have to be airplanes or helicopters. You can drive R/C trucks or boats or whatever you enjoy doing. One of our missions here at Hobby Lobby is to “Share the Fun.” I love that. If you’re not having much fun these days, give us a call at 866-512-1444 and we’ll help you get started. It really is fun, and that’s why I fly.

Jason Cole

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I was fighting some aches and pains for the first couple days we were there, but after that, things were smooth sailing. I was camped out in my tent right next to the flight-line, and Jason was hanging between the main tent, and a tree with his hammock. It was nice to wake up and open the tent and see a beautiful dew covered flying field, and wonderful temperatures for the day to come.

Through out the day, Jason and I got a chance to meet a lot of new people, and see some familiar faces as well. Being the first year of this event, I was very impressed to hear we had almost 400 pilots registered. It s amazing how fast the electric community is growing with the quality of batteries, and brush-less motors now a days.

At the flight line we got a chance to fly most of our aircraft including the 1/4 WACO, MiG-29, Dago Red to name just a few. All heads turned when the Dago Red flew its 130mph passes. The video on our website doesn’t come close to giving it justice.

Jason and I both had our DIY quad copters lit up for night flying. We were testing out our line of eRC BL480s motors, and eRC 25amp ESCs with the quads, which worked flawlessly. Jason finally did his first loop with his quad. It just seemed unnatural, but very cool to say the least.

All in all This first time event was a great success for Triple Tree, and will continue to grow as the years come by.

-Neal Davis

Click here to see more photos.

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It all started at about 5am. We were going FLYING! I didn’t sleep much the night before because of the usual pre-trip excitement, but it didn’t matter much now, it was time to load up the truck. I met my flying buddy Chris at his house which about 100 yards from my place (it’s awesome having a fellow R/C nut living that close to you) and we started loading up his Toyota truck. I was followed by Max, Bruce, and another local pilot. We filled the back of the truck and headed out. The destination was about an hour away, near Tullahoma, TN at Normandy Dam. We were cramped with 5 guys in the truck, but the conversation was fun with wise cracks rolling and talk of who will or won’t crash during the day. I couldn’t wait to fly.

For those of who don’t know me, you should know that I started in this hobby flying gliders. I lived in the mountains of NC and we had some amazing places to fly. I flew gliders for 3 years before I touched a powered plane. Flying sailplanes is to this day, my favorite thing to do in this hobby. I can’t really explain it, but there is just nothing like being up on a mountain with picture perfect panorama views, the wind in your face, and a silent flying machine cutting through the air. If you’ve never tried it, you owe it to yourself to get to a slope sight and check it out. It will change your R/C life.

Anyway, when we arrived the sun was up and the wind was blowing. It was a little chilly, but we didn’t care one bit. We immediately raced to get our planes together and see who would be first in the air. I don’t remember who won, but we were all up pretty quickly. We had an arsenal of aircraft to play with. EPP foamies, composite (or crunchies) ships, flying wings, aerobats, we had it all. The air was pretty good to us providing good lift and later in the day, we had some great thermals blow through to gain some serious altitude. I brought out my favorite Hobby Lobby sailplanes, the Samurai, and attached a FlyCamOne HD to it for some video. I’ll share the video at the end of this story, but we got some great footage.

We had many people stop by the side of the road to see what was going on here. We would all showboat a little bit doing low level aerobatics and pushing the limits. Everybody loves an audience. I heard the usual “how high can it go?” type questions and we were happy to talk to interested folks about our fine sport. As the day flew past (pun intended) we began winding down with only a few noteworthy crashes and plenty of stall turns and aerobatics to remember. We starting packing back up and heading for home. Now here is where the “junkie” part comes into play. Instead of just heading home and grabbing some dinner, Max pipes up and says “hey, I was looking at Google Earth and I think a found a new slope we can try just down the road.” Next thing you know, we were winding up one of the small mountain ranges off 24E towards Chattanooga.

