EP.41 OMPHOBBY with Jonas Wackershauser

Welcome to the Rotor Revolution RC Podcast with Brian Birdsong, Alex Dean, Kenny Hutton, and Nick Wisdom. Welcome to the Road to Revolution. Oh, hello. Is it the sky? Oh, shit. The sky is calling. The sky is calling. I'm going to change this guy to spam caller on my phone. Oh, my God. The sky will not go away. Hey, Siri, set sky as spam. Oh, jeez.

Oh my goodness. Why does the sky keep calling? I don't know, but maybe we'll find out later. I don't know. Episode 41 is going to be a good one. That's hilarious.

But before we get into whatever we're doing, let's talk about what we bought ourselves for Mother's Day. Oh, I did. Aren't you supposed to buy a helicopter on Mother's Day? No, I didn't. I didn't. But now that I... I bought something. I'll talk about it later. Oh, no, I think you should go first. You never go first. Let's make you go first. Okay. Oh, hello?

The ground is calling. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. We know what that means. Holy cow. Wouldn't that be a different ringtone? I know. To crash something or buy something. Oh, jeez. Oh, you're going to lose your sound effect privileges. So I got out to go fly, and I was flying with my buddies.

I was really excited about my M5. I've been freaking in loving that thing, flying it a ton. And this is about, I guess this is last Friday. It's been a little over a week since this happened that we were out and I was doing these. amazing rolling rainbows and do you have you guys ever thought I wonder if there's a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow have you ever thought of that before only if you go too far well if you go too far there's not a pot of gold there there's just the ground

No, it's a pile of gold. This is a pile of black carbon mess. Like, I trashed the whole kit. It was so bad. Oh, man. Every single servo was like locked up. Oh, those mini servos aren't super tough like that. That was odd. dumb ass error i just rolled right into the ground like rolling rainbow to the right boom and i was really like in my groove i you know what i i think is that i was in

You know what the danger zone is when you're flying? Do you know what that is referred to as? Oh yeah, the point of no return. The highway? I was in the sim zone. Oh. Oh. Yeah. It's an expensive sim. Yes, it is. Yeah, it was. It's funny. I rolled that off pretty well and just went back to flying and had fun the rest of the day. Like, great day. That's good. Yeah, it was cool. I wasn't upset. There was a guy at the field that wanted the airframe, and I was like, yo.

have it like that every single bearing was screwed the tail pitch slider wouldn't even slide at all oh man the blade grip arms were bent up the swash was all I was not happy about it. But I kind of was like, whatever. I'm not going to let this ruin my day. And I had a great day beating stuff up. How many RPM was the helicopter at when it went in? 2350. Cool. Yeah. Yeah. That'll hurt. Blender.

Well, congratulations. That's some good work. Fly's really good at 2350. I wouldn't know because I don't have one. I'm sorry to hear that, dude. That's a bummer. Yeah. I really liked it, like a lot. Yeah, it sucks. It's gone. I think you jinxed him from last episode, Nick. Yeah. What did you say, Brad? I think you jinxed him from the last episode when you said, you said, if anybody can put one in, sure it can be Alex. And here we go. Next episode.

I mean, honestly, that's why he said, and I didn't let it get to me, it's because he's got the most practice of any of us brushing it off and moving on. Yeah, that's it. Hey, but it's part of the experience, man, so hey. it's all good alex did you send any photos into the frame for some research and development um i took one photo and i think i sent it to you guys in the chat because i was so like disappointed when it happened i was just like sending it out yeah

Couldn't really tell what all was going on, but you could see some broken stuff. Yeah, it didn't look super bad in the chat, but, you know, crashes are deceptive like that. They don't look so bad at quick glance, and then you dig in and you're like, oof. I don't know if I'm going to get another one. I do. I really want one.

But here's my problem with the M5. And it's not a problem. I love the helicopter. If I want to get good at flying my 700, do I put that thing away and just keep flying the 700? I mean... As far as that goes, I always feel like it's not the same thing, but if a 5 or 550 means you get more flying in because you can fly it closer to home or you can charge six 6S packs.

and crank more flights out at lunch, then it's worth having one. Well, my other problem with it is that the M2 fills that space for me. Like, anything you can do on the M5, you can do on the M2. And if you can do it on the M2, you can do it on the 700. I think that's person specific because I definitely can do way more with the M5 or any 500 than I can with the M2. I'm just not the best Micropilot. I mean, it's still helpful. It's a good helicopter. Not knocking it, but.

I'm way better with a 500 and above than I am with a micro. It's definitely going to give you that smoother, you know, more floaty feel than 200 in size. Which I guess I fly more that way, more floaty, more... gentle so the micro is harder to do that with i feel like going from an like the 200 size to the 500 size the 500 is way more direct right like the collective happens faster and everything like that but

When you go to the 700, it's another step above what the 500 was as far as directness goes and it doing exactly what you thought it was going to do at the time that you thought it was going to do it. So... If I can use the M2 for all my practice stuff, then it makes me go, why do I build another M5 right now? Because I might want to sell you mine. Well, I'm down for that.

I don't feel like building another one, though. I've got to get way more time on mine. I only have a couple of flights on it at this point. I probably had... I probably got 30 or 40 flights online in that little period that I had it. Oh, that's awesome. I was very comfortable with it. It's a great helicopter from what I can tell so far. So since this has happened...

I've had a couple of things that I'm thinking about. Like, I had told another buddy of mine at a different club. I was out at the club in Grapevine, which is about a 45-minute drive for me. And my McKinney crew, it is a way closer club for me. It's like half the distance.

They don't like won't come out there. How come? So since this happened, one of those guys was like, oh, I won't go out there. They'll they'll talk you into the ground, which was not the case. I was just having fun that day. Yeah. But it was interesting because since then, I just haven't been into it. Like, I didn't really want to fly this week. When I did fly, I just kind of wanted to go out by myself and enjoyed flying by myself and being alone.

I went out on Monday briefly to the Grapevine Club because the guys were out that Monday. It was a beautiful day here. And I flew like one and a half packs and left. I just wasn't into it. and i was like dude i lost my mojo and i was like what's wrong with me like i didn't think about the crash at all hadn't realized and today i was like oh my god did the crash do this to me does a crash do that to you all where you're like i don't really want to fly

it can ripple effect yeah it makes you sad and then you get it out on the bench and you're like you know that frustration how to fix it none of us like to repair i don't think anybody enjoys that process It's also a natural ebb and flow thing, right? If you're really, really into it and you're like deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, you can't do that 100% of the time every single week. No, I knew that. I knew that I couldn't be like as obsessed as I was.

So, you know, maybe a crash is just like the cue to take a break and come back when you feel the excitement again. Well, I have basically been a whiny little bad person all week. and complaining to my friends. I was like, why do I, going through that thing, like, why do I do this? This stupid stuff. And then when I realized today that I think it's from my crash, I haven't really been flying.

And I charged up all my packs for my M2. I literally just got back from the field, like the local church parking lot. And I was like, oh my God, that was so much fun. Well, that's great. Yeah, it felt good to get back into that groove again.

And when I realized this is what's bugging me, I was able to move on. But having that unknown of I just don't feel like doing this was really weird to me. As long as you have multiple helicopters, you can just put it aside and try to block out of your mind until you decide you've got.

Like spare time to sit down and go through it and take apart all the broken stuff and tally up the parts. Right. Yep. But I didn't even do that. This was one where I was like, I'm done with this thing because it was just so trashed. So.

I'm not trying to be like a jerk when I say this at all. No, I'm not trying to poke fun. I'm open. I'm open. You know, you've been putting in a ton of flights and I don't think you crash at a higher rate than anybody else. But when you put in as many flights as you have.

You're going to crash some. You're going to crash some more, especially when you push as hard as you do. And I think when you have a series of crashes and it feels like it's every time you're coming on the show, you're talking about a crash, like that also adds up. There's a cumulative effect to crashing and having to fix so many times in a row.

I think. It's normal to be down about it. I probably get 50 flights in between each episode that we record. Pretty close to. Which is a pretty good amount. You're just going to have to raise your danger zone another 10 or 20 feet. Yeah, I'm getting too comfortable. Well, Goose Guy's got a helicopter for you. We'll talk about it in the news. Goose Guy does. Yeah.

That new E2 with all the GPS and return to home. You can sit in your fold-out chair and just kick back with the transmitter on the ground. Yeah. That video of Turek. Getting his folding chair out while it's flying is ridiculous. Okay, we'll get into that. We'll get into it. So I did buy something this week, but it is not going to be what you expected that I would have bought. I bought...

Nick had sent a thing out in our chat that was like, this is so annoying. I'm driving down the road and my helicopters are falling over. Yes. That's me a lot of the times. I also hate that. Yeah. I finally bought a heli rack to put stuff on. Oh, nice.

Did you get the X-Guard one? I ordered the X-Guard stuff today, actually. I'm curious how that is. I want to hear about it. I'm interested, too. It is a bit pricey, in my opinion. Granted, there's a lot of stuff going on there. I don't think that... It's funny because when you look at it on the website, the XGuardRC website, the price per part seems moderately acceptable. But when you get everything you need, it's like a $300 rack.

i feel like that happens with bicycle racks too like the base unit is like 90 and then you get all the brackets and parts and right yeah maybe it's 300 bucks well if i can drive around in my car like a normal person and not like

looking in the back to see what's happening while I'm turning around a corner, it might be worth it to me to have. Yeah, when I'm coming home, I have like a certain couple corners I have to really be careful on because otherwise, you know, it's just the right angle to tilt them over.

I had a rack in another vehicle, oh gosh, 2015 and 2016 probably, using a similar system, but I had made this piece of plywood with the clamps on it that it would... you know walk down to and this this is elevated nicely and i can fit my charger and some other stuff underneath the rack so i'm looking forward to it and i'll give you guys an update later on once i get it and have used it for you know a few months and see how it goes right on

Who's next? I'll jump in real quick. So currently in on a West Coast two week trip out in Vegas and onwards to San Francisco in a couple of days. So not a lot of opportunity to fly. since we recorded last, but I did get out once. So I got home just for two days between these trips and I built the M5. So I started to talk about how I was going to build the M5 in San Antonio in the last episode on another work trip.

I did get it built and mostly wired, but I got home on Wednesday of last week. And Wednesday night, I kind of finished the wiring. And then Thursday night, I did all the setup. And then Friday, which was an insanely busy day at home, had like... doctor's appointments and kids stuff and running around but I just like charged two batteries put the helicopter in the car and was like at some point I'm finding a time to fly this helicopter that's like what I do I like force it in and

An opportunity showed up on the way to get my son from carpool and pulled over at a little tiny baseball diamond and made the M5, which went great. Zero issues with that. This particular baseball field is only like little league size and it's surrounded by trees and really tall light poles. So it's really intimidating to fly in because you're like, if you go outside of the boundary of that field at all, you're in a tree or a fence or a thing. Yeah.

