Lama V3 crash!

My Lama V3 has been flown extensively the last couple of days and as usual I'm having a lot of fun with it. I'm really glad I bought it. So if you want a nice little 4 channel coax heli you really should consider The Lama V3. I wonder if there is any diference between the Lama V3 and V4?

eSky 4CH Helicopter Co-co Lama Version 3 Micro Heli Radio Remote Control RC Helicopter RTF for $69.95


Today I had the heli up about 10 m (about 32 ft) into the air when I had to "adjust" to not fly into a tree. The wind conditions was pretty close to perfect (almost no wind). It seems this heli can't handle too much roll cause when I tried to roll it away from the tree it just lost every bit of lift and crashed straight into the ground. OK it was on grass but I was pretty sure that this was my last flight with my precious Lama V3. But no no. The flybar came snapped off and that was everything. I just had to put the flybar back in place and then I was up in the air again :)

/MidnightSunRC

Moved to blogger

I have moved this blog from wordpress to blogger now. All posts here on will be published simultaneously on both blogger and wordpress.

/MidnightSunRC

Foam plane

Meanwhile in the bat cave... I had to start out with something and until I can figure out what plane I want I started to build a foam plane. It is an Extra 300 and I got the plans from RCPowers.com. I will put up some more information on my progress on this one as well as what power system I will use.

That's all for now but I'm really starting to feel the air under my wings now :)

Back into r/c after a break

Been away from the "r/c business" for a while now but today I dusted off my ESKY Lama V3 heli and took a trip. I really like flying this little heli. First I flew around inside but then I took it out into the backyard. The wind is really a problem for this one!

Some time ago I started to build a foam plane out of a foam sleeping roll (not sure if that is the correct name). The plans I used are the free Extra 300 from rcpowers.com. I believe you're supposed to use depron or something similar but I didn't have that so I used the only foam I had att hand - the sleeping roll. The plane is finished and I have to say that this is a really neat way to get yourself a r/c plane at a budget. I believe the actual building time was about an hour or two (with no electronics installed). I took the plane out on it's maiden flight and boy is this plane maneuverable! I tossed the plane up in the air and my pulse went up at 200 bpm at once. I made a few swirls, loops and other unmentionable maneuvers before landing the plane. During landing i broke the prop. Since this maiden flight I have made some modifications to it and put some landing gears on it and made adjusted it to be a little less touchy. Now I am ready to fly again :)

In earlier posts I've been writing about r/c simulators. Simulators are really good since you can crash your plane and the next second you are up and flying it again. But when I tried my plane for the first time I thought about crashing it pretty much all the time. I believe this made me extra nervous. But I truly recommend a simulator before trying your own plane for the first time.

Happy flying!

Lama V3 swashplate problem

Inspired to fly from my trip to the local r/c field earlier today I brought my Lama V3 heli out into the backyard. Flew around for a while and then "landed" a bit hard. Started up again and when I got the heli up into the air it started to do the mighty wobble. Shaking and swirling around the helicopter hit the grass. I removed the battery cable and inspected the heli and couldn't see anything wrong so I connected the battery again and throttled up. Same thing - the whole helicopter just shaked uncontrollably (this time still on the ground). I disconnected the battery again and took a closer look and now I saw that the inner swashplate had separated from the outer swashplate. It was a but tricky but I managed to push the two pieces together again. In order to do this I had to adjust the servos to get the outer swashplate in the right angle.

After this happened the swashplate has separated a couple of times. But I don't want to glue it in place if I want/need to change it in the future. So now my standard procedure before every take off is to check that the two pieces are tight together. I don't know if it's common with plastic swashplate but I'm thinking of buying the aluminum swashplate for my Lama.

eSky 4CH Helicopter Co-co Lama Version 3 Micro Heli Radio Remote Control RC Helicopter RTF for $69.95


I also spent some time on the simulator tonight flying planes. Installed a new version of my r/c sim ClearView. My previous version was 4.98 and this version is 5.02. I don't know but I think the system requirements for this latest version is somewhat higher. I felt that I was experiencing lagging or something, I'm not really sure. There was some difference in the feeling. I have to try it some more to pinpoint my feeling. Maybe I also should mention that the computer that I have the simulator installed on is not the latest and greatest...Well well, that will be a later issue.

I want my own r/c plane now!

Trip to local R/C field

Today was a beautiful day so I decided to take the long waited trip to the local r/c field. It was not exactly crowded out there but there were three persons flying. One was flying a pretty large gas Extra 300, one person had a couple of electric planes and one had some kind of home built gas plane. I hung around for an hour or so and felt that I have to start looking more actively at finding myself a r/c plane.

Here are my "specifications":

• 4 channels


• Preferably electric


• Something that I can grow into (by this I mean that it should be easy but being able to fly more advanced too)

Lama v3

OK, I couldn't stand the "pressure" so I had to buy the Esky Lama V3 Helicopter. Have to say that this is so much fun. I will get back to this one, probably this weekend, because now I have to fly!

