This month has been pretty busy again helicopter wise. I bid my Z230 gasser farewell, it went to a good home, that of an engineer who is more keen on just flying around rather than aerobatics. It's kinda sad to see the old girl go, but I wanted to do more aeros/3D than it could do nicely, and as a result I wasn't flying it as much as I needed to.
Replacing the Z230 (cause you can't just SELL a heli and not replace it with another one!) is a used Standard Vigor. I've got a Webra 91 in that machine with a big Hatori 700 tuned pipe.
On it's first day of flying, it went beautifully I was really rapt. On it's second day of flying it got a mild lockout due to the fact we hadn't mounted the pipe as good as it should have been and it was rubbing against the boom supports creating interference. I instinctively hit throttle hold (which hadn't been setup yet) and got it down ok. However, because hold hadn't been setup, the pitch was screwed and the swashplate came down so far that the washout came out of it's guide pin. Once I hit the switch out of hold, the swashplate tried to go back up, but couldn't because the guide pin wasn't lodged in it's groove and so the collective servo stalled. Now, 9kg servos don't take kindly to stalling and I expect it put a lot of load on the collective servo output arm while it stalled.
I took the heli back to the pits and fixed up the mount and ensured the washout slid back into the pin. I then copied the normal flight condition that I'd setup to all the other conditions to ensure that this didn't happen again.
I never thought to check anything else and in the next flight I was cautiously hovering at about 6-7 ft when a gust of wind blew the heli to the left and I applied some right aileron to counter. All of a sudden the heli rolled over and went in on it's side.
I was gutted… My new heli, on it's third flight while in my custody went in. The bit that gutted me most was that I'd just had the canopy clear coated to protect the decals and now some of that clear coat has chipped off.
What caused the crash? The collective servo arm had snapped in half… A metal servo output arm is now mounted on the collective servo.
The point of this?
· Set your heli up with hold position when you set up your normal mode.
· Mechanical failures can happen at anytime to anyone (I just heard that Curtis smacked up two CS's at the California funfly due to mechanical failures) - BE SAFE.
· The smallest and cheapest part on the heli can (and will) bring the whole thing down…

Webra 91
The Webra 91 is a pretty exciting engine. In the limited amount of time I got with it before the crash, I was really impressed with how smoothly it ran while so rich. I intend on doing a head-to-head shootout between it and the OS91 once the Webra is run in.
This will be done in my Standard Vigor and will comprise of a list of maneuvers that both engines will complete and be judged upon. If you have any ideas/suggestions for this article, feel free to email me.

Pilot Locator
The Pilot Locator has continued to grow in popularity since the last newsletter with it still rating second most popular section of littlerotors.com. Make sure your details are up-to-date! The pilot locator can be found at www.littlerotors.com/findapilot/

Market
The Buy/Sell Market has been growing also. It should be noted that this section will accept postings from all over the world, not just New Zealand. List your items free of charge! See the market at www.littlerotors.com/market/

Curtis in New Zealand
The cut off date for the 10% entry fee discount as well as entry into the early payment prize drawer for the Curtis Youngblood in NZ 2002 event is 1st October. Get yourselves organized and download the registration forms from www.littlerotors.com/curtis2002/ and send them in!

Articles this issue are:

Pilot Profile: Mark Christy
Great Britain's Mark Christy is one of Europe's top pilots and is one of the top ranked F3C pilots in the world. Mark talks about his beginnings and ambitions in RC Helis. Click here

Futaba 9Z WCII
The 9Z is on the top shelf of radio systems and it's not cheap to buy, is it really worth the money? I couldn't be without mine! Click here

Basic 3D: Inverted
Flying a heli inverted is a great trick and will leave unknowing spectators in awe of your ability. However, it's quite a basic component of 3D, once you've got inverted under your belt, you're ready to try the more demanding 3D moves! Click here

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

Si