Didn't get to do a lot, just kind of lots of flips and rolls and kind of really small circuits and stuff just to kind of wring it out. But the fly's great. zero issues everything was as expected tracking was perfect like i don't know it was just great made sort of those things where you're like cool everything's working like it should you use the two numbers that i had sent you i did not

I took the tune off my RS5, which has been flying fantastically. And since it has the same blade, same components, same electronics, it's literally identical, which was intentional.

so it was just really easy to move that file over and that's what i was i was just curious i was like did the tune come out really similar on machines because i would assume the throws are different yeah i would think so it definitely it feels more

I don't know. I'm not going to say much because I really want to fly them both in the same day. And then I could make some like honest comparisons because it's hard to do when it's like a week and a half between you flown each model. But yeah, it really is.

My initial response was for the same agility settings or rate settings in rotor flight. It felt a little spicier. Like it was a little faster. That's weird. I would expect it to be slower. I would think it might have been the same, but I don't know. It felt just a...

tiny bit spicier not in a bad way or anything just like i might turn it down when i get more time on it but it could have just been because i was in a really small space everything feels agile in a really small space yeah so once i ring it out i'm sure it's probably feels exactly the same so

Speaking of same components, in my RS5, I have a full-size tail servo. And I just want to shout out Bert Kammerer, who shipped me the full-size tail servo mounts, which you can't buy anywhere. He just happened to have a set from when he was...

building a pre-production model for omp and he didn't need them i think we need to ask jonas where are the parts i have heard they're already on the way they're they're on a boat somewhere so i think you'll see them hopefully by the time this episode is out you'll start to see spares for uh

The M5 and 6 and optional parts like the full-size tail servo mount. So thanks, Bert, for shipping those my way. Those fit perfectly. And so I have exactly identical, same servo, same motor, same ESC between those two helicopters, same blades. So I can, you know, fairly compare them when we do the review episode down the road after we get more time on them. But that was fun. It was a good maiden. Outside of that, man, not a ton going on. I have not built, sorry, I've not bought.

anything else i keep putting little things in my shopping cart and i'm like you don't need this stop it nick we but i have ever i have to go back to this m5 rs5 thing that you're doing that's really cool yeah will you do me a favor at some point and will you

write down what your cyclic percent numbers were and things like that because that's going to be similar to what we did in v bar for the eight degree number where we're comparing the rs7 and the m7 anyway i just feel like that's an interesting thing so okay interesting i guess i never put any stock in that but like what that value might mean but yeah okay well it tells you it gives you an idea about how much resolution there is and if there's less then it should theoretically be snappier

I will tell you from a super helicopter nerd moment, in Rotor Flight, when you're doing this setup, you do this thing with the collective where you basically teach Rotor Flight. what 12 degrees of pitch is on each side and, you know, how far it has to move the servos to get or nine degrees or 12 and a half. You're just teaching it the pitch of the helicopter and how much movement it takes to get there. And there's two ways you do that. There's a percentage correction.

So that you tell it, you know, which just helps adjust so it gets to 12 degrees. And then you balance up and down with another adjustment number. Right. And this model was like, yeah.

geometry correction yeah geometry correction that's right so that you get 12 degrees of positive and 12 degrees of negative and rotor flight knows where those are on both ends of the collective or 9 degrees or 14 degrees or whatever it is it's like perfection on the m5 it is zero 12.0 degrees in one direction 12.0 degrees in the other direction 9.01 in the other direction and 9.01 the other way like it is the most perfect i've ever gotten so that was a super

And that's without having to have a geometry correction where you're like moving in. No, no, there's geometry correction as well to get that so it knows the amount of travel. But it's the most perfect setup I've ever had in Rotor Flight. Not that there's a problem with it being off by point.

two degrees or something but I can't stand it mine are all pretty freaking spot on I spent a lot of time doing it yeah me too but that was the most perfect and the most different degrees of pitch I've ever gotten it so that was fun gotcha And I don't know if it's because we had Bert on the show last time, but because he wants to buy my BK Nitron kit, I'm like, no, you can't have it. But I am excited to build it. I almost stay up to 1 a.m. Finally, dude.

I don't know why. It's just life, you know, and it's just building a nitro on the road seems like a terrible idea, but I'm excited to get that on the table. And I'm kind of wishing I had it with me because I want to start on it. So that's next for me, building that thing. Nice. And while I'm talking, by the way, a correction from last week's episode. We had a listener, Derek. We all make mistakes. I don't even know which one of us this was. Never, never. No.

Can you make the phone ring, Alex, for a second for me? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You never make mistakes, though, right? Alex, it's for you. It's the ground. It's calling again. It begs to differ that you never make mistakes. Oh, man. Never make mistakes. Thank you for that. But I just want to shout out listener Derek Townsend, who hit us up to say, hey, you guys were wrong about something last week. The old V1 and V2 icons and brains couldn't do more than 9-volt BEC.

and run 12 volt servos but the icon twos and the brain two units can run all the way up to 15 volts so if you're running an icon two or a brain two you can run 12 volt servos so we got that wrong sorry about that and there's the correction all right brian kenny

Which one of you wants to jump in? I guess. 50% of the time we're wrong all the time, right? Precisely. So I got my 770 out that I've had sitting around forever, the old 770 sport. That's pretty.

It's a great looking machine. It just sits there and I don't want to kill it. So it stays on the table a lot, but it's fun to fly. I just forgot how much fun it was. Cause it's just, it's got a lot of power. Still got a 4530 on there, but it's just so smooth, you know, and you have plenty of time to do what you want in the air. So it's.

It's pretty cool. It's almost like Sim flying with that thing. What I was surprised, though, is all my other helicopters that I've set up on rotor flight, and I switched this one over. It was the farthest off on the tune just because of the large head and the three-blade tail, which made everything...

like my tail gains had to go down to like 30 or 40 percent of what they were before just from the extra blades you know it's mathematically makes sense but yeah i was really surprised that it actually took that much you know altering to get it

back to solid because it was just i had to turn stuff down it was just too chattery on the tail you know wait way too high but it wasn't that hard i just had to throw the numbers down there and then finally got it to where it feels pretty good i might play with the head a little bit more because it's a little

tight still like the gain's a little too high but fly's awesome and it's the first time i've taken it out was last week i was speaking before last week about or last episode about updating a lot of stuff you know i did all that 4.4 stuff updated and then 4.5 updated and now i've finally switched over to the newest firmware and i guess we'll get you're talking about rotor flight updates for the newest software sorry and

So I was doing the updates just last night on one of them. I was doing the ELRS update that there is, and we'll get into that in the news also. But I was going through the second or third helicopter, and I've never had this issue. I'd have done probably 50 or 60 Wi-Fi.

firmware updates you know the putting it on there and i got through this one and it said 100 and when it rebooted it was just a solid blue light and it no longer would communicate wi-fi or through the pass-through option it couldn't you know recognize it

So I was like, uh-oh. So you bricked it while you were updating. It was like fully bricked, yeah. So I found a way to unbrick it. I mean, it's posted now on Discord, but just a small... quick description is you have to go through the beta flight pass through and basically instead of doing it wirelessly you have to use the boot button and the instructions are on discord that i put on there but you use the boot button and then go back and you can manually

Put the firmware back in and then finally just got that done tonight and I was able to go out and test it and everything. All is well, but I was almost, you know, I had to take it apart. I was looking for a boot button that was on the receiver, but you do it through the regular FC boot button.

Got that solved and had all kinds of weird software issues in the past two weeks. So I went to help a buddy at the field this last weekend and he was having issues with, he couldn't do telemetry and stuff on his Hobbywing V4 because he had got it.

from somebody else he had it on v-bar and he'd switched it over to rotor flight so we were like okay i'm gonna you know i brought my i had a older style the original hobby ring programming box and i thought okay i'll get that out you know i've only used it literally one time

You know, three or four years ago, I used it, brought it out, plugged it in. It works fine. And I got on the USB link software and I was like, OK, I'll just go ahead and update it like it tells me on there. So I updated it. Everything was good. Plugged it in again. Still worked. I took it out to the field on Sunday to use it, plugged it back in, and it just has white boxes all the way across the screen. Brains are dead in that thing. Kenny, I've done this before. Dope. Yeah.

I went back and forth with Hobbywing support and all kinds of stuff. And they said, you know, you could plug it back in. And if Windows recognizes it, that I could update it. But it wasn't the case. Like it says it's like an unrecognized device and it would not.

do anything mine worked and then i was able to still update it and it went back i know that's what he said too and i tried so many different things and i tried five or six different cables like three or four computers it doesn't work on anything i tried you know pinching the usb because it's that

old HDMI style. Nothing worked, so I gave up on that, but I was surprised only using it once before that it did that, but there's a new one out now. Maybe they decided to kill those. I don't know. I haven't bought the new one either.

Because it worked fine before the update, but oh, well, I gave up on that thing. So I don't know if you guys got a hold or he got a hold of you, but Rob Bingham contacted me about sending, you know, he wanted to get some of the grommets because him and a gut buddied his field.

had the grommets go bad on their trons just maybe nitro the vibration but they go bad you know either one if you don't glue them and if you do glue them they still eventually cut through the the canopy because they're softer silicone um so i'm working on Print up a bunch of those to send over to them. Yeah, me too. I want some of those. Everlasting Canopy. Yeah, I want that. Give me those. Yeah, let me know.

All right. I want some. I'm doing that right now. And you got some flights this afternoon and that's about all I've done. I got four flights after work today. And that was awesome because everything's working good. And I'm finally able to go out and just have fun flying and practicing. Getting better. 770. What'd you fly today? Today was RS7 and the Tron Advance. Nice. So how was tuning the 770? Was it weird at all or was it normal?

It was just really loose. I had to go up and down with three different batteries to get it closer because I was really expecting small advances in numbers to change everything, but it took... quite a bit of dropping the gains like i went from like like 70 or 80 or whatever it was on the tail down to like 35 to get it right and it's still still tight like crazy because of that mechanical three blade it's just got a ton of grab

I also found tuning my Logo 800 relatively difficult, but it's also a 14S setup. The more powerful it is, the harder it is to tune. Yeah, this is flying around 1800, somewhere in there. Yeah. I wonder if, I'm completely uneducated when I say this, I could be full of crap. In fact, I probably am. I wonder if tuning the Logo 800 is hard because the frame is not as stiff. And Rotor Flight likes a really good hard mount and stiff.

I don't know. That's a good question. I can tell you that when I was tuning this machine on V-Bar, I had a similar problem where I was having it on higher pre-comps than ever before and stuff like that just because of the torque of the 14S. That could be. Or the whole helicopter. I don't know. I don't know. Maybe I'll fly this again. But speaking of Kenny and helicopters.

He was featured on the FlyRightRC YouTube channel this week. You can check out him. That was cool. You spotted that before I did. RS7. Yeah, there's a nice kind of low, mostly low head speed, chill, smooth flight on the RS7. That was fun, Kenny.

Yeah, I didn't want to kill it. I'm like, oh, he's recording. I better just putt around. That was nice. Now I'm going to hear Alex in my ears ringing like, I just crashed. And it's going to make me not want to crash too. It's going to ripple effect through all of us. The curse of being filmed.

