I can see the blue sky, i can smell the rain.

After 3 weeks of hazy conditions, the skies are finally clear again and it started raining, along comes the cool fresh air. This means the monsoon season is here and the slope season is just a few weeks away! We can only fly at the BR slope during the northeast monsoon season when the winds blow from north east and hit directly at the BR slope. This only last 2-3months thats why its always so cherished. Its time once again to monitor the winds so that when the winds blows in the right direction we can be there, at the slope flying. The winds conditon can be monitored at the Met station website here or at the windguru website here which is fair acurate. Bookmark the links so you can reference to them easily.
I decided to re-tape my weasel as some parts of the coverings were damaged from last season. Tore out all the tapes , even the elevons, slowly retape them back and changed the fin.Its always nice to start fresh. lol. Almost finished, left with the wings covering.

Hari raya Holiday Funfly BR

We got together for an extra day of funfly during the week as it was a holiday! Great day again. More heli flyers are joining us, some to learn, some to hone their 3D skills and that day we actually had more helis than plane! Wow. Star of the day was the lmf's Hirobo lepton ex. He installed a hacker A30-10XL on 4s3700 Flightpower lipos. It looked like a very well designed machine, although not fully tune yet, im sure he will bring out the full potential of Lepton when he finish tuning it. The mini mag almost stole the show when it burst into flames after a crash on take off. Luckily only the ESC was burnt. Fried chips anyone?

Funfly 21 Oct Br

Some pics of todays funfly. Couldnt take more as run out of camera battery.

Piccolo Z craze hits. We have one today as well. Its really small as seen compared with the trex600. I tried flying, couldnt fly it really well as it was quite windy. Its controlled by infra red so got to keep pointing it at the heli. The controls were only throttle up/down and rudder left/right. Heard that even alan szabo is flying it. Wahaha what a craze. Well it can do pyros.

I was amazed at this flyer who came to fly with his OK model medallion. His on/off switch was just the two main battery to ESC wire twisted together! lol. First time i see something like that, talk about saving cost. The more u twist the higher amps it can take?

Last few pics are some of the wannabe bomber. lol. The trex 600 batteries are so huge. Wonder if will get stopped if we walk into the mrt with these.

Got some new toys today as well, more of that laterz.

Extra repairs complete

The repairs to the extra turned out pretty well. The motor mount was reinforced with a few pieces of ply and the utimate glue expanded and filled up the gaps nicely. It feels strong when i hold up the plane by the firewall and gives it a few twists here and there.Put a few drops of CA to the mounting holes before retapping them to make the screw threads last longer. I do this to all my wooden screw holes' threads.

The damage cowling was repaired with a layer of fiberglass cloth and epoxy. Sand it down and sprayed painted. Amazingly the motor fits together with the cowling better after the repair. Oh well as they always say planes flies better after repair. Back in the air for hovering training soon.

Free Trial RC Mags

Look what arrived in the mail today - free trial issue of the Quiet flyer and 3-D flyer! I was pleasantly surprised to receive them as they actually honour their free trial issue promotion even to international customers.


I bought these 2 mags when i went to US a few months back and found that they are one of the better RC mags around. The articles inside have very good technical details and contain alot of hands on tips and know-hows. What i like is the Quiet Flyer mag has articles on sailplanes and gliders which few other mags have. And the 3-D flyer showcase some of the best 3D stuff for helis, planes all in one. After reading, i wanted to subscribe to them. When i went to their website and saw that they had a free trial issue, i signed up for it thinking that it may be just a gimick. Wala, both the mags arrived today although its after 6 weeks, but hey they are free and they are the latest issues!

Highly recommended mags are from Kiona Publishing. You can get your free trial issue there.

