Seen on the street in Kyiv.

Words of Advice:

"If Something Seems To Be Too Good To Be True, It's Best To Shoot It, Just In Case." -- Fiona Glenanne

“The Mob takes the Fifth. If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?” -- The TOFF *

"Foreign Relations Boil Down to Two Things: Talking With People or Killing Them." -- Unknown

“Speed is a poor substitute for accuracy.” -- Real, no-shit, fortune from a fortune cookie

"If you believe that you are talking to G-d, you can justify anything.” — my Dad

"Colt .45s; putting bad guys in the ground since 1873." -- Unknown

"Stay Strapped or Get Clapped." -- probably not Mr. Rogers

"The Dildo of Karma rarely comes lubed." -- Unknown

"Eck!" -- George the Cat

* "TOFF" = Treasonous Orange Fat Fuck, A/K/A Dolt-45,
A/K/A Commandante (or Cadet) Bone Spurs,
A/K/A El Caudillo de Mar-a-Lago, A/K/A the Asset., A/K/A P01135809

Saturday, December 22, 2007

Early Gift

I was given a battery-powered helicopter at our office bash.




The damn thing is surprisingly difficult to fly, it took me several tries to get it to take off without crashing.

This is the controller. The helo is connected to it for recharging and George is checking it out.

As it turns out, the stability of the helo is dependent on main rotor RPM. You set the yaw trim with the two little buttons on the right side of the controller. A trim setting that is good for one rotor RPM is wrong for any other, so the trim control is extremely important. If you try to take off by slowly increasing the rotor RPM (the rotors are fixed-pitch), the helicopter will screw itself into a crash.

What you have to do is "bang" the main rotor throttle right to the setting needed to climb and then use the trim control for directional stability. It will turn as you climb or descend, because you are out of trim, and you have to be careful on landing. It also does not turn very easily and it has a tendency to lose trim when you try to execute a turn.

This is stuff that unless you knew something about flying to begin with, you probably couldn't get it to fly, as the directions gave no clue.

George is fascinated by it in flight, I think he regards it as fair game. If I had a third hand, I'd take a video.

3 comments:

Lurch said...

This has got to be such a waykewl toy.

Comrade Misfit said...

It is fun. But I need to take it to a friend's house who has a larger room until I get better at controlling it.

Since I was given it at work, I think I'm going to use it to buzz my boss. :)

LBJ said...

I like the buzzing the boss part. One of our guys brought in a radio controlled blimp one day. Was sort of fun to watch it bump from cubicle to cubicle thought when it got near the office secret smoker I was afraid we'd have another Hindenburg on our hands.