I just remember, Brian, I'm going to jump in with one more thing. I forgot to say something. I sold something. And I have mixed feelings about it. I know what it is. Can I guess? I mean, I think I've told you, but you can guess. Did you sell the M5 to me? In about 40 flights, probably. Okay. Because you know me, I like to try things and then move on and try something else. I'm holding out. I'm holding out.

Hey, that's the perfect combo. If you like to build stuff, Nick, just let Alex crash it and send it to you. No one wants to fix my broken crap. Yeah, you have to take all the broken parts off first. That's not fun. I sold the Dynamic and I have mixed feelings about it because it's by far an amazing lightweight 700 and I love that model, but it's just not getting a ton of airtime right now because I keep trying other things. And so I'm excited that it's going to go to a new home.

and see the airtime it deserves but it's a fantastic model i have something to say i have to have something to say about the dynamic and what do you got i i also felt guilty getting rid of mine because i felt like we got on this podcast and talked about how great it was and probably convinced some people to buy it. And I hope they didn't buy it and then do the same thing where it just said on their, they enjoyed it for a little bit and then moved on, you know?

I think I felt the same way. It's just because it's light, like you like how it flies, but then I always go back to my regular 700 feel. I don't know what it is. Yeah. I mean, for me, part of the love of the dynamic was all about single pack convenience.

And now that I have 550s back in my life again, they fill that role and they also let me fly in smaller locations. So it was time to pass it to a new owner. And also I have to fund... maybe a later purchase of the neutron when it comes out so i gotta i gotta make some room and get some hobby dollars going so gotcha all right sorry brian go ahead what are you been up to man i'm so

Besides rain, Mother's Day, and graduations, I've managed to get in a few rounds of practice. We know Nats is coming up, so I'm like super serious. Trying to practice right now for the expert class. It's going to be a handful of folks competing there. Again, I'm going out the Gordy Meade's trophy, who's had it now for, I think, three years. Yeah. So just practicing.

I did have one little auto-rotation boo-boo when I landed, right? Oh, a boo-boo. I know, I know. Here's the deal, too. So when you auto-rotate and with... especially this 180 degree auto rotation. So basically guys are coming across the sky and then you cut the motor and then you just do this nice big half circle down to this one meter circle that's kind of about 20 feet in front of you.

right on the ground. The goal is to put the helicopter down right in the middle of that circle. Well, don't hunt for the circle. That's a no-no. When you try to hunt with no engine. Or no motor turning the blades and you're just relying on that energy. Don't hunt for the circle. So I was hunting for the circle. I just totally screwed up, ran out of energy and put it down.

I got it to the ground, but then it went too fast. And so I was like on one skid and the gyro was trying to autocorrect. And I was like, no, go back this way. And the gyro said, no, I want to pull you this way. And it just kind of tilted over and fell. Just crack. I mean, like a hairline crack in the blades, like a hairline crack in the blades. And it was enough to just trash them. And I was like, wow, dude, 120 bucks down the drain. Just like that.

See, we're focusing more on the landing than like keeping the helicopter level to get it there. Yeah, exactly. Instead of like peripheral steering at the landing. Do you have rubber grommets on the skids too? Say that again? Brian, do you put rubber grommets on your skids? I do not. A lot of folks do. I was like, that can make it worse. It makes it worse because I've had it before and I fall forward when I try to slide and it's like, nope.

Yeah. So I took them off. But no, man, I tilted over. Only thing I did was just fracture, crack the blades. Nothing else was damaged. But I had to throw those blades away. And I was like, wow, man, just like that, like 120 bucks. Which model was it? This was the Wraith. Yeah, I was thinking it was the Wraith. Yeah, this was the Wraith.

But no, man, I had, of course, I always take my spare blades. So I just pull those off, put the spare on there, and I always take it back up to make sure nothing else was wrong. And sure enough, I was able to get through another round with a fresh battery pack.

And, and I said, okay, well, you know, if I, if I make a mistake doing an auto rotation like that, then I have to take the next battery pack and just do like 15 auto rotations in a row. And I did that and everything was pretty cool, but. Nice.

Nice. Other than that, you know, just again, on happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there to listen to the podcast, you know, and thank the one, the wives. Yeah. The one. But all the wives of the men that fly helicopters, right? All those mothers out there. Thank you guys for the support you give us. We love you. Hell yeah.

For sure. And my baby girl, man, she graduated college. My baby girl graduated college. So we celebrated her this weekend as well. Awesome. That's awesome. Yeah, man. Congrats, dude. Practice, practice. I'm going back out tomorrow morning. You know, hit it, do it all over again. You got Nats coming up, dude. Nats is right around the corner. Sorry, Gordy. Kenny, what were you going to say? Here's my bad interruption, but it's a public service announcement that's super important.

Right now, since we're all sitting here and we're not there. There's lots of plankers that are gathered from around the country in one location, which means all your helicopter fields are wide open to go fly. That's right. So get to your local flying field while you can.

They're all gone like a moth to the flame. On Monday when I went out to fly, it was like the first time that I've been out where it's dead calm, no wind. And there were plankers out there. And I literally, when I pulled up, I was like, man, I like it when it's a little bit windy. because they're not out we said that the other day we're like man we need like three miles per hour more wind right now yeah yeah they were out there flying foamies which is fine foamies are fun but

It's more fun when they're flying them somewhere else. Maybe. You can walk by and give them rumors like, oh, I hear it's going to be 13 mile an hour winds in about a half hour. and see if they fall for it and pack up. That's funny. Yeah. I mean, the good news is, is Joe Dahl's in May. So by September, when Heli-X rolls around, the Centiplanker should be long gone from Triple Tree.

Yeah, you may not even trip over some broken landing gear on the runway or something. All right. Anybody got anything else before we do some good news? There's good news? It's all good news. Gary Gadoos. What's that show called? And now, with all the news from inside the RC helicopter hobby, we bring you the Rotor Report.

Okay. All right, Brian, kick this off. Let's get started. Alex, pay attention to this. Goose guy. Goose guy. I mean, scale helicopters. Gooski or goose guy. Gooski. You can pronounce it however you want to, but... so they've released re-released their e2 scale helicopter with a new paint scheme and some new features so renamed now as the e2 gps the helicopter now features a very vibrant easy to see red and white air rescue paint scheme and the combination of both gps and what they call vision

TOF LiDAR? Is that LiDAR? Well, it's LiDAR. LiDAR system. Yeah. To stabilize the helicopter and make it incredibly beginner friendly. So the GPS features return to home on a switch and stabilization, but the helicopter can still perform the same in environments where it either loses the GPS or can't get a signal.

So the LIDAR system looks down at the ground to keep your helicopter over a fixed point when you let go of the sticks. And the vision system looks at the horizon to keep the helicopter at a fixed elevation. The model also has an electronic fence, so it won't go, don't get too high or get too far away from you. Now, is this the best model to learn how to fly 3D with? Absolutely not, right?

But it is a great tool to bring friends and kids into the hobby who want something that can fly on the first day or day one, rather, safely. It helps kind of set the hook, so to speak, and bring folks into the hobby as well as... helps reduce the crash cost in those early learning weeks. The model is up for pre-order. I do think it's cool that there's models that help newbies. Sorry, Brian. I didn't realize you weren't done. No, no, go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead.

because it's a good point it is definitely it is cool that there are models that are available with that are full collective pitch helicopters for a beginner the problem that is are you really going to suggest this for a beginner to learn with multi-blade head and increase crash costs from all that i don't think there's a lot of crash risk honestly so i have not flown a gps one of these but i did review a little mini scale helicopter that had the ground

and the horizon system in it and uh my kid loved it it was super not intimidating to fly it's so dang stable that you have to work to put this thing into the ground it's got bank limiting and all these things so right You know, it's something you can teach your kid to fly and literally walk away pretty quick. That's cool. Probably more likely to hit like a tree branch or some random object that's just nearby. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Think of this as an investment.

And you're a kid asking to go fly, so you get to go fly. I don't know if my son would be interested in something that is not going to crash. See, the thing is, is like my son has been not interested in buddy boxing again because he's intimidated by it. So this could be a good bridge for us. Maybe that would be a good bridge. Okay. He was really mad when I sent that review helicopter back.

He was like, why did you send my helicopter back? Which one did you have? Did you have the fly wing? No, although I have had the fly wing as well. And I'll just say that I think Goose Guy's GPS with the backup systems in it is 100% the way to go over the Flywing. I would recommend this model over the Flywing every day of the week.

But no, I had one of the small micro-scale helicopters that has these systems in it. I forget the manufacturer. XK maybe or XY. I forget one of those. But anyway, Brian, finish up. Yeah, so you can— How much is this thing? They're not available yet, but you can pre-order these guys. One here, so $379 U.S. dollars for the Binding Fly.

version or 419 us dollars for the ready to fly model comes with like this inexpensive goose guy plastic transmitter that you guys can find at your favorite goose guy retailer so Check that out. I'm on the HeliDirect website right now looking at this thing and it came up and said frequently bought together and my price is only $1,600. Because it recommended that I buy this and the Huey Air Rescue Helicopter and the Venom and the Venom ready to fly.

oh wow it knows you somehow like he's gonna buy three things at once i will tell you and believe me the complaints have come in but heli direct is definitely testing some new ai based tools from there You know, whatever retail package comes with the website or is part of the website. And some of it's hit or miss, but it's learning and it's getting better slowly. But yeah, some of those recommendations get a little odd. Yeah, it's part of that.

That was a lot. I was just like, oh yeah, let's just add selected to cart. There it is. Okay. Sorry. Tangent. That was just comical, I thought. The videos coming out about the scale helicopter, some of them are funny, you know, Tarek. doing his thing, sitting in a lawn chair. I don't know, man. Some of these people just trust these systems too much and get way too close to the helicopters. Like, electronics fail, people. I agree.

it loses i mean the nice thing about this helicopter is it's got a redundant system so if it loses gps it's going to go to the lidar and the horizon system to like hold position but you know even when they hold position really well a gust of wind will still move it a couple feet and it'll come back or you know whatever just don't get too close to these things are you saying you shouldn't hand launch your helicopter

I can still cut you up no comment but absolutely not unless you throw it disarmed and not running and then spool it up in the air. That's okay. I used to hand launch my MCPX all the time. I can't say anything. I did it a lot. Okay, we can move on from that. All right, Kenny, save us.

So we mentioned in an earlier episode that Spirits FBLs offered support for ELRS receivers. What we didn't realize at the time is that you can now do forward programming with Spirits FBLs via the ELRS transmitter. Spirit showed an example of using the Hello Radio V16 transmitter and being able to program the flight controller from the radio with a simple text-based interface. This is available with the latest Spirit firmware.

So now you can use other transmitters and get some of the same function. That is cool. That's neat that they did that. I like that they're going with the route of... A little bit of openness too, you know, where you have more functionality kind of like brain does. Yeah. Kind of makes me want to try it. The spirit system. Cause I never have. So you're not limited. All right. ELRS users. And I'm not talking radio master users or.