We came to a plot of land that was for sale with an awesome view and joked about how we should buy the lot and turn it into a dedicated slope site. It was tight though, trees all around, not much space to make a landing. Taking off is the easy part, but Chris was like “I’ll just stall and spin it straight down.” I had to see that, so Chris got his plane together and became our new slope test pilot. If the lift wasn’t there, it was going to be nearly impossible to retrieve the plane. Luckily, right after launch, the tail went up like a rocket and we knew we had a cool spot. Everyone else grabbed a glider and joined him. Max, used his crunchy composite glider and we all wondered how he was going to get that one down. Everyone else was using combat tested EPP planes that bounce. I took the Samurai up for some more video and had an interesting landing which you’ll see later. Chris came in first and did his stall, snap, spin to the ground. It worked great! It wasn’t so easy for me and the Samurai though with it being made of wood and carbon fiber. I had to approach downwind, fly straight at myself, and then whip it 180 degrees and try to land. After two or three attempts, I got it, but the wing hit some bushes and spun it around with no damage. I was safe! Max on the other hand with his big heavy crunchy plane tried coming in from behind with full crow mix to keep it slow. He got it down, but one of his wings caught on some bushes and you’ll have to watch the video to see how that one ended.

So by now, you should understand why we call ourselves “Slope Junkies.” We’re insane for flying gliders on hills using crazy wind energy generated by the sun to soar aloft for hours on end. It was an amazing day of flying, friends, and fun. The only question left to ask is, when can we do it again!?

Jason Cole
Member of S.A. (Slopers Anonymous)

Enjoy the video.

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This article is more about drop kicking a specific helicopter, the Durable Micro Heli . You wouldn’t want to drop to kick a .90 size glow engine heli unless you wanted a trip to the hospital. With that in mind and borrowing from one of my favorite TV shows, Myth Busters, let me say this, do not attempt this at home, I’m what you call an “expert”.

I know there is a burning question in your mind after reading that first paragraph. Why on earth would he want to drop kick a helicopter? Well the answer is pretty simple. It’s called the Durable Micro Heli, and I wanted to see if it could live up to its name. Of course I was skeptical, when I got into flying electric powered helicopters the Ikarus Piccolo was THE helicopter to have. It was fantastic, we could actually fly indoors. The downside though, was that if you even thought about running into a wall or ceiling fan, or thick air, something was going to break. Calling a helicopter durable is like calling Dolly Parton slim…

So that leads me back to drop kicking this helicopter and the fundamentals of doing so. The first thing you want to do before participating in any physical activity like drop kicking is stretch. Limber up those arms, legs, and torso. Cardio is key, you don’t want to look like an idiot and cramp up after you’ve just drop kicked a helicopter right? Ok, now that you’re good and warmed up, you’ll want to visualize the kick in your head. Think about the rotors spinning and in slow motion, imagine yourself flying through the air Chuck Norris style, leg extended, and knocking that heli right out of the air. In real life it will be nothing like that, so now you know what not to expect.

On to the real deal. For my drop kick, I held the heli by the tail, made my best soccer pose, released and kicked it sky high. I expected parts to go flying everywhere, but it landed in one piece. I could not believe my eyes, if that would have been a Piccolo, there wouldn’t have been a piece left the size of a dime. I was truly stunned. This thing really is durable, and not only that, but it was able to fly around afterward like nothing happened.

Now, do I recommend that you actually go out and drop kick this helicopter? Absolutely not. Don’t blame me if you do and break something, we didn’t say indestructible, just durable. Will drop kicking this helicopter and still flying it put a huge smile on your face. You bet it will. Alright, it’s time for me to stretch some more. Go fly something, have some fun and remember, cardio is key.

Jason Cole

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We got a tow to about 2000 feet and headed straight for the nearest thermal. It was easy to tell when we hit it because the plane would quickly jump in elevation, also you can watch the altimeter as it shows you how many feet per minute you are rising. At one point we were able to maintain a 600 feet per minute ascent! After telling me the basic controls the instructor let me fly the plane around for about 10 minutes. I was able to fly into different thermals and gain altitude on my own (or at least attempt to). Eventually the pilot took back the controls and asked if I was ready for a wingover, I said sure and he went into a mild dive then pulled back on the elevator with a slight mix of left aileron. The plane did a nice 4G wingover and I have to say it was a pretty intense amount of force! Next the pilot did what he calls a “Zoomie”, we hit about 110 knots flying low at about 500 feet over the private runway! Needless to say this was one of favorite flying experiences of all time! To see some of the R/C sailplanes and gliders that Hobby Lobby sales click here.

-T.J. Moore

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