I am also looking at some RTF airplanes with 4 channels to start out with.

eSky 4CH Helicopter Co-co Lama Version 3 Micro Heli Radio Remote Control RC Helicopter RTF for $69.95

Lama V3 Review

This will be a short review of the Esky Lama V3 r/c helicopter. Before I start I have to state that this is the first and only r/c heli that I have ever owned or flown. This is also the first r/c review I have written...

So out of pure abstinence I bought a Esky Lama V3 r/c heli and it has been a nice acquaintance this far. It is a small coaxial heli, meaning that it has no tail rotor but instead to rotors on top of each other rotating in different directions, to be flown inside or outside when there is pretty much no wind.

What's inside the kit
The kit comes with the helicopter, a 4 channel radio (incl. 8 non rechargeable batteries), 800mAh LiPo battery, battery charger/balancer for two or three cells , AC and DC connection for the charger, extra set of rotor blades, a cable to connect the transmitter to your computers USB port and the FMS simulator on a CD. As you can see this is a Ready To Fly (RTF) kit that comes with pretty much everything you need to get started.



First impression
My first impressions of the Esky Lama V3 when I got it out of the box was plastic. It really has no quality feeling to it but then again you might get what you're paying for. At about 99$ (990 swedish krona) I still think this is a nice heli to start with. The transmitter has much more quality felling to it than the heli. I really liked that there was a charger/balancer included so the LiPo gets balanced while charging it.

Before flying
There is not much to do before you are ready to fly the helicopter. Place the batteries into the transmitter, charge the LiPo (about 1-1,5h), turn on the transmitter and then connect the LiPo to the heli.

Flying the Esky Lama V3
After turning on the transmitter and connected the LiPo to the heli you are ready to fly. There are of course some trimming that has to be done in order to get this little thing to hover but I was amazed how easy it is to fly the Lama V3 heli. The battery will allow about 10 minutes flying and after the first recharge I was able to hover and move around a bit. At this point I felt that I was ready (yeah right!!) to take it outside and fly around. Everything started fine and then some wind tossed the heli into the ground - CRASH! The inner shaft broke at the top where the flybar is connected. I used some string and glue to fix the problem and soon I was flying again. After a couple of charges it was time for major crash number two. I think my repair broke and the flybar flew into the rotor blades and one can say that I landed pretty hard. This time the tail also broke and that is another thing that ads to the poor quality. The tail is fragile and I mean really fragile! It is now broken in several places but some tape fixed that problem.

But all in all this is an easy to start with r/c helicopter that will help you to learn the basics (at least I think) of flying r/c helicopters. One thing that I noted was that my simulator training worked really well. But I don't know if I got stressed up but with the simulator I had no problems fly towards me but in "real life" I had some problem making the connections in my brain. But I'm sure that some practice will put an end to that minor problem.

Spare parts
As I mentioned above this is a fragile little thing and you will need spare parts. I have bought two extra inner shafts. One with plastic parts like the one included in the kit and one aluminum. If you hit the ground or a wall or whatever with the rotors or flybar the plastic top of the inner shaft will break.

I also bought a extra flybar in case of some serious bending of the original. It hasn't been necessary to use that one yet.



An extra tail is probably a good thing to buy as this might be the most fragile thing on the Lama V3. I think that the one sold as spare is a bit more flexible and I think you can buy it in yellow (as the original) and in grey (or maybe it's white).

Extra rotor blades will always come in handy but remember that a extra set (one pair for the upper and one pair for the lower) rotors are included in the kit.

There is also a "crash kit" that you can buy that includes some of the parts that you are most likely to break. I didn't buy this one because they didn't have it in stock when I needed my parts.

Conclusions
The Esky Lama V3 r/c helicopter is a nice and quite cheap coaxial r/c helicopter that you will be able to fly within a couple of test runs. I think it is a good heli to learn the basics of r/c helicopters but if you want to get more advanced there are other helis to go for. The quality of the heli is quite poor but atleast the transmitter and charger/balancer has ok quality.

Since it seems like this is a fairly popular heli there is quite a lot of information on the Internet if you run into problems. Just type in "Lama V3 problems" into google and you will get links to forums discussing the most common problems that can (and will) occur.

To wrap this up I would recommend this heli for the beginners but be aware of that you should probably buy some spare parts at the same time as you buy the helicopter!

eSky 4CH Helicopter Co-co Lama Version 3 Micro Heli Radio Remote Control RC Helicopter RTF for $69.95

Flying R/C simulator

I've spent a lot of time in front of my computer flying r/c simulator. This is so much fun. It's almost as if this could be enough. I mean, it really feels like I'm flying outside with a real r/c plane! There are 40 planes in my simulator (ClearView as mentioned in an earlier post) and also 40 helicopters. Up until now my main goal has been to learn r/c planes but I have to extend my goal with r/c helicopters too.


Well, now it's just practice practice practice and I am proud to say that I have come a long way. My tip to you is to spend a lot of time with your simulator before trying the real thing.

This was just a short update on my progress. I will soon start to look for a airplane to buy. It should be something that is easy to fly, durable but still something that will last. Any suggestions?

R/C field trip - not today!