FR Sky users or whatever the heck your transmitter is that spits out ELRS. This is an ELRS issue. Yes, it's been discovered by rotor flight pilots, but this is not about rotor flight. So. A recent bug has been discovered with ELRS where if you're running a Lua script on your transmitter that's running what's called an MSP call, which is kind of a method of communicating between the FBL and the radio, has been causing several of the aux channels on rotor flight.

to glitch when the MSP calls cause the radio and the receiver to get out of sync with each other. In extreme cases, this can cause the motor to shut down and has caused at least one crash we're aware of where the model lost power and control.

Now, the crash did go into failsafe. The model, you know, shut down the motor, et cetera, and went in in that instance. All of the aux channels in Rotor Flight contain things like motor arming, disarming, bank switching, et cetera. So obviously, it's very bad if those things start to glitch.

So the great news is there's already a fix for this. So the first thing you can do if you don't update your ELRS firmware is simply change the telemetry rate in your radio to one to four, and the problem will go away.

Now, the ELRS team have also released version 3.5.5, which should largely fix this problem. However... as they released this new firmware they did recommend against sending msp calls while in flight or while the motor is armed or the system is in an armed condition so because of this the developers of the lure scripts that work with rotor flight

for both RadioMaster, FRSky, and other radios are working to stop making MSP calls while the motor's armed. But this new ELRS firmware, so you'd have to reflash your transmitter and your receivers. will also clear up the problem as well. But again, the ELRS folks recommend against making MSP calls. So the developers like Rob Thompson, who does the FR Sky ethos Lewis scripts,

are working to release a new version that does not make MSP calls. Now, at press time right now today, that new Lewis script doesn't exist. But like I said, drop your telemetry rate to one to four. and you'll be all good. By the time this comes out, I'm sure Rob Thompson will have a new version out or any day now. I can't speak to what's going on with the Radio Master Lewis scripts. I'm sure those are probably in the process of being reworked.

So just a minor hiccup in the road. You know, I got to say, for me personally, I'm not shocked when a system, whether it's the receivers or... a transmitter or an FBL has a hiccup. That's to be expected in our small hobby. But it's how the company responds and how transparent they are about it, or the community in this case responds, that's most important to me. And I got to tell you,

As soon as this issue started to happen, the whole community worked together to diagnose it. There were people reviewing logs and trying to figure out what was going on. It was rapidly diagnosed. It was rapidly published and made available on all of the Rotor Flight Discord channels.

which is where you find out about this stuff. Videos started to be made on the subject. I shared some on our Facebook page and elsewhere, and the fix was in the works. By the time you knew about the problem, the fix was released like a day or two later. Yeah, I was surprised. I did the updates on three helicopters tonight and flew them, and it was only like two or three days after the problem was found that they had the ELRS firmware updated.

Yeah. So the pace of change and fixes is awesome. And the transparency is awesome. So I'm just going to applaud everybody for how they tackled this and how the community fixed it. And do make sure, update your ELRS firmware to 3.5.5.

And keep your eyes out for the new lure scripts as well. And until those are out, reduce your telemetry ratio to one to four. I think the biggest, like there's no reason to panic on something like this either. I think the biggest worry would be is if you've set your sliders up on the adjustments tab. to where your channels are too close you know meaning like if your ox that enables armed is very very close to the disarmed amount instead of like full other end range of the channel

You know, if it's far away, you're not going to have an issue because a slight glitch is not going to send that channel to the opposite direction. But if you have switches that are set up fine tuned to where it's just barely on or off back and forth on the range.

then you would be a little more worried about it and I would update because then it could glitch and cause it to disarm just by switching a few pulse width numbers different from where it is armed, if that makes sense. Yeah, I understand what you're saying, but I will say...

I happened to witness the one crash that this happened, and I know how that model was set up, and it was rapidly switching between profiles. So it was moving those numbers pretty far. That's major. Yeah, they said it just glitches. They didn't really say that it moved. This one definitely glitched repeatedly in this instance. But again, it didn't happen to very many people. This was a really small amount of people who experienced this at all.

Yeah, I would just update to be safe, at least update the LRS firmware, and then eventually the LUIS scripts will follow very soon. Yeah. All right, speaking of transmitters, Alex, what do you got from Mikado? Mikado is releasing...

More information as we get closer to the version 8 release that is right around the corner. It's scheduled for May 24th, which is really just a few days after this episode when you guys are listening to it. So we heard some... Some information from Brian Barrow from Okada USA that the gimbal upgrades, that's the new gimbals that come with the V-Control Evo Plus, will be available to buy as standalone units. Owners will be allowed to upgrade themselves.

without sending the radio back to mercado but guys this is a hundred percent do it at your own risk so expect to see availability these gimpals sometime in june or july this year we are hearing they will be 199 Mikado says they will offer US-based people gimbal replacement services for a small fee who don't want to take the task on themselves. So we hope to have some positive V8 coverage coming from you guys in the near future.

Hey guys, real quick, did you break the warranty of the transmitter when you do that, when you replace the gimbals? If you do it versus sending it in to letting them do it? If you did the AGO ones, you definitely broke the warranty. I suspect if you do these gimbals and you purchase them from a licensed, you know, Mikado dealer, you're probably still under warranty. Even if you install them versus them?

I don't know if everyone can plug a plug in. They didn't mention that it would void the warranty. Well, it's not a plug. The problem is it's probably... And I haven't taken any, no, I guess I did take an Evo apart and put EGA ones in it. You have to pull the screen off that thing, don't you? No, but you still have that ribbon cable you have to see, and you've got to be really delicate with those.

If you grab that ribbon cable with a pair of pliers, you're hosed because you'll ruin it. You've got to be smart and use gentle tools. I'm sure they will have videos available about how to do it properly. Yeah, 100%. I would expect them to do that. And if you're nervous about it, just send it into Mikado USA or if you're in Europe to Mikado, Germany, and they'll be eventually doing gimbal replacement services or...

Try and sell your transmitter and buy one with the Merti installed if you're really nervous about it. Yeah, that's true. All right. Well, we have been going on and on about how much we love the new M2 with the OFS. That's the Flight Controller 3.

from omp hobby and omp hobby announced that there is a new version 3 pro of the m2 200 size helicopter and this is a complete redesign so Different from what we saw before when the M2 Mark II Evo came out. That was essentially a really similar model to the previous M2 with a new flight controller on it and a couple of new things. This...

however, is totally different. The biggest thing that they're really touting is that it's lighter. It's 25 grams lighter, which is almost an ounce, dude, on a micro. That's a ton of weight. That's a lot of weight. New main motors, new tail motor.

new faster rotor blades colors and canopies that are just beautiful by the way four different colors very similar designs to what the m5 m6 and m7 are so now the models look more seamless across the model line so also new metal case servos new servo geometry and they're claiming that it's a 25 longer flight time also

due to the lighter weight and increased efficiency i have a really hard time believing that that's one of those things i'll have to see it for myself yeah when he was i watched his video and apparently with the same packs he said he was flying before for the past year

That before he was getting like two minutes and 30 or so seconds, really hard 3D. That's about what I get, yeah. And his last, in a video I watched, he did like three minutes and eight or 10 seconds on the same packs. Well, that's huge. Yeah. I watched the time from start to stop. All right. Well, I look forward to seeing that. Yeah. I mean, that's fair, though. Anytime a manufacturer says 25, 50% better, we definitely want to test it. Yeah. See if that's true. I'm skeptical. Price-wise.

This thing is $430 in the US. However, pricing can obviously change based on what tariffs are doing at the time. It's 449 euros. And... Also, the motors are black now, so you're not getting motors that match whatever skids or whatever canopies you get. There are new skids that are all white. So when you want to change canopies, there's just a tail fin and a canopy color. You're not like...

crap now i have to buy the boom and all this other stuff so i saw in the video that also those skids that are on it now are very flexible he said he's pretty much not able to break them now you can flex them around and stuff yeah very bendy skids

You know, when they announced this, I was a little bit pessimistic. I was like, this is a really expensive micro that I'm probably not going to buy. I'm going to buy one of these. I'm excited to hear about it. I was curious if you would. I'm on the fence. I'm going to try and sell my M2 Mark II, and that will probably sway whether I do or not. I fly my M2 enough, dude, that it makes sense for me to get one. As soon as Alex heard it was coming out, he took his M5 in so he could make room.

That was definitely not the case. Honestly, I'm just hoping he stuffs his Mark II really well before this one's available and I can sell him mine. That's my hope. You know, we were talking through all this stuff about crashing.

machines were not flying we're talking about dynamic and i was like i just need to get rid of my 800 i need to sell that thing and then just buy an m5 a machine i actually fly yeah problem with that though it's like the same thing with my logo 700 you're like What I can get for it on the market right now as a retired discontinued model largely.

is not that good and you're like is it worth selling oh is it not i haven't i haven't a small amount i mean the logo 800 you know it's such a big pretty machine you probably get a little more but a logo 700 on the used market for an airframe you're like

is the money I can get for it worth losing it? Or should I just keep it and enjoy it once in a blue moon? Like, yep. Okay. Put it up in your healing museum. Yeah. I like my, uh, m2 that i have now but if this one's lighter and better on the tail and stuff and it's already amazing now so i can't you know can't wait to see how this is basically it's going to be even better and i'm sure that you know the m2 is still going to be available the current one so it'll be a still a

like the budget-minded version with the same performance, you know, other than the weight savings. I thought that it was interesting he said the crash costs are really similar between the two. It's a more expensive get-in, but once you're in... Yeah, I think the way the frame is now, like before in the metal one, you would bend the boom, and it might not be as much damage in that sense, but in this one, you might crack the boom off with the carbon.

but they increase the triangle shape and the support around the back of the boom area, so you're not going to break stuff up front as much. It'll be more just boom and maybe linkage or blades kind of thing. Yeah, they did say that they just redesigned the geometry of the whole model and the strength of the various parts to really make sure that crash loads are transferred to the servo arms and that that's the sacrificial part.

more so than the previous generation. So we'll see if that's true as models hit the market. But it's certainly cool, you know, and worth paying a little more for if it really is just servo arms and booms every now and then. Totally agree. All right, let's move on because we're about to talk to Jonas for an hour or so. Hey, guys. Oh, yeah. I'm kind of mad about something. Nuh-uh. What could you possibly have to be upset in the hobby, everyone?

in the hobby is so supportive of each other and when we talk about how rotor flight had the lrs issue everyone that flew other systems was so supportive about how they were making changes and what could you possibly be upset about well i'm excited about the hobby And I'm excited about all of the brands, whether I fly them or not. And when one of those brands pisses in my cornflakes, it makes me mad. You still eat cornflakes? Only with pee. All right. All kidding aside, look.

We're really excited to have our guest on the show this week. We've long planned to have Jonas from OMP on the show. We've been in talks with him for a while. So first I want to pause and say thanks to Jonas for moving up the timeline and agreeing to come on this week instead of a future episode as planned.

