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 Here is my BladeCP.net
website. It focuses on my E-flite Blade CP electric helicopter, including some modifications I made
to use the Spektrum DX6 spread spectrum radio system and a separate gyro. Please contact me if you
would like to buy the domain name for $150.
 My first R/C helicopter was a DuBro Tri-Star, back
sometime around 1976 (the year I graduated from high school). I think it
was purchased through Tower Hobbies. Come to think of it, just
about every mail order purchase I have ever made has been through Tower
Hobbies, but that's another story. The Tri-Star was named so because it
could be built with three different ABS plastic body styles: standard
non-scale, Hughes 500, or Enstrom. Mine never got past the standard body, which
was styled after the Scorpion home-built helicopter. If anyone has one for sale,
please let me know; I'd like to reacquire one for the sake of nostalgia.
 A
Super Tigre .46 powered it (barely). The biggest pain was the
centrifugal clutch. The clutch material that was on the inside of the
bell housing had to be epoxied in place, and the darn thing never lasted
for more than two or three flights before it had to be re-epoxied. The
tail boom was very thin aluminum and easily creased when the tail would
hit the ground. Although I never broke and blades, I spent a lot of time
repairing the clutch and tail boom. I built a spider type training gear
for it that consisted of five fiberglass arrow shafts and some whiffle
golf balls on the ends. At the time, gyros for the tail cost about as
much as the helicopter did ($200), so I never had the benefit of one.
After learning to hover somewhat successfully, I dared to venture into
my first deliberate forward flight. It took about fine hair-raising
minutes to finally get it back into a hover where I could land. I
remember that I was flying from the parking lot of a hotel that was next
to a busy highway. More than once during that flight I was sure I was
going to smash into a car (I don't think the drivers were even aware of
how close I came to them). After that, flying was done at a school.
 I
went into the U.S. Air Force in November of 1978, and brought the
Tri-Star to my permanent duty station at Robins AFB, GA, where it hung for
three years but never flew. After getting out of the USAF, it was sold
to some guy in Annapolis, MD, for about $100 (including the engine).
ECO 8 Electric RC Helicopter
My next venture into RC helicopters came about a decade
later when I bought an Ikarus ECO 8 electric chopper from Hobby Lobby
(c.1998). It was pretty lam in performance with the stock motor and a
very heavy NiCad battery pack. At least there were no clutch problems to
deal with. This time I had a heading hold gyro for the tail rotor and I
was actually able to somewhat fly the thing. After losing patience with
the lameness of the power plant, I sold it on an AOL bulletin board to
some guy in Florida. It had not suffered any damage beyond a slight dent
in the tail boom where one of the main blades slapped it on a
less-than-soft landing.
E-flite Blade CP
Electric Helicopter
 Please
click here for the dedicated Blade
CP webpage. |
