Once again I find myself apologising for my slackness in updating the website, the usual excuses etc. The biggest consumer of my time lately has been getting the World Championships article finished. 20 A4 pages and 122 pictures later (out of 1631 pictures taken) it's finally finished. I tossed up the idea of making a 'condensed' version of the article that was much shorter. I even began doing this, but the story just wasn't the same so I ditched the idea. It took Peter Jackson three gigantic movies to tell Lord of the Rings, so I'm subscribing to the same theory :). This is not a 'clinical' account of what happened in Spain, it's my experiences and thoughts from my eyes as a competitor.

VIGOR DOWN
The beloved and legendary Vigor is on sick leave at the moment. It's my dumbass fault. I was doing piroetting loops and stacked it. I had finished the loops and was just continuing a piroetting circuit when I just dumb thumbed it. What an idiot. So now I'm playing with a little Raptor 50 and using it as a 'no emotional attachment beat up machine' and boy it's impressing me. No upgrades (apart from white paddles), no governor, just basic electronics (except for a 601) and that little thing is going great! I have been playing with doing some pretty crazy and marginal autos lately which has resulted in some real heavy 'arrivals' and the little sucker just bounces back into the air like nothing happened. It's incredible the punishment that it can take. It's a great heli, but I do miss the Vigor. Now that the Worlds article is finished, I just have one my Sylphide to rebuild from maintenance and then I'll get onto fixing the Vigor. Two pretty small crashes in over 2400 flights on that helicopter isn't too bad.

14MZ
I finally succumbed to the bling factor of the 14MZ and bought one. I didn't need it as such, but you guys all know how that goes... The 14MZ looks great and has lots of great features on it, which you'll probably already know from reading my article on it here. I got it this week and as yet have only setup the little Raptor on it, but as I learn more tricks about it I'll publish them here. Good to see that Futaba STILL aren't providing any performance bonus' to whoever writes their manuals, cause he's still doing a crap job of it!

T-REXES AND OTHER TINY HELICOPTERS
This last weekend I finally went to look at an indoor fly in our club often has. Normally these tiny little helicopters haven't interested me ever since I saw Andrew Donaldson (who is a very good pilot), only just manage to keep his Hornet inverted which he said was a major achievement. That, and the humongous amount of time he spent working on this thing compared to the small amount of time he spent flying it, turned me right off.

However one weekend it was raining and we decided to go check out the indoor fly in cause I had nothing better to do (apart from writing the Worlds article and building Sylphides). We arrived at this indoor gymnasium where there's about five or six T-Rex type things buzzing around most at mega headspeed. There were dudes who were obviously trying to push themselves but either didn't have the skill or setup required to do what they were wanting. The end result was these little helicopters turned into lethal flying bandsaws that could have easily taken dudes out. Apparently though, no one had ever been hit which was surprising.

Somebody offered to give me a turn with his T-Rex cause he was Mode Two (Mode Two is pretty rare here in Australia). I was really surprised how stable the thing was in hover! I did a little 3D with it and was surprised even further by how good it was! It had something strange with collective, doing tic tocs it either had no negative pitch, or all of it which made it interesting, but apart from that it was good. Might have to get one of those eventually.

It's good to see the market for bling is alive and well (even more so) with these little things as well.

KYOSHO CALIBER 50
Unfortunately the plan to do a review of the Caliber 50 was thwarted by Kyosho who said I could take and publish pictures of it, I just couldn't write anything about it :). Interesting view of marketing I reckon. In my view people either see it and read about it, or you don't see it in public at all.

However, the good news is it looks like Kyosho is finally on the right track and made a decent helicopter that flies good and could be a realistic choice for 50 size buyers. I don't know how much it's going to cost, I don't know when it's going to come out and I don't know what's going to change from this one now to what the actual production model will be like, but so far, it looks real promising. I've published all the pics I have of it on the website.

SYNERGY
At the Australian 3D Competition, 3D Downunder held this weekend I was able to give a short demonstration of a pre-release Synergy. Very nice machine with incredible cyclic crispness. I hadn't had much time on it (that was it's fifth flight), and the engine wasn't optimum, but it was very nice to fly. Hopefully this might mean it won't be too long until it hits the market. Word round the campfire has it that the Vibe is only a week or two away from hitting the stores. Looks like 2006 is going to be a good year for the helicopter market!

Articles this issue are:

2005 F3C World Championships
A detailed report of the 2005 World Champs, the triumphs, tragedies and ofcourse, the food.... Click here

Kyosho Caliber 5 Pictures
Although I wasn't able to write an article on this new machine from Kyosho, I was allowed to take and publish some pictures of it. A great looking machine with great promise. Click here

Si in Amsterdam
Last month I was in Amsterdam again for a trade show. Amsterdam rules, I love that place. Click here

Si in Tel Aviv, Israel
This year I visited Israel for a training course. As a result, my impression of Israel is quite different, it's not all about car bombs, terrorism and religious craziness... Click here

Si in Cairo, Egypt
On my way to Israel this year I had a short stop over in Cairo, Egypt. A real eye opening place full of history and things to see, as well as over enthusiastic tourist guides... Click here

Si in Vancouver, Canada
On my way to Las Vegas again this year I had a short stop over in Vancouver, what an awesome place! One of the few places I've been that I could see myself living in! Click here

Si in Toronto, Canada
At the start of the year I was in Toronto for work, Toronto is a great place and I had a great time there! Click here

Feel free to contact me at simon@littlerotors.com at any time.

Si