But Jonas was not the original scheduled guest for this episode. So originally we had one of the Mikado test pilots coming on the show to talk about the release of version 8 because we're desperately trying to not just talk about Rotor Flight.

we love to talk about other FBLs. So we were super excited to share with our listeners some of the new features in V8, as well as some of the real world experience with how it flies and tunes. Maybe even get somebody to go on record and say something other than... It's super locked in and flies on rails. However, Mikado decided to tell this particular pilot coming on the show that they were not allowed to come on the show and share any details. Why? I have no idea. Maybe they just...

want to wait till after it's officially released and not have anything come out a few days before so but i i'm just honestly bummed about that decision you know the episode would have come out right around the time of the release of v8 it would have helped to promote the product

which is honestly what our podcast is all about, sharing the news of new stuff coming to the hobby from any brand and any fly barless and any manufacturer. And assuming V8 is as good as a lot of folks think it'll be, it'll just help build enthusiasm for it.

So that pilot, thanks for agreeing to come on. I know it wasn't your fault at all to hold it against you, but we're going to keep trying to get V8 news and some real world experience of it for you. It might have to be after its release and it's in the hand of regular old users. And we'll pick someone whose opinion the community respects to come on and tell us all about it. But sorry, folks, no V8 news this week. It's time for some exciting things, though. We have events coming up.

it's that time of year. Yeah. And you know what? We've kind of like pitched a lot of events. We keep finding them and pitching them. And so I think a lot of what we have this week is just reminders. So let's go through a bunch. Yeah, and I think it's a good idea, too, to put reminders out there, especially when you get close to the event. So this is great, Nick, to lead into this. So I'll start it here. So just a reminder, right, for the Heli X or the Heli...

extravaganza event here in 2025. The event will take place August 28th through the 31st at the Triple Triero Dome in Woodruff, South Carolina. For more info and to even pre-register for the event, go to their website at www.heliex.org. And that's H-E-L-I-E-X dot org. Helie Extravaganza. Good stuff. Okay, so we got the 9th Annual Swarm Funfly. These are the guys that used to do the swarm parties at IRCHA. It will take place on July 19th.

The one-day event in Franklin, Wisconsin has a $10 landing fee that includes a pizza lunch. For more info, head over to their website at www.ramsrcclub.com. What you got, Alex?

The Amps Heli Smack Fest in Miami, Florida comes in the weekend of Memorial Weekend. That's May 23rd to the 25th. They've got some fun mini contests, including a 3D competition with a... mix of set freestyle maneuvers and auto contest and they're doing a heli drag race don't miss out also the same weekend is the austin funfly

May 23rd through the 25th in Austin, Texas. One of the bigger events in Texas. Great time. Hope to see you guys there. Another big reminder. So we got Urcha and Nat, right, that are coming up here. They're not held together this time due to the world competition. So the Nats will be held first, and that will be July 6th through the 9th, while the IRCHA event will start August 6th.

Both will be held at the beautiful AMA field locations in Muncie, Indiana this year. So be sure to check them out. Let's make Urcha super huge again. So looking forward to that. And we got the Ocean County Modelers Helifest in Jackson, New Jersey, and that's on June 6th through 8th. All right. And lastly, a reminder for the Dragonfly event in East Bend, North Carolina, one of my favorites.

June 19th through the 22nd. There wasn't lastly because there's one more thing, Kenny. There's always one more thing, right? When is Urcha? Brian just said. No, we didn't. I think it starts August 6th. August 6th. He said it starts August 3rd through the 10th. Technically, yes. 3rd through 10th. I guess if you're getting there super early and you want to be tired by the time the weekend comes around.

Or if you want to fly early and then hang out and watch later, 3rd through the 10th is a good idea. Yeah, there's a lot of guys that get there like midweek or early in the week and have 100 flights by the time you show up. I am planning on making Archa this year. Nice.

As far as events go, just a quick reminder. Speaking of reminders here, I know, you know, there's an event this weekend. So before this episode comes out, I realized we missed announcing it all, I think. And it occurred to me, you know what? If you have an event we totally failed to shout out, don't be mad at us, be mad at you. So we do our best to catch posts we see online. But if we miss your flyer, we depend on you to email us.

at questions at rotorrevolution.live or message us on Facebook at facebook.com slash rotorrevolutionrcpodcast. Simply tagging us on a Facebook post is not enough. those tags and notifications get missed. So definitely message us directly and we will go ahead and put the notification up and just know messages at least three weeks out in order to make us get the announcement out before the event happens.

And that is all we got for the news this week. Hey, this is Leroy Hall with the Heli Cincy Crew.

You're listening to Road to Revolution RC Podcast. All right, main topic time. We are super excited for this next guest. It's not often you get to hear from a helicopter designer who's also a pilot and an enthusiast of the hobby who's got a wide knowledge base on FBL's helicopter design.

flying 3d etc we've got jonas from omp hobby coming to talk to us about the new models coming out from omp as well as some of the models from the past year with the process of designing helicopters and like all kinds of stuff we're going to hit them up on all kinds of subjects so with that Please welcome Jonas from OMD Hobby.

calling again oh my god dude the ground already called me i don't want to have it happen again who's there hello hello hello is this mcdonald's i i would like to order a happy meal With an M2 V3 Pro and world peace, please. World peace. How great would that be if McDonald's came with a toy helicopter? I would go to McDonald's more often. Well, welcome, Jonas.

Thank you. How are you doing, guys? Good, man. Excited to talk about helicopters, as always. I want to talk a little bit about your history also. Jonas, I feel like I remember 10 years ago on Helifreak. There were all these videos that you would post, and you were like, how's my flying? Oh, yes. Yeah, that was fun. Those were good times on Helifreak. I'm sure those are still there. You can probably still find that thread. Should be.

I mean, I rarely take down any videos except if it's, like, for good reasons. But, like, those were just, like, insecure little Jonas wants to know how he's flying. Nah, not really. It was, like, I'm... Maybe I'm flying alone or whatever, and I want tips and tricks from you guys. I didn't see it that way at all. I always enjoyed all your low head speed flights. That was kind of an inspiration to me. I really dig low head speed flying, so I always enjoyed your sort of...

Slow, low, smooth 3D is good stuff. Thank you. Yeah, that is actually something that I prefer doing over high head speed 3D. It's just much more relaxed, much more chill. just so beautiful to watch and i think many people many people on the internet will also agree that low head speed flying is much easier to understand than high rpm 3d

Especially the new stuff with MCK and then like you can't even tell what's going on. It's happening so fast. Oh, 100%. I was watching them fly yesterday at the Boomstrike Festival. Some of the streaming they were doing. I was like, what is this helicopter even doing? I don't know. It's good stuff.

But yeah, Jonas, it would be good to learn a little more about your background before we dig into new toys and new stuff coming up. Kind of find out a little bit more about how you got into this hobby. How I got into this hobby. Well, that all started basically with my lifelong fascination for RC helicopters.

When I was not even one year old, my mom put me under the ceiling fan in our living room and that spun on the ceiling. And I was like, oh, spinny thing is nice. I mean, you can probably guess where this is going. and yeah that started my fascination for helicopters and that stuck around forever my mom says it's the worst mistake she's ever made

Because this has consumed my entire life, but I'm eternally grateful. I mean, she was like driving you to the field and stuff, right? Those videos from a long time ago, she was driving you there. I mean, I started flying in 2010. And in 2010, I was like 12 years old. Holy smokes, dude. So yeah, my mom supported me throughout the beginnings of the hobby more than I could have ever asked for. And I'm actually eternally grateful because without her, I would not be where I am now.

Did you have a mentor in those early days or did you just go it alone and figure it out? I joined the flying club. One of the guys, Chris, always looked after me and gave me tips and helped me with my flying. I mean, eventually I outflew him, but he helped me through the beginnings and also some other amazing people, Manuel, Dennis. Yeah, they were basically my mentors back then.

Eventually, I started figuring out things on my own and then I went my own way. I feel like a lot of people get into the hobby at an early age like that, but then... college and and later you know high school and on all these things distractions happen how did you manage to stay in it let's put it like this i always thought homework was a stupid idea and i mean

Now, in hindsight, I'd say kids do your homework because it's important, but it's also important that you find the time to follow your passion and just live the life that you want to live. So, yeah, it was mostly a weekend thing. Also, when small helis actually made a jump to being flyable with back then the Blade MCPX and stuff. Yeah, it was a great machine. My backyard essentially also became my training ground.

And yeah, then we go forward about 10 years and OMP brings out the first M2. And from there, it is all just... Were you involved in the first M2 also? I wasn't. I was not. How I got into OMP was like, Mikado announced the Logo 200 in 2020. And I was working at Accuracy back then, the simulator. And we wanted to have the over 200 in the simulator. So we contacted TJ Williams, amazing guy, who was the representative at BuddyRC back then.

And he got us the CAD files for the M2V2, from which we made the Logo 200 and also put the M2V2 in the simulator. And he was like, oh, if you like the Logo 200, you're going to love the M1. And then he arranged an M1 for me. And then he also arranged an M2 for me, which came from the factory. And then I started giving feedback on that.

Yeah, eventually I started talking to my boss, Jeff, more and more. Yeah, then this basically business relationship developed, which is also a very good friendship. Were you working on any helicopter development stuff prior to OMP? No. Just Rotorblades with Funky, the RotorTech Ultimate line, is mostly my doing. Especially the most recent half of the RotorTech Ultimate blades was done almost entirely by me.

And yeah, that is basically how I learned to develop, how I learned to give differentiated, detailed feedback. And that also helped me tremendously with talking to OMP because... They were just doing kind of, well, China helicopters, you know, kind of ready to fly packages with very little adjustability and kind of stupid high head speed. And I gave feedback on all of that.

And eventually there was a story with one customer who was very, very annoying to Jeff. And the customer was like, If I give the M1 collective up and down in a rhythmic way, the tail will always move to the right or left, I don't remember. And Jeff was like, hey, Jonas, can you help us with this? Our test pilots cannot reproduce this, but we also don't have a way to disprove it. And I was like, sure. And then I locked out the Yacht Channel on my... Back then it was...

a Tango 2 on Freedom TX. I locked out the Yard channel and did exactly what the guy did in the video and sure enough the tail didn't drift and then I made a video about it, sent this to Jeff, also sent him a paragraph. He sent that to the super annoying customer. Never heard from him again.

And that was the point when Jeff knew that I would be useful. And then he asked me if I wanted to design a helicopter for him. And then we decided it would be the M4. And from there on out, I guess I'm a helicopter designer now.

That's interesting. I'm curious how, I mean, I can understand people designing blades with an aerodynamics background, which I would think would be more helpful there. But mechanical engineering is what you went to school for, yeah? Actually, it's mechatronics engineering. I also had some aeronautics classes, but that was not my main focus. Everything I know about aero stuff or like most things I know about aero stuff is actually self-taught by...

Reading a shit ton of books, papers, publications, research, I probably sunk like several months of my life into just reading about these things and learning this stuff. That's interesting. Did you learn a lot of lessons about blade design the hard way, sort of going the wrong direction, or did you kind of jump into the right ideas first?

Well, it started out with Funky releasing the 700 Ultimate with the orange tips, which were quite frankly unflyable. And I emailed them about these and I gave them feedback on... Hey guys, this blade does not fly the way I want it to fly and here's some ideas why? Can you check this? Can you confirm this maybe?

