I haven't been online much lately. Thursday saw the purchase of my first RC helicopter, a Raptor 50 v2, and pretty much all my waking hours since then (quite a few of which should have been sleeping hours) have been spent trying to assemble these few hundred oddly shaped metal and plastic bits into something hopefully roughly resembling a helicopter. (The incredibly cute picture to the left is not mine; it comes from Eric Balay's site)

Today I went out to the airfield in Tortuguero where Harold, the guy from the hobby shop, gives the free classes every Saturday. My heli is not yet finished (though much closer than I would have expected), but I just went to check it out and see people fly. It was sprinkling off and on, so there were only four or five people there, but I got to see both Harold and one of his students fly their choppers. The guy who'd been learning from him had been flying for about two months, and he wasn't too bad. He could hover and fly around without a problem, if somewhat sloppily, though he couldn't do any kind of aerobatics yet. Still, it gave me hope. However, once I talked to him, I learned that he flies every few days, and most days he spends an hour or two flying on his simulator at home as well. He told me there's lots of guys who come out to that field who've been "learning to fly" for a year or two but they only go out every other weekend or so, and so they still can't fly without Harold there helping them. I'm beginning to suspect that this will in fact be much harder than Harold made it out to be :)

That suspicion is reinforced by the fact that Harold had a bit of a mishap himself today. He moved his hand for a second to adjust a knob on his radio and in that second the chopper dived for the ground. He managed to save it, but the tail rotor did contact the ground (he complained that it was the first set of blades he had ruined so far). I was surprised by how quickly it went out of control. I've heard it said that flying an RC helicopter (and I assume, by extension, a real one) is like balancing a ball bearing on a sheet of plate glass (and that if your heli is improperly set up, it's more like using the bottom of a bowl). That seems a reasonable description, based on what I've seen and read. This should be fun, then. But seeing everyone out there flying today did nothing but increase my enthusiasm. It will definitely be worth the effort. I can't wait to finish building the model so I can get started.

However, my impressive progress was promptly impeded by a stupid mistake. I was trying to cleverly jury-rig a way to keep the piston from moving while I tightened a nut, and instead managed to cleverly dent my piston. I guess it's made of a softer metal than I assumed (yes, it turns out it's aluminum). Oops. However, I was careful not to move the piston much, so that it wouldn't damage the cylinder walls. The dent itself wasn't too bad, and could probably be easily repaired. That is, until I took it to the hobby shop today. The guy there said "Hmm, I don't think it's dented," and forced it to turn. As a result, now there's a nice long gash down the side of the piston, which I assume means the cylinder sleeve is damaged as well. Oh well, at least unlike car engines, these model engines are apparently very cheap and easy to work on. A replacement piston costs $19 and I'm told it takes about 20 minutes to replace, hehe. It's frustrating that I have to wait the week or two that it will take for the parts to arrive, though.

But I ordered a copy of Reflex XTR, an RC flight simulator. It's apparently incredibly realistic, both in visuals and aerodynamics, and comes with a USB adapter cable for your brand of radio, so you can practice with the same radio that you use to control the real thing. From what I've read, a simulator is essentially considered a mandatory part of learning to fly a model helicopter these days, and this is one of two that are considered the most realistic and effective. It will hopefully help to sate my desire to fly while I wait to get my real heli up and running. Hopefully, it will also help to ensure that my first helicopter flight is not promptly followed by my second helicopter purchase.