Rechargeable glow starter with meter and hexagonal head for loosening plugs.

Miniature Aircraft pitch guage, the best one I've seen.

Screw and hexagonal drivers.

Ball link pliers.

Verniers, measure down to 0.1mm.

Ball link butterflies, a whole lot better than using your fingers!

Lubrication products.

Brakleen, Simple Green and Blue Magic.

Of all the newbie emails I get, one of the most common questions asked is "What support equipment do I need?". The truth is, you can get by with a bare minimum, but you're much better off with a comprehensive list of tools to help you out.

I'm going to outline all the support equipment I have and what I use it for.

I've split up the list into two sections. One for all the tools I keep in my tool box that I take with me to the field, and one for all the tools that stay at home in the helicopter room.

Toolbox:
· Glow Starter: Without one of these you're not going to go very far. My one has a meter on the end of it that allows me to see if they plug has glow or not. It also has a hexagonal plug end so that I can loosen the plug off a little if need be.
· Pitch Gauge: One of the essential items is the pitch gauge which gives the angle of attack on the blades. It allows you easily and fairly accurately set your helicopter up before you even fly it. I've seen some shocking excuses for pitch gauges around and I believe that the Miniature Aircraft one is one of the best I've seen.
· Hex driver set + allen keys: Helicopters are mostly built using hex drive bolts to hold everything together. You're not going to get far in helicopters without some hex drivers! I would recommend getting some with 'rounded' heads so that you may get at bolt heads from an angle.
· Phillips and flat head screw drivers: I keep a small flat head screw driver
· Ball link pliers: You'll need a good set of ball link pliers to remove and re-attach ball links to your machine.
· Adjustable crescent: Always handy for holding onto nuts when undoing bolts.
· Socket set: I always carry a metric socket set with me. The most popular size is 8mm which is used for glowplugs. Also handy for doing field maintenance such as changing spindle shafts.
· Glowplugs: I always keep a good supply of glowplugs on hand.
· Ball links: Have some of these handy cause it's quite easy to fracture one if you're not careful and you don't want it to ruin a day of flying just cause you don't have any links handy.
· Loctite products: I use a variety of Loctite products include 609, 243, 262 and 510 (gasket sealant that I use for sealing exhaust outlets).
· Superglue: I don't use this much, but when I don't take it to the field, I end up needing it. Useful with planks when you tear the rudder off doing a ground loop after a dodgy landing (so I've heard).
· Araldite: Haven't needed to use this much for helis at the field, but is useful for securing the o-ring dampener kits in Vigors or expoxying the boom support ends. Used to good effect in planks too.
· Double sided tape: For holding down your gyro. I've had a gyro come loose on me before, luckily I recovered from it and resecured the gyro and I was away again.
· Cable ties: There's ALWAYS a use for these.
· Electrical tape: Some kind of electrical tape for securing things down like receivers, batteries etc.
· Tri-Flow: Always useful for a bit of emergency lubrication.
· Fuel tubing: I always keep some lengths of fuel tubing in the toolbox for emergency use.
· Cutters and pliers: Some kind of cutters and pliers are always handy as well for cutting cable ties, tape and fuel tube. The pliers speak for themselves.
· Verniers: Absolutely essential for measuring anything. Will measure down to tenths of a millimeter. One of the best tools you can have.
· Ball link butterflies: Used for threading ball links onto pushrods. Much better than trying to do it with your fingers!
· Fast Charger: I've got the Robbe Infinity II charger for battery management (charge/discharge etc).
· 12 Volt battery: My 91 sized engines can take a bit of convincing to crank over sometimes, this battery (an old one out of my car) along with the Sullivan Hi-Torque starter does a good job of persuading them into action.
· Sullivan Hi-Torque starter: I used to use cheap wimpy starters until I got my first 91 engine which laughed at the measly power of the cheapie starter. The Sullivan Hi-Torque soon showed it who was boss.
· Misc hardware: Such as various bolts, nuts, washers, screws etc. Inevitably you're going to lose some at the field.
· Cellphone: Good to have in case of emergencies (ie calling a mate to tell him to bring a part to the field that you need).
· Field Mat: I spread this out on the ground before 'establishing' myself. This is so that I don't lose any nuts and bolts or tools etc. Inevitably though, by the end of the funfly my stuff will be about 3 or 4 meters away from where I started. I call this 'Funfly creep'.

Workshop:
· Hammer: You may laugh, but you try getting bent mainshafts out of bearing blocks without one!
· Vice: Use one for pressing bearings in and out of bearing housings.
· Ball link reamer: Loosen up your links with one of these. Makes for a smoother control system.
· Dremel tool: At some stage you're going to need to grind something up, the Dremel tool with the appropriate cutting/grinding bits is just the ticket for this.
· Drill: Eventually, you're going to need to drill something, a decent drill with various drill bits up to about 13-14mm will do the trick.
· Grease: Get some silicon grease for lubing your head dampeners and some bearing grease for the thrust bearings in the head of your heli. Helis with tail gearboxes (such as the CS) benefit from some of this too.
· Fan puller: I found a neat little mechanism made by JR for pulling CS fans off. Works great!
· Tooth brushes: Make great cleaning tools as well as being great for sticking down carb throats to hold engine crankshafts in place while you remove the fan.
· 12 volt battery charger: Because I fly helis with 90 sized engines, I need a decent battery to crank them. In this case I got an old battery out of my car for this purpose. I've got a great little 12V charger for keeping this battery in good shape.
· Stacks and stacks of ice cream containers: Nothing is worse than pulling your machine down and having everything scattered everywhere all over your bench. Organise the different bits in separate containers.
· Bra-kleen: I use this for cleaning engines and such. Quickly removes grease and crap and dries very fast.
· Simple Green: Use this for soaking objects to get them clean. It's not as powerful as I'd like, but it seems to do OK.
· Tonnes of re-usable nappies: I've found the softness and ability to absorb lots of liquid lends itself directly to helicopters. The smoothness of the fabric keeps their frames nice and smooth (with no rashes :)). When you think about it, helis are not much different to small babies. They both make a lot of noise, can't understand what they're saying, require a lot of cleaning up after an 'accident', and both will give your wallet a workout.