And then they got back to me and were like, hey, yeah, let's change these couple parameters. We're going to send you another couple blades. I tried them. They weren't any better. What they did was just vary the weight of the entire blade. But that did not fix it. And then I was like, hey, can we vary the amount of weight in the tip to get the CG further outward? And they were like, sure, let's make some more prototypes. And then they sent me the blades and one of them...

flew absolutely amazingly. And that is what the 700 Ultimate flies on today. And then they were like, hey, we want to do more sizes. Do you have ideas for those? And then I started giving them some specs that I... came up with, they made the blades, we tested them, then we iterated on this. This was kind of the learning process. And during that time, I also had a bunch of MATLAB classes in university and i was like huh i now have the knowledge to use this tool how can i use this for my hobby

And then I started writing a script that simulates the rotor of a helicopter in flight. I read a bunch of research papers and programmed night and day. And that script alone probably took like... couple months to develop and then i used that one going forward from the 610 ultimate onwards i think and that is now the basis for blade development wow that's

That's dedication. That's not light reading we're talking about. That's deep stuff to dig into. Yeah, I suppose if I'm interested in something, I'm going to sink a whole lot of time into it until I really understand it. till I can actually apply it to what I'm trying to do. That's good stuff, man. So I guess if someone gets an email from you, look out, Jonas might be on your development team in the near future.

Let's dig into the M4 development then, since that was the first model you worked on, Jonas. Tell us a little bit more about how that process worked, how it came to be. Well, that was quite the adventure. Basically, I tried to take... a bunch of concepts from the M2 and M1 which I had back then and scale them up. Which worked in some areas, in some areas it proved to be not as ideal.

But yeah, the M4 basically was just a playground for me to try out different things. How do we get to the result that we want? I still have the original M4 prototype here on the shelf with the... M2 Evo style canopy and the silver aluminum and well nothing about that prototype is the way it is on the final model we basically changed everything again except for like the boom profile and stuff

So, yeah, that was a pretty intricate process going back and forth with China, finding out what manufacturing capabilities do we have? Three axis, four axis, five axis. How fancy can I make the parts? Where should I think more about manufacturing? Where should I think more about making parts pretty? For example, a rotor head yoke, that is a defining part for the appearance of a helicopter.

So you can go more fancy on that than you can go, for example, on a boom clamp, which barely anyone ever sees. Right, you're never going to see it anyway. You know, Jonas, I feel like what we didn't clarify here is we know you're working for OMP.

Hobby. OMP Hobby. You're rebranding it. I'll try to stick with the brand name. Is this a full-time job? This is a full-time job for me, yes. Okay. This is what I do for a living right now. I didn't know, because OMP makes other things, if you're not aware. They make scuba diving apparatuses. We don't even get into everything they do.

I didn't know if you were working on that side of OMP also. I will be in the future. Currently, it's all heli because we just brought out the M2 V3 Pro and that was a huge project. And the M5 and M6 before that. The M5 was actually my master's thesis. So that also took a lot of time. But yeah, I'm planning or well, they are planning for me to also work on other projects because the heli sector.

You remember when you had Chris Kim on the episode and he was always like, we always have exciting and new developments in the pipeline, but I cannot specify what we're working on. Jonas said there will be a nitro. I've been telling everyone. Jonas said there will be a nitro coming. That is a lie, and you know that. All right, well, cool, cool. All right, sorry. I just wanted to back up there before we got really far into it.

All good, all good. So yeah, OMP actually wants me to work on these other projects just because the heli sector does not pay. well enough for a full engineering wage for a german engineering wage which is way higher than what they pay their engineers in china so they also want me to work in the industrial sector do propulsion systems and stuff

which we're already doing, but let's put it like this. The last year of my life revolved a lot around propulsion development, and I have some pretty neat ideas for... Both the industrial and the hobby sector. So we'll see where this goes. Well, so you're working at OMP. The M7 comes out. You're still in college at that point, right? Yes. So how are you managing to do this while you're in school? Like, how is their time? The M7 was designed after the worst exam I ever took in my life.

Two very hateful professors and like just a shit ton of insecurity about whether I even passed or not because they were just diabolical with that exam. And I was... driven by stress, anxiety, basically insomnia. I slept maybe four hours a night in that time period. And I cranked out the entire initial design for the M7 in like two weeks.

So it was a stress reliever for you then working on it also. Yeah, but it is still a helicopter I love dearly. And like we went back and improved a lot of things afterwards. It's always like this. You design the first iteration of something. They make it. They make a couple prototypes. You build it. You fly it. The team pilots build it. The team pilots fly it.

You notice things you want to change. The team pilots give you feedback on, hey, this can be improved. Hey, this does not work well. Hey, this doesn't work well. Keep this. And then you go over it again. Do a second iteration. You build prototypes again. And then hopefully everyone's happy and you can go into mass production. That's awesome. So step into the M5, which I know was your thesis project.

What were your classmates like with that? Were like, really? You designed an entire working helicopter that's going to be mass produced? Like, really? Now we look terrible. I went to school with very, very smart people. Sometimes I was like, what are you guys doing with your thesis? Holy crap, that is amazing. So this by far wasn't the fanciest thesis, but this was a thesis I loved. Actually, the M5.

The development of the actual helicopter was not even the topic of the thesis. I developed a new technology for helicopters of that size and I needed an airframe to test this on. So the M5 was basically just a byproduct. Nice. Did you fly as part of your thesis presentation, your dissertation?

I just showed a flight video because it's hard limited to 20 minutes. And if you go over, you actually get a penalty for it. So just a flight video to demonstrate that what I did was actually working. And yeah. This technology, I'm gonna file a patent on it and we'll see if we actually bring this to market. That is all I can tell you about it right now. We'll see. where this goes is it a place for a nitro engine to go alright well that's cool that's cool

All right. I know, Nick, you had some questions about the M5, right? Yeah. I recently built an M5. I've only flown it twice and then I had to leave for work, unfortunately. But I want to talk about the M5, especially in regards to helicopter design, because these are just things that interest me.

When I built mine, especially when the parts are disassembled, nothing's bolted together. I was a little struck by the amount of air in the side frame. So how light they are, how many cutouts are in there. And it's pretty thin and you're going, is this going to be strong enough? And it just got me thinking about how.

helicopter design has to be a process of compromises right you want the overall weight to be reasonable but you have to put weight into strength in certain locations how do you make those design decisions and balance where you want to use the weight to your advantage and where you want to reduce the weight well it all starts by setting a target weight for the entire helicopter ready to fly and then you kind of choose your

reference electronics, and then you get your airframe weight that you need to hit. And I mean, we're working in CAD. CAD knows the volume, CAD knows the material properties, so it can just spit you out the... like weight of your airframe as you build it. It's pretty accurate. It is. pretty accurate for an entire helicopter you're within plus minus five to ten grams because oh wow that's impressive yeah it's it's always just a little bit with the tolerances and like

The carbon fiber can have different resin saturations, but overall it's actually really accurate. And I usually just go by that and go to my target weight in CAD, build the actual helicopter and see where I end up. Nick, to your point about how thin the frames are on those things, Jonas, you don't know this yet. I pummeled mine into the ground and basically trashed the whole thing. Why? Well, I didn't do it on purpose.

But every single bearing was screwed and the pitch slider was broke and the pitch arms were broke and the swash was bent, but the frames weren't broke. in your defense jonas it was at like almost 2500 rpm and went in at speed yeah I mean, 2500 RPM, that is a lot of energy in the rotating parts. It was running 2350 at the time. Oh, I thought you said 2450. Sorry. No, 23. I mean, yeah, that is also what I run.

Of course, rotating parts are going to be hit first because you're storing just a lot of kinetic energy in those. The frame just holds everything together. I pushed it into the ground inverted. Well, don't do that. The ground was calling. Yeah, that was the joke. Yeah, that was the joke. But no, the frame is actually not the hard part. It's really just, I mean on the frame you can cut the weight really low if you keep the areas rigid enough that actually fly the helicopter.

On the M5, the areas that fly the helicopter are the main plate, the servo rack and the tail boom mount. The tail boom mounts, they are in an area of the frame where three carbon panels are bolted together. So that is very rigidly connected to the rest of the helicopter. And like towards the bottom, all the frame needs to do is land the helicopter on the skids and hold the battery.

And that does not require a lot of bending stiffness. That just requires the frame to have a fixed width and to not flex out of the way so the battery can kind of fly out.

So it is not a matter of looking at where can I... Well, it is a matter of where can I save weight, but it is not a matter of, oh, do I need to make all the parts strong? It is just concentrating the strength in the important areas. No, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, totally.

Well, that's cool. How fast are you able to like prototype things when you want to change something? You do the initial design and then you come up with a change. How long does it take working with the factory to get a new part to try to see if it improves things? Well, usually we collect the changes we want to make. Like the team pilots got their helicopters for testing, I think, in like November last year.

And then we flew them for like two months. And then in January, I sent the final changes to the factory, which were just a couple parts. Just a few parts. They remade them, sent them out, and eventually we had a final helicopter. If I need something really quickly, then we can do it in two weeks. That's cool.

Are there any challenges working with a factory in China? Any language barriers or no issues there? There is a major language barrier. We use WeChat, which luckily has a built-in translator, which is very useful. But you cannot just use your standard English to talk to them. For example, a main blade becomes a main oar. A blade grip becomes a main oar holder.

The canopy is the head cover. The canopy design is the head cover costume. So basically, it's still like learning a new language that is based on English, but you need to learn all these new expressions too. accurately convey what you're trying to say. If you write this abstract Chinese-English, communication with the Chinese is not a problem at all, but that is a learning process in itself.

I'm very lucky that my boss Jeff speaks very good English. So if my boss Jin on P and Sunny Sky are actually owned by three people, Jin does not speak... a single word English, but he's the one I need to deal with for all the manufacturing and logistics. So we're just, I'm writing this abstract English. He just writes Chinese. WeChat translates everything.

And when we really get lost in a conversation, I go like, Ed Jeffren, please translate, help. That's wild. That's got to be a challenge. That usually works. Then also, I cannot do. the entire process in preparing the designs for manufacturing. I designed the helicopter and then I sent them the CAD model, but they need to do the engineering drawings because they need to be in Chinese. Nobody in China.

Almost nobody in China actually speaks English. So all the engineering drawings have to be in Chinese and they have to be in correct Chinese. And I cannot do that. So the engineering team at the factory. then painstakingly takes my helicopter apart again in CAD and makes a drawing for every single part just because it's impossible for me to do this.

Well, that's a blessing and a curse, right? I mean, I'm sure some things get lost in translation, but you also don't have to do all that work. It is a blessing and a curse, yes. Sometimes I need very specific tolerances in pieces. And that is very, very hard to do to convey this because like they know the standard tolerances, F77F, that kind of stuff. But like, how do you convey that?

They need to spend the extra money to make this one bore very, very precise because the thing that goes in there is safety critical. That's interesting. On the first M7, they put the one-way bearing sleeve. into like the steel sleeve in which the sprag clutch runs. They put it into the aluminum housing without any press fit. It was just in there with goodwill and a bit of Loctite.

