I had great fun with my Blade 120 SR today. There was pretty much no wind and between two batteries I advanced my flying skills tenfold. I am getting pretty good at flying around for a bit, coming to a hover and then choosing where to land. It sure beats the wind choosing where I crashed landed last time.
Not my finest hour but I did manage to capture a bit of footage today.
For the sake of the helicopter I wanted to wait for a nice day to start flying it. However the weather has been crap and I decided to fly it in the wind anyway.
Here are some clips fronts first proper flight. It was a losing battle against the wind but fun none the less.
This is a cheap model I ordered from emodels. It was made by a company in Moscow and the quality of the kit is particularly poor compared to the likes of Tamiya, Revell and Airfix. Still it was a quick build and I don’t think it turned out too bad. I particually like the slogans in Russian covering the hull.
The gunner is from a pack of Tamiya Russian tank crewman.
Probably my favorite build so far. Experimented a bit with weathering on this one.
Never find Tamiya kits too frustrating to build.
At this year’s tankfest I picked up a new rc tank from the market.
It’s a Heng Long Panzer IV with metal gearbox and tracks.
The metal upgrades are what attracted me to the model. I have an all plastic Heng Long Pershing but it would cost more to upgrade it than the asking price of the Panzer.
I haggled the price down further so it was a real bargain. Unfortunately when I tried to get it going it was dead.
It started working intermittently when playing about with the channel select switch so it seemed like there was a loose connection somewhere. After some googling I found Heng Long’s soldering skills were not highly rated. Eventually I found out that the component next to the switch was causing the problem. The component was re-soldered and the tanks now working fine.
Below is a video of the repaired tank in action.
If there is one thing I have learned when it comes to R/C, its to give spares a thought before you purchase your new vehicle.
I know look at the avaliability of spares before making a purchase and pick up a few of the most common bits to break while I can get hold of them.
Its very easy to fall into the trap of buying a (often discontinued) model that is reduced in a store, only to find you break it in 5 minutes and can not get hold of the parts.
The first thing I did after picking up my Blade 120 SR from model zone is buy a load of spares from rsbspares.com
If you are wondering what the blade 120 SR is then watch this.
I may not have mastered inverted flight but my first inverted landing went pretty well.
