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!”

The Quick Orange Fox

Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009

Dennis pivoted the wings on carbon fiber rods, rotated by servos.

Dennis pivoted the wings on carbon fiber rods, rotated by servos.


Many of us fly cheap airplanes, but few fly anything as cheap as the Multiplex Fox.

Looking a bit like a scaled-down Multiplex Easy Star, it’s sold as a $15 glider: no motor, no control surfaces. Throw it hard and high and wait for it to come down.

But it looks so much like a small version of the planes we fly that inevitably people began tinkering with it.

Matt Abrams had the first one I saw. His was blue, a work in progress on the day I saw it at the PCC airfield.
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Getting Warmer

Wednesday, May 27th, 2009

Mark hovers his helicopter just above the sand.

Mark hovers his helicopter just above the sand.


Mark Indiveri writes:

If you like the beach AND you like to fly helis, I highly recommend a combination of the two. This was a really great flying day, my best so far. Flyin’ ’er over the ocean is a total rush. Plenty of spectators. Some even got fly-overs (against AMA regs!). Watch out for loose dogs! Check out my nose-in hover (last pic).

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Survivor!

Wednesday, May 20th, 2009

Recovered Plane. Ike Dahlen holds his algae-camouflaged T-28 Trojan.

Ike Dahlen holds his algae-camouflaged T-28 Trojan.


The ParkZone T-28 Trojan is notable for its brightly bold color scheme: red and white, with some strokes of black.

So it was a surprise to see Ike Dahlen’s Trojan Wednesday when he brought it out to a picnic table.

It was positively scruffy: the bold colors were muted by an overlay of brown and green, an unlikely camouflage scheme.

Was this a paint job, or severe weathering? It looked like brown and green algae.

It is brown and green algae.
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