On the first day of testing, our one-way started slipping and I was like, what the fuck is going on? And then one of the factory guys took my heli apart and he just banged the one-way bearing on the table. And the entire one-way assembly fell out. And I was like, why? And he was like, what do you mean, why? And I was like, why is that just falling out? That should be pressed in. And he was like, oh, that should be pressed in.

It's a learning process. We just remade the parts with the correct tolerances and then also put three pins in it. And now it's not a problem anymore. But yeah, that is one of the cases where things really got lost in translation.

And where also the intention of the design was not clear just from the CAD model I sent. So now if there's any difficult parts, I just write a... description in English and have Jeff translate it and then they usually get what I want to do. Well, let's get into the new M2, dude, the newest thing. Oh, yes. Yeah, there's a whole new helicopter to talk about.

Like, how is this? Let's talk about what sets it apart. Like, how is it so much different and so much so that if you just bought an M2 that you're going to be like, well, I'm going to buy this thing too. So what are the, what are the major changes? Now the M2 V3 Pro is a helicopter that was conceived for everyone who can outfly the M2 Evo Mark II. That was the main idea.

Because when we started developing OFS3 and made all the changes to make the M2 Evo in the Mark II, we got a lot of performance improvements out of it, but we also were like... we can do better and that is when the idea for the m2 v3 pro started because The M2 Evo still inherited a lot of parts still from the first M2 in 2019. It still had the same blade grips, the same kind of...

frame layout with the top plate and the main plate and in between the servos and the same servo layout. And we just eventually found that this was starting to limit what we could do with the helicopter. So we decided that we just wanted to do something completely new that appeals to the top pilots and the people who just think the M2 Evo Mark II is not enough.

So I assume it inherits the new Swash, right, from the M2 Mark II? Funnily enough, it doesn't. Really? No, the Swash geometry is actually very close to that of the original M2 Evo. But the blade grip arms are way shorter. So you get faster cyclic even than the Evo Mark II. And the Collective is also...

much improved because we need way less swash travel for the same collective pitch angle. Is there any other geometry changes aside from the swash being different and the blade grip arms being shorter? The new servo layout also helps a bit with the, well, straightness of the linkages. The servos are now inverted, so we get less linkage tilt shortening. The swashblade has new ratios and the blade grip arms are shorter.

It is a new geometry, basically. What's the reasoning for the servo layout being the way it is, the triangular? It makes it a lot easier to work on and to especially replace the servo arms. On the Evo Mark II, you always have to unmount the rear servo from the frame if you want to swap out the servo arm. With the V3 Pro, you can just stick a driver into the back of the helicopter.

And just swap that arm without having to unmount the servo. And it also makes wiring a lot easier. Exactly the same way we did on M4, M5, and M6. You can now just wrap the servo wires around the main dome. And they're neatly tucked away, and yeah, it's just so much nicer overall. I know there's new mainblades also for it. I have flown...

The new M2 with the Goose Guy S2 blades on mine. And they're way faster blades than the OMP blades are. But I noticed that it made... i don't want to make i don't want to say it made it feel notchy but there were there were times when it would jump around i don't know if you know what i'm talking about how are these blades different from the goose because they have a similar blade profile is why i'm bringing them up

Well, I cannot speak for the blades that you mentioned because I never even touched them in my life. But I can tell you how they compare to the Evo blades because they come from the same mold. Oh, they do. We kept the overall blade geometry the same because I tried to design a new blade for this helicopter, but I could actually not do a lot better than what we have right now. Maybe two, three, four, five percent.

At best, but making a new mold for that would have been way too expensive and would have actually driven the price of the heli up even further. So we optimized the material. We have a completely new material now. which makes the blade way lighter. Oh, okay. It is like 15, 20% lighter. I don't actually remember how much. Is it the same airfoil?

It is all the same geometry. It's the same airfoil. Oh, it just looks different, I guess, with the paint. Wow, that's crazy. We painted it with our Apex brand, which I came up with a while ago, and I think it just looks neat. with the okay it looks like a totally different blade i didn't realize it's basically just a lighter it is it is lighter and it also has optimized flat white stiffness i cannot tell you exactly how we optimized it

But it helps tremendously in fast flight. You can like literally go up to retreating blade stall without the helicopter becoming unstable. And once you hit retreating blade stall, you have way different issues than just your blade stiffness. While we're talking about these blades, what about can existing M2 owners put these blades on their helicopter with good results as well? Or should they stick with the stock?

Oh, they can totally put them on. I mean, it's the same mold, so they will fit. And actually, our guys have been ordering additional Apex 190s for their Evos because it just makes the Evo also quite a bit more agile.

just flies better with them. And I tend to agree. I've also tried this. And while the EVO Mark II in itself is a really nice and very, very stable package, the... more nimble apex blades make it just a bit more fun to fly okay so i feel like what you said there the m2 is the mark ii is extremely stable not the pro but If you're a pilot that likes that stability, does changing these blades out hurt that feeling of it at all? Not too much. Not too much. I mean, it is...

I mean, you're obviously giving up gyroscopic stability by putting a lighter blade on. That's just how physics work. OFS 3 still does a very, very good job at stabilizing the helicopter. So it's really just a matter of if you're really pushing it. the helicopter might feel a bit less stable because it is also, you cannot design a blade without knowing the helicopter you want to fly it on and you cannot design a helicopter without knowing the blades that will be flown on it.

You have to match the gyroscopic stability of the blade to the moment of inertia of the helicopter. Those two go hand in hand. If you've ever, like... tried a blade that flew amazingly well on one helicopter and then put it on a different helicopter. And you were like, is that the same blade? That does not fly well at all. That is exactly what's happening. Interesting.

Like, you can mismatch. You can mismatch the moment of inertia of the disc, the gyroscopic stability of the disc, with the inertia and stability of the airframe. That does not happen with the apex.

Like, it still flies amazingly well. But yeah, you're giving up just a little bit of gyroscopic stability that OFS 3 then has to use up its control margin to compensate for. All right, bringing things back to... the simple folk like myself um no i mean it's all really interesting it's starting to get over my head for sure but one of the things i love hearing just now about this model is that you can change all the servo horns without removing the servos which

If you've ever wrenched on a micro, you know it's really easy to drop a screw into the motor. And it's a pain. So that's clutch. And one of the reasons, honestly, the original M2 was so loved is because it's so damn durable. You can stuff it into the ground or the grass with typically only minor damage. So how does this new M2 Pro do? Are you seeing the carbon boom sort of snapping versus the previous boom bending and maybe getting away with a little more?

How was the durability-wise? Have you guys stuffed it a bunch yet? I have stuffed it a bunch. I've been yelling at my guys anytime they crashed, but I've been crashing it myself quite a bit. I've had a couple really nasty crashes. and like 15, 20 maybe normal crashes and it holds up in some areas a bit worse than the M2 Evo Mark II and other areas a bit better than the M2 Evo Mark II.

I mean, obviously, it's a completely new design, so things are going to change. But overall, you end up usually with the same parts that break. One example for how it does better, the blade grip arms. are way more durable on the v3 pro because that is something that always annoyed me about the evo mark ii and the evo before it and the v2 and whatever came before that

The blade grip arms on the older models were actually pretty easy to bend. Anytime I would crash with the rotor running, I would bend a spindle. I've actually... bent my first main shaft on any m2 ever like two days ago i've never been to mine i've been mine so many times but i i crash i crash fairly often so

Like usually you bend a spindle, you bend a main shaft, you break servo arms. Those are not big repairs. Those like, I don't care. I can pull a spindle and replace it in like two minutes. Yeah, it's easy. But when you bend a blade grip, that sucks because the blade grips...

They're expensive. You need to swap the bearings over. It sucks. It's a pain in the ass because they're pressed in and you need heat. And that can ruin your flying day. So especially those stupid blade grip arms have been my focus to improve.

The blade grip is not any heavier than that of the EVO Mark II, but it is so much more durable because you're just not bending these arms anymore. And that is my biggest win on this helicopter because I don't... want to know how many times i've bent these stupid arms back and like that is usually a three-dimensional compound band that you then have to undo and it's always a pain in the ass yeah hard to get your tracking right after that

That is not an issue on the V3 Pro. Like I've just yesterday, I stuffed it in out of an inverted loop, hit on the main rotor head with... 5,200 something RPM. It bounced back up half a meter. I changed the spindle. I changed the main shaft and one servo arm and it was flying like new. That's cool. That's cool. Is it any easier to change out the boom on the Pro? Well, we looked at a new wire routing. So you can route the tail motor wire now without having to use zip ties and without having to...

unmount a servo. So in that regard, it's easier, but you still have to route the wires to the front, obviously, because Office 3 is at the front. Otherwise, pretty much the same process as before.

Except that you do not have the little insert in the boom anymore that you need to swap over. You just now bolt the tail motor mount directly to the tail boom with two screws and that's it. Cool. Is this the peak? Like, is there room for improvement or is this like...

The best micro helicopter ever going to be made type thing. Like how much room for improvement is there? Define improvement. Then I can answer this question. That's the thing. It feels like we keep evolving in the micro helicopter space, right? You know, it started with.

You know, the M2s and then the Logo 200 was in there as well. And then the Goose Guy S2 and then the Mark II. And we just, you know, making these continual evolutions where things improve, improve, improve. Feels like we're running out of improvements and yet they still continue to come.

I mean, I don't see a way for it to get lighter, right? You've already got a super light airframe, lightened motors. I don't know. Let's bring it back to a point that was mentioned earlier. It's always a compromise. You have to build both for flights. performance and for durability. I could have brought this helicopter down to 300 grams if I wanted to, but don't expect durability from that one then.

Yeah, I get that. Okay, I hear that. It would have flown a lot better, of course, but to what use if every crash means basically a rekit of the helicopter. So is there room for improvement is a very, very difficult subject. Also, the simulation methods I used to optimize this helicopter. For all I know, they might not be optimal. There might be more left in those simulation methods. I don't know that at this point.

There could always be better tools. There could be like bionically optimized shapes that are inspired by shapes in nature, which you could design in the future, which. we didn't do but nobody in rc does and it's also probably a pain for manufacturing so i would say that the m2 v3 pro is i mean i also said that in my video it is the absolute maximum what we can do with current technology while not compromising durability too much. We could compromise durability and get more performance, but...

We don't want to do that, so that is the best we can do right now. Further evolutions in battery technology, motor technology, also materials maybe. could warrant more improvement in the future. But for what we can do right now, this is and I can say this in good faith, the best that we can do at this time.

No, that's a fair point. And certainly as tools and software and simulations, you know, continue to evolve new, you know, new options may become available. But so that point, speaking of improvements in efficiency. We've seen O&P mention, you know, 25% increase in flight time. Is that marketing hype or real? Oh, that is so real that I was like...

