Close Call For T-Rex

After messing about with the T-Rex out in the front yard yesterday I had a couple of moments where she started yawing to the left and seemed to stop answering rudder. It wasn't like a complete failure - the heli didn't pirouette, but it was not controllable.

This was easily handled out the front - I only had her 3 feet off the ground so just close throttle and land.

Anyway, popped back down to nitrodude to get Paul to take a look at it. He had a fly, we played with the gain on the gyro a bit, and then I had another fly. We hadn't been able to replicate my problem and were thinking maybe interference.

I had her up and flying about quite well when she stopped answering the tail again - she was much higher this time and she started turning to the left. I fought with her for a few moments but she got back over my head, and then over the roof of the verandah outside Nitrodude.

Given I was about to lose visual on her I just tried to slow her down as much as possible and shut the throttle. There was an all mightly bang as it hit the sloping tin roof. We all walked away from the building looking up onto the roof expecting to see debris. And there was the T-Rex sitting happily on the roof with her blades gradually slowing down and pointed directly out from the building. Paul flew her down from the roof, and at this stage let me know that he thought he might have had a moment where the tail stopped responding but my flight had confirmed it. Bad gyro. It's been replaced now.

Oh - the TRex didn't quite escaped unscathed. She broke one of her landing skid supports - but let's face it - that's nothing. I'm trying to epoxy it while I wait for new parts.

One other thing I wanted to mention. Over the last two weeks I've been helping a nice guy called Richard Wood (Woodsy) set up his RC shop. He was trying to run the site with html etc - I just helped him out by setting up a basic ecommerce site for him - which I think is great cause now he can focus on what he does well - customer service - rather than battling with Microsoft Frontpage and HTML. Anyway you can find his shop here: http://www.aussieflight.com.au - He's got some quite unusual stuff there as well as a great collection of other models and things.