Numb thumbs

I was starting to get a hang of hovering the extra when the unfortunate happened today. Learnt another lesson, never try to do new stuns when at low attitude and when the TX battery is low , do not fly. LOL. Basic stuff yet it happened. Dam dumb me. It happened so fast i cant remember what i was doing, i only remember plane was flying low, was trying to do a hard loop, pulled the elevator full then the TX low batt alarm sounded, and my thumbs went numb, the plane went into a spin. I think i was in two minds when the alarm sounded i cut the throttle immdiately and held on to the elevator causing the plane to stall and spin.The plane crashed head on, i could heard the sound of the balsa motor mount breaking , a nice piakaaaaa sound. That was it packed up and went home, feeling sian, knowing it was going to be another tedious repair as i learnt from the previous experience.

On examination, the electronics are fine, even the prop was ok. only the cowling and motor mount damaged. I slowly removed the damaged pieces and cut out a new firewall using 3mm ply with the dimensions i measured from previous repair. Made a L piece ply to hold the firewall in place to the plane. Then added pieces of lite ply as reinforements. Used elmers utimate glue for the gap filling effect. Very time consuming to repair balsa, got to measure, cut, sand, glue, clean up all the dust. Makes me think that the mulitplex acromaster maybe be better over the extremeflight yak54 as the next plane. Spent 3hrs just to repair the motor mount. Still got the cowling..... that one leave it to tomorrow. haiz. numb thumbs.....

Dark side is growing

I can feel the power of the dark side. At the last 2 days of flying at Segar, we were joined by a few nitro heli flyers. After seeing them fly , woooooo , their helis have so much power!. And because of their big size they were so much easier to be seen in the sky. Many a times when i flew my trex, i lost orientation cos it flew too far out and became too small. It was also affected by wind easily, when a big gust of wind comes, the trex will be blown around. The .50 size raptors at the field were so stable.They zip around the sky and performed 3D moves with ease. Autos, funnels, piros . The sound made by their engines and hugh blades as they slice the air sounded imtimidating yet exciting. Boy,they made the trex looked like a toy.

The power of the dark side is strong and growing, but i shall hold back for now, the season is coming, the sloping season. And im definitely looking forward to that.

Flying Through walls

Today i came across an interesting article here. In is it says that some helicopter pilots that don't use simulators progress faster than those with simulators and buying a 2nd hand heli may help you progress faster. This doesn't make much sense but it happens all the time, why? Here's the gists of it, it boils down to believe and fear. They can do it because they want and believe they can do it, and they are not afraid to do it. Many people are limited by their own walls, and walls are what they are..fear, money, pride,or just plain ego. Many a times we are held back by our own fears. Fear of crashing, fear of losing face. Just like when i was trying to do FF.

Each of us can fly as good as anyone else and we are only limited by our own fears. To progress to the next level, you need to believe you can do it and fly through your walls. Don't be afraid to try. Once done, your flying takes on a new confidence and you will feel that you have opened up a whole new world!I guess this applies to other aspects in life as well...

Elogging on my trex

One of my flying kakis got a elogger for his heli, so i borrowed it to put it in my trex to test. I have always wanted to find out what's the amp draw like on my trex as its kinda hard to do it with the usual wattmetters. This device is great!Small and light enough to connect inline between the battery and ESC for flights, allowing me to log down the different flight specs.



For the test, i did a basic hover for awhile and a few punch ups to see what was the max amps drawn. From the graph , can see that my trex hovering amps is around 8.5 amps. The flightpower lipos are still holding their voltage well at slightly above 10.5v under load, dropping to 9.9v on punch ups. my max amps is 22.8amps at the peak of the punch for a max watt output of 225.2watts which is well within my motor and esc specs.I luv to see the different numbers as they allow me to gauge how the electronics and heli is performing, must be due to the engineering side of me. What i like most about is the software allows you to zoom in to which ever part of the graph you want and it will recalculate the different parameters base on what is selected. Pretty cool stuff. Highly recommended for those perfectionists out there who wants to fine tune their helis and planes

30 Sept weekend Funfly Pics

Pics from this weekend's funfly. Weather was abit hazy, but that kept the sun out, not much wind too, great time to fly. Enjoy.

CKS's Storch kit built from E*star models. Cjen's piper cub , KP's Edf funjet. Newbie's huge motor (2KW?) n 125 amp esc for his upcoming project. Had a cake to celebrate KP's birthday.Happy birthday kp! Some flying at BP.