Archive for October, 2009

Indoor Flying Season

Monday, October 12th, 2009

During an evening of indoor flying in a large City of Sunnyvale gym, I hover my tiny E-Flite mCX helicopter at face level. Photo by Mike Bowns.

Helicopter Nose. Photo by Mike Bowns.


We kicked off the year’s indoor flying season Friday evening in a cavernous City of Sunnyvale gymnasium.

Don Cohn, administrator of the BayRC discussion forums, organized the event, which drew close to 20 flyers. Most popular plane: ParkZone Vapor. Most popular helicopter: E-Flite Blade mSR.

In this photo I’m flying an E-Flite Blade mCX helicopter, which is also quite the rage.

Each helicopter weighs about an ounce.

The mCX is remarkably stable, easy to fly even for a novice.

So my nose-high hover is hardly amazing.
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Pep Pills

Wednesday, October 7th, 2009
A medicine bottle carries batteries for E-Flite aircraft.

A medicine bottle carries batteries for E-Flite aircraft.

My current favorite aircraft are quite small, weighing just an ounce or so.

Their batteries are small, too, single-cell lipos rated at 120mAH.

As a battery carrier, I’ve adopted a pill bottle. It holds a bunch of them.

Oscar Yatco was quite amused when he saw them. “You’ve got to put this on your blog,” he said. “Just take one in the morning and you’ll feel great!”