First of all, I must apologise for my slackness in getting this newsletter out. Been pretty busy here on all fronts you see, I'll try to do better next time :).

Merry Christmas!
It's that time of the year again, by now you should be in the final stages of dropping hints to your significant other about needed/desired helicopter products. As your significant other may not be as well informed as she/he really should be in terms of technical information to procure said helicopter products, it may be prudent to leave technical information/part numbers lying around in plain view. You may also what to try stating it aloud from your helicopter room whilst your significant other is in the room next door. Something along the lines of "I sure wish I had a set of MS 710 Carbon blades with 5mm bolt holes for my Z230 right about now...". Or, "Gee, I wish I had the upgrade tail lever for the CS, which I believe is part number 960234" may also be successful.

Nightmare weekends:
Have you ever had one of those weekends where you (God forbid I say this) actually question whether helis really are for you? I've just had one such weekend. I'm still traumatised by it. On Friday night I took the little Ergo to the field for some general beating up. I wanted to make sure I kept up my progress with autos and wanted to put in a lot of tanks revising my skills etc.
I did about 6 or 7 tanks of full speed autos (racing up to the landing pad at about 100ft then autoing down), and an assortment of loops, rolls, split s's, inverted and such. Anyhow, it was the last tank of the day (isn't it always?) when I pulled a full speed roll at about 80-90 feet. As the heli rolled inverted the engine quit, just like that. I managed to roll it over and start to auto. It came in hard, but it landed upright without a scratch! I put the tx down and did a little dance and rung a mate to gloat. Later inspection revealed the plug had blown. If I hadn't been able to auto, the little 46 would have been badly hurt. Learn to auto, it'll save you money!
Saturday I was out with the Z230 doing autos with that. I'm very careful with the 230, I fly it like a grandma and treat it so very nicely, and in return it gives me no hassle. Anyway, it was autoing nicely, kinda like landing a 747 in comparison to the Ergo. After about the 10th auto or so, I spooled it back up to do another when it started doing piroettes as soon as it lifted off and wouldn't stop! I thought I should hit throttle hold, but was in disbelief that the Z230 would be doing this to me. End result is it went in on it's side. Did stuff all damage, boom, mainshaft, boom holder, spindle and flybar as well as a few bearings. The most annoying thing is I can't figure out what went wrong, the gyro and rudder servo respond ok, and the battery is fine. Failsafe worked correctly too. I'm sending the whole lot in to get checked.
The following day the little Ergo was out to get me, I'm not even going to go into it, but the end result was new blades and boom. A marathon effort by a mate and myself got the thing together again, but the weather has been too nasty to test fly. Crossing my fingers for a test flight sometime this week.
All of this, plus the trauma of watching a mate fly his Z230 into a flagpole in the space of a weekend was a bit much even for me. However, I'm over it now and am looking forward to building the CS after Christmas.

Littlerotors developments:
I've got a few plans for littlerotors in the new year which I'm working on at the moment. I'll be doing the finishing touches on the for sale section and will be putting that up asap, so look out for that.
There will also be an events section where you can add your heli events etc, there will also be a section that provides people with information on where they can go to see helicopters and join clubs, local information and such.
I'm also going to do some articles on successful fun fly activities and things like that.
If you have got a topic you would like to share, or anything else to contribute, please email me.

Articles this issue are:

The Squirrel and the TSK (Part IV)
George makes the final preparations on his Squirrel Fuselage before it goes in for painting. Click here

Flying Lessons: Autorotations
Learning autos can be intimidating yet an unending supply of satisfaction once you've achieved them. It'll also save you money, it's already saved me hundreds of dollars! Click here

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

Si