Raven says I like to fly!

Hi good morning.

Yesterday (Sunday), I have the chance to fly the Raven. I was pretty busy on Saturday with other commitments, so I was not able to spend my time with Raven.

Ok, on the Sunday morning, at about 11am, with all equipments and Raven loaded into my car, I drove to Putra Heights Field II. Friend fliers were already there, and have flew their aircraft. There were Sidi, Keza, Bard, Zamri and few others not in the photo.

From Remote Control Helicopter - 2009

I quickly brought out the Raven and the supporting equipments. Fill up the fuel into Raven. I have very little left from this gallon, not even half of the Raven tank. Well, that should be enough for the initial test flight. It has been a while the Raven did not fly properly. The previous session (last week) it did have good lift off, but have broken vertical tail fin dropped during the flight.

From Remote Control Helicopter - 2009

Starting up the engine was easy. Alhamdulillah. With only one tries, it started right away.
After checking and confirmed that I have good response from the controls I started to increase the throttle, lifted off and I bring it to hover at about 6 inch heights. I need to be very careful there are so many trees at the surrounding.

Bring it to ground again, just to make sure everything is ok. I adjusted the throttle curve at my Spectrum DX7 radio controller. I was having throttle curve mid point quite low, used for lift off attemp with the older blades. After I confortable with everything, I did the take-off, hover at head high, slowly move forwared from the shades to the open space. Did a quick figure 8 like manuever then I brought it to land infront of me. Almost finished the fuel elready. Shutdown the engine and bring it back to the shades under the trees.

After a quick rest, I started to fill up fuel into the Raven again. This time I am using RedMax fuel, same 15% nitro mix, a new gallon.

Started the engine without any problem. This time I carried by hand the Raven to open space, I felt it was too risky to take-off and taxi from the shades out. This time I passed my camera to a friend. That is why I can share the photos of Raven flying this time.

Lifted-off ok. Control all checked ok. The Raven just drifted a bit to the left, so I adjusted the trim to the right a few clicks. Switched to idle-up mode. Started to fly figure 8, slowly. It has been about 3 weeks I have not flying the Raven like this. Yes, better start with slow maneuver first.

From Remote Control Helicopter - 2009

I flew the Raven at about 20 feet above ground. I don't think that was high enough to prepare for emergency, however flying higher than that hurt my eyes, the sky was very bright and to watch Raven flying at higher altitude was difficult and painful.

I did some more, faster figure 8s, and some semi-stall turns. I don't dare to try the full stall turn yet, furthermore, for that I will need to fly at higher altitude.

From Remote Control Helicopter - 2009

After about 12 minutes, time to land, I slowly bring it to hover infront of me at about 5 to 6 feet. Then slowly I controlled it to land at the shades where I first did the take off.

From Remote Control Helicopter - 2009

From Remote Control Helicopter - 2009

Session end at about 12.20pm.

Alhamdulillah. Fully satisfied :)

For next session I will need to first check and setup back the main blade pitch. My current setup, the pitch range is from +9 to -9. I can feel that the climb rate is much slower compared to previous where I have +11 pitch.

Thank you and wassalam.

::truemax

ps: will add photo later. :)