Had a plan on going to the local rc field today and see if there were any enthusiasts there but the rain is stopping me. If the weather allows it I will go there tomorrow instead.

Hmmm, I feel that I have lost some momentum in my mission. I feel that I have flown using the rc simulator up to the point where I feel that I know the basic handling of the plane. As posted earlier I have started to look at rc helicopters to and I have done some simulator flying there as well. My diagnosis is this: I need to try the real stuff! Maybe I can try flying at the rc field if I go there?

What else...I have been looking through most of the videos from RCPowers.com on YouTube (rcsuperpowers on YouTube). I like those videos and I like the enthusiasm shown by these people :)

Here we go!

So I am now the proud owner of a R/C flight simulator. It's really fun and I think this is a very good way to start out this hobby. A simulator is a simulator, it is not the real thing. But it can prepare you for the real thing without spending a lot of money on crashing numerous planes and helicopters on your way. In a simulator you can crash your plane hundreds of times and it doesn't matter, it will still fly the next time :)

You can fly the simulator in various ways. You can use the keyboard, a game pad, a special usb transmitter or your own transmitter. If you are using your own transmitter you have to use a special cable to connect the transmitter to your computer. But if you are using your simulator to prepare yourself for the real thing you should use the special usb transmitter or connect your own transmitter to the computer. Why? Because you have to get the feeling of using your thumbs to steer the plane, do corrections and react by reflex to things happening to your plane.




Below is a compilation of simulators. This might not be a complete list but these are the ones I've been looking at

• ClearView (about 40$, good feeling, nice graphics and a good collection of planes and helicopters)


• RealFlight (about 200$, good feeling, nice graphics, comes with a special usb transmitter)


• FMS (free!, no good feeling, fair graphics)


• Phoenix (about 130$, no transmitter but I think it comes with a cable to connect your own, haven't tried this simulator, nice graphics, haven't tried it)


• FS One (about 100$ including special usb transmitter, nice graphics, haven't tried it)

My choice:

• E-sky usb transmitter (about 20$ and includes the FMS simulator on a CD)
  


• ClearView

I made my choice pretty much based upon the cost of the simulator. The Esky transmitter comes with the FMS simulator on a CD for about 20$. That transmitter works great together with the ClearView simulator (40$) an all this is a fair deal compared to the hundreds of dollars that you have to spend on the other simulators. But! I did not say that this is the best you can get but it's a fair deal that works for me. To be honest I really wanted the RealFlight simulator and as I said before my choice was based pretty much on the cost. Most important I am really pleased with my setup :)

Summary:
What you need:

1. A fairly new computer
2. A special usb transmitter or your own transmitter (with special cable to connect it to your computer)
3. A simulator of your choice

What you get:

1. Feeling of flying R/C planes or helicopters
2. How to correct and react to your planes movements
3. You can crash and learn!
4. Based on which simulator you choose you get a more or less realistic experience and a good time

Before you choose a simulator be sure to try them out. You can get a free demo from most of them with some limitations but it's worth trying. Maybe the most expensive one isn't the best for you!?

The first conclusions

Today showed up as a beautiful day. The sun is shining and the snow is rapidly melting away. This fact made me stay away from the computer and my investigations around the Internet for articles and information about beginning R/C airplanes. But during the week I have run over some interesting sites and also found out that there are really good information out there. And there are lots of information! So here are two examples where I spent more time reading and watching:

www.rcpowers.com
Dave runs among other things a "ThursdayBeginnerBlog" where he every week go through materials, building foam planes, radio control and many other things. He's also on YouTube under the name RCSuperPowers with over 100 videos. This man has got me inspired that is for sure! This is really good and has been the my top pick for information. He is currently restructuring into a "version 3" and will be up with new information first week in May.

www.ampaviators.com
Good collection of articles for the beginner. I have read a few and will return there. Here is a link to the beginner guides.

I have come to some conclusions this far:

1. I will start with an electric foam RTF or ARF plane!
2. I will get a simulator and start at that end to get the feeling of flying with a stick radio.
3. I will put up a list with my "top pick" links.

These first two conclusions will be discussed in later posts.

I have also come to the conclusion that right now I have to go outside and barbecue! See ya!

Welcome to MidnightSunRC

Welcome to MidnightSunRC!

I have a new mission. I will learn to fly R/C planes and maybe also R/C helicopters. So here’s the deal. I have flown R/C planes a few times like 15 years ago so I have the basic understanding of it. But now I want to take up this hobby and really learn and get great at it.

By the way, R/C is an abbreviation for Radio Control
So here's what I will start to do this week:

1. Search the Internet for R/C plane resources
2. Take a trip to the airfield of the local R/C club and see if anyone is there
3. Learn how to use blogger.com and set things up

I think that will be enough for this week because I have other things to do besides all the fun, like work and some renovation on the house and such things.

However, I will share my progress and things that I learn and do in this blog. Maybe you should join me in my mission and start this hobby too and share your progress with me? Or maybe you are already into this and want to share your thoughts, knowledge or whatever with me.

Join in and learn to fly!