Another Night Flight Test

Sorry that I have not updated this blog for more than a week.

Many things unrelated to Raven/RC Helicopter happened (in my mind), I have been doing lots of thinking and searching.

Anyway, here is the story continued..

Last Sunday 15-March, I spent some times, did the balancing for the main rotor blade. Since I did not have the special tool to do it, I have to improvise. Screwed the 2 blades together at each end, and balanced it by only holding at the screw.

It took quite some weight to make it balance. First I tried with stickers, but they are just too small and light. Then I use a small card board paper (quite thin one). I stick it at about 1 cm at the end of the blade with a normal salotape.

At the midnight (yeah, I don't think I will have time on Monday..) I went out the the previous place to test it. It was about 12:15am. The green thingy on the blade was the 'weight' to make it balanced with the other side.

From Remote Control Helicopter - 2009

With all equipment put in place, ready to start the engine. Hmm.. my glow plug is broken again (the one I glued with super glue before).

Yes, the engine started ok. All controls are ok. Started to spool up the rotor faster and faster.

From Remote Control Helicopter - 2009

However, even when I pushed the throttle almost to the max, the blade did not seems to spin fast enough. Tried this several time, playing with the throttle, I can hear the engine screaming, indicating good response, but not the main rotor blade!

Shutdown the engine. Quickly I noticed that the metal gear on the top of counter shaft is loose again!! This was the reason why I crashed during inverted for 2 times, and now gear has gone loose again.

I tighten it up and ready for another test.

Started engine again. This time I saw the main rotor spinning up fast quickly responding to my throttle input. Yes, good!! Play with the throttle a bit to make sure it was really ok.

Suddenly, buuuhhhh! Saw something flying very fast, came out from the Raven, directly perpendicular to me, to my left!! The Raven vibrated rigorously, and I was in panic situation. And after flipping 2 wrong switches at the controller, I got the correct switch to shutdown the engine!

What happened?? It was the weight on the blade. It has ripped the white cover of the blade and got loose!! Luckly it did not went towards me or other person around. As the result as well, I have the vertical tail fin broken again. The broken part has stuck into the ground firmly, due to the force of vibration.

From Remote Control Helicopter - 2009

I was worry that the tail blade of its gear may have been damage/loose, however so far everything just looks fine.