Had my first solo flight today. Well, semi-solo, anyway. Harold was at my side and had to take over at one point when the helicopter got far enough away that I couldn't make out which way it was pointing, but other than that it was all me. The first flight was with the trainer cord, to get me warmed up and used to it again. The second was on my own with him at my side, and then for the third, he went and sat down and kept an eye on me as I took it up and hovered and practiced landings.

I made four or five landings, and all but two of them were actually not too bad. One of them was just OK — I misjudged the helicopter's altitude and cut the throttle with it about two feet up, so it dropped down sort of hard but no trouble. The other one was closer to an accident — when the helicopter is pointing forward and is sort of far away, it's hard to tell whether or not it's moving forward or backward, and that was exactly my problem. Apparently it was moving forward and I thought it was standing still, so as I set it down it tilted precariously forward on its landing gear, but I was able to bring it down before the rotors touched the ground.

So I'm definitely not there yet :) But surprisingly close. I figured it'd be months before I was flying alone, but already I'm nearly there. Harold said he figures in three weeks or so I'll be ready to start learning aerobatic flying. Sweet :) That's what I like about helicopters: there's always something new to learn, if you want to. I can enjoy just flying around, build scale fuselages to mount on the helicopter, etc; but if I want a challenge, I can keep learning more advanced 3D flying.

Also had another display of Harold's skill. He was flying his Raptor 90, doing various 3D stunts. At one point, he was hovering inverted about 75 feet up, and the actuator rod that controls the tail rotor snapped. However, he managed to flip it back upright, shut off the engine (to reduce the torque that was no longer being counterbalanced by the tail rotor), and bring it down safely in a very clean autorotation (the helicopter equivalent of a glide, where you use the air passing upward through the rotor to keep it spinning so that you can slow the descent before landing). He got it down safely with no damage. Very impressive. Everyone else there agreed that if it had been them flying, the helicopter would be in pieces now :)