What the fuck? When's my battery going to go flat? When's my battery going to go flat? How long have I been flying for? This is actually the reality. And I kind of explained that in my video already. We just... made changes that conserve energy and if you fly 3D you stop you accelerate you stop you accelerate exactly like you do in your car

Imagine stop-and-go traffic, how your consumption goes up if you have to stop and accelerate all the time. Suddenly you go from your 30 miles per gallon on the highway down to like... God, when we drove out of Oshkosh, we got like... one and a half miles per gallon in that hour that we crept off the parking lot. And it's exactly the same thing. You accelerate, you stop, you accelerate, you stop. And that costs energy. And by lowering the mass...

of the helicopter by those 25 grams, that is 7% of the total flying weight. Now imagine if you have a 700 size helicopter, 5 point, I don't know, whatever kilograms. And then you shave off 400 grams. Do you think it would fly longer? Yeah, no, it totally makes sense. Yeah. And that is exactly what's happening here.

I mean, that's why the guys who fly without canopies don't want to fly with a canopy anymore, because you're used to that feel of the machine without it, and the canopy is weight. But then you don't have any friends. Even I've been doing that on the V3 now. I've been doing that on the V3. I've been putting a lighter battery in and left the canopy off. Boom, I'm at 300 grams flat. And 300 grams flat on a helicopter with a power system like this.

wow like okay wow i wish i could do this all the time but i need to keep the canopy on for marketing and it's it's actually bugging me sometimes because i've seen like You need a canopy, right? You need a nice, beautiful canopy. You need a canopy. I agree. I like canopies, dude. I'm a fan. But if the canopy then again is 5% of your flying weight, it might make it worse. Okay, so totally off subject here.

But wouldn't it be cool to get an M7 canopy that's all carbon? Like, be cool. There's a carbon fiber canopy. Painted carbon. Would be so expensive. Would be so, so, so expensive. That's what Alex wants for Christmas. I mean, you can put in a special order with us. We can custom make canopies if you want, but it's going to be super expensive. I want one. I want a carbon canopy. It's going to be super expensive. Rough cost estimate shipped from China, probably like 300.

I think, Alex, you need to rethink the amount you're crashing right now as you consider an expensive canopy. Let's see here. I'm going to message Jonas right now and say I want a carbon canopy. So I want a... While we're talking about money, though. You actually sent me a message. While we're talking about dollars, though.

Let's get into how much this thing costs a little bit. So it's roughly $100 more than current other $200s on the market. What's the reason for the price increase? The reason for the price increase is that this, well... All the work that went into it, of course, contributes to this cost. The weight optimization also contributes because

I've seen one guy say, oh, it's less material. It should be cheaper. Well, guess what, smartest? That's hilarious. Less material means more cutting operations on the CNC, and that costs... money yeah yeah it's like your jeans that already have holes in them they're more expensive no that is like that is only part of the reason also we like the new canopy mold costs money

All the prototyping we did cost money. And what people seem to forget, right? We live in a world where everything gets more expensive. Like, just look at eggs. Our helicopters don't, though. Exactly. That is the problem. A 700 kit. What did a 700 kit cost in 2010? It was about $900. What does a 700 kit cost in 2025? $900 with blades. Do you see what's happening here? Do you see what's happening here? Nobody in this hobby ever dared to adjust helicopter prices to inflation.

If you want to make money with a 700-size helicopter these days, the kid would have to be $1,500 to $1,600. Yeah, that's too bad. I'm not exaggerating. That is literally what it would have to cost to be lucrative. So it sucks because helicopters are a work of love and helicopters are a work of art. And just underselling them and compromising on the quality, it just doesn't do them justice. These things are like an expression of what the designer wants a helicopter to be.

And the M2 V3 Pro is our vision. I say our because this is a joint effort between me, the engineering team in China and our team pilots who... have been relentlessly testing these helicopters for a long time now. Is the new canopy lighter than the old canopy? I actually don't know. Okay, it looks like it. I actually have no idea. I can...

I can check, but let me finish this thought. Yeah, sorry. So we are asking for quite a bit more money for this because this is a very special helicopter and a lot of work went into it. And we value our work at realistic prices. Also the M5. The M5 is way more expensive than other 550s. But if you've built one, you know how well everything fits together. You know the quality of the parts.

So isn't it actually worth it? Yeah, and I think there's precedent there too, right? When the Logo 200 came out, everyone looked at the pricing and went, oh my God, no one will ever pay that. And we all know... amongst Mikado owners, it was a very popular model. So I think, you know, the proof's in the pudding. When a few people adopt it and it flies really well, which I'm sure based on the Mark II, it will, you know, more people will be willing to pay a premium. But really, but honestly...

Premium is the wrong word, right? Because you're right. We are like need to bring things to realistic levels and pay for the development work and innovation. Yeah, I mean, we are like the way we prize our helicopters. is made so that we can survive with the helicopter business, so we're not making a loss on our helicopters. But you need to consider the margins also for the retailers. If helicopters were our only business branch,

it already would be difficult at the prices that we're asking, I think. Right. I mean, it is more expensive than helicopters that came before it, but we are trying to deliver a product that is actually worth this price. Like we're using 77.5 aluminium for all the highly loaded parts. We are using the best motor technology that we have on hand right now. And we are a motor manufacturer.

we are using new paints for the canopies so they would be way more durable and not flake off as easily as previous canopies we had. We are trying our best to make this model worth the price we're asking. That is the important point. Yeah, it makes sense. Hey, John, this is Brian. John, a little bit late, but I've been listening to the conversation here.

You know, and talking about the peak of evolution with this guy too. So it feels like the OMP, like the M2, the Mark II just came out and there's already a new model available in this V3, right? So have you got much... push back on this from any of the modelers out there? How quick we switch out from one version to the next? Well, hey, Brian, that's one hell of an entry for you. Asking the important questions.

I am aware of this. We have been actually thinking about this, but it is important to note that the V3 Pro does not replace the Mark II in any way. The Mark II will stick around for quite a while. We are guaranteeing parts support for three more years. And the Mark II is just a more budget-friendly option in the lineup. It does not have the fancy motor tag. It is heavier. It has the slower blades.

but it will still be supported. And the thing is, we had a choice to make. So, OFS 3 was ready half a year ago, in December, when we launched the... Evo Mark II. By that we made a conscious decision of extending this airframe's life because the M2 Evo came out in 2022. So it is now three years old at this point. And three years is usually the typical life cycle for a Chinese micro helicopter product. If you look at all the other offerings, they're also...

around for no longer than three years. Yeah. But we then saw this is a very popular helicopter and we had the choice of either Discontinuing the M2 Evo with the previous generation of the OMP Hobby flight system, OFS2, it was not officially called that but makes sense to call it that. which was very limited, not nearly as good as Office 3. And I mean, imagine we killed off this helicopter right then and there.

And then released a new model that is $100 more expensive with no option for you to even buy the old model again or anymore. And I think that would have upset people. quite a bit as well. So we decided to extend the useful life of the M2 Evo by giving it the Mark II treatment, bigger motor, higher KV, the newest wash plate, the white skids and especially OFS3.

which transformed this helicopter into something completely new. Totally agree. The OFS-3 makes it, I mean, the best flying micro I've ever flown. Yeah, exactly. And that way... we are able to support this model for at least three more years. The important part is at least. If we still see people buying the M2 Evo Mark II, we can offer parts for longer. That is not a problem. And we just actually wanted to do our customers a favor by keeping the Evo Mark II around. Now the difficult part is...

The M2 V3 Pro development process has taken us about one year. And when the Evo Mark II was announced, the V3 Pro was not ready. Not nearly ready. We were still in the design stages. We were still testing stuff, still optimizing stuff. And to those saying, well, you should have told us that something new is coming. Yeah.

In the current market situation, it's just not possible to make such statements anymore because, well, you're kicking yourself out of the market if you do this. No, that's a good explanation. Thanks for sharing that. Absolutely.

So is there a nitro copy? Jonas, we're starting to run a little long, but we got a few other quickies we want to throw your way here. First up, any additional ELRS telemetry in this new release? I mean, it's kind of ridiculous. We just got awesome telemetry and now we want more, but anything new with this model? Well, the OFS 3... flight control stack is exactly the same as it is in the Evo Mark II. So you will get exactly the same feature set that you get on the Evo Mark II.

Which is also really nice because any updates that we push for the V3 Pro or for OFS3 in general, both helicopters will get the exact same updates at the exact same time. So, I mean... This is going to continue as a parallel kind of development for both helicopters. So everyone with a Mark II will benefit from the developments on the V3 Pro.

and they will not be left behind. So if we do fancy new features, you will get them on both helicopters. You think we'll see OFS-3 in like a larger machine, like a move over to the M4 or something like that? Well, we are always working on you and exciting things. Well said. Very well said. Very well said. I got a different one for you.

Here, Jonas. So future innovations, right? And thanks for sharing all your knowledge about the whole OMP fleet, right? We love it all. I love to see manufacturers continue to innovate and evolve their products. So you guys are doing a great job. Keep up the good work. However, so my primary flying discipline is F3C precision flying. Do you see in the near future possibility of an F3C machine coming from you guys?

Well, we're always working on you and inside. No way, come on. I love it. The M7 already comes with the longer blade grip arms. Explore branded blade grip arms. Those were initially branded F3C. And I actually know some guys are flying the M7 and F3C. Oh, nice. Okay. I might have to grab it. So apparently the airframe already lands itself well. As for a fuselage, I obviously cannot tell you if or if not we're going to do something about that.

I've toyed with the idea, but I can at least tell you that currently there is nothing in development. Gotcha. Gotcha. Cool. Okay. I appreciate that.

So as Brian said, OMP has a full range of sizes of helicopters, everything from the M1 through the M7 and all the sizes in between. I'm curious, and I'm not sure if you'd be privy to this information, but... what's the bigger seller 400 and below so micro helicopters or 500 and up like what what sells more and makes more money for a helicopter company that has a full range the bigger ones or the small ones it's the small ones

The big ones are really just for the people who want to build a helicopter, but the small ones, everyone buys them. Beginners, advanced pilots, 3D pilots, like... It's a no-brainer to buy a small helicopter because it's not expensive. It is easy to keep around, easy to maintain. And, well, especially the M1.

especially the M1 is a helicopter for literally everyone from complete beginner to 3D Pro because it has just such a wide range of like flying applications a very wide flight envelope and it crashes like a champ it crashes like a champ it is super easy to fix if you break something it is super cheap to fix if you break something like literally i know

world-class pilots who always have an M1 with them just for fun after practice with 700-size helicopters. Very cool. So yeah, small helicopters are definitely bestsellers. That's interesting. Thanks, man. Well, we've gone pretty long. I think we're just about to wrap things up. Anybody have anything they want to ask before we wrap? Or Jonas, is there anything you want to share with the hobby if we give you the floor before we wrap things up?

Well, I just want you to know that this is still a very, very alive and exciting hobby. Amazing things are coming your way. Because as I said, we're always working on new things. especially the micro heli market is very much alive right now. And technology is still progressing. Like there was a sentiment of, oh, how can this get any better? Oh, we've reached a peak. No, we have not reached a peak.

Very, very exciting things are coming, and especially in small helicopters. Oh, really? When's the new M1 coming? Let's just say... Let's just say we still have some plans that we want to work on. But no, this is like really a hobby to stick around in. And if you like... Especially if you buy a new helicopter, always keep in mind that you directly fund the development of new models from that manufacturer. So no matter if it's an M5, an M7, an M4.

the first M4 or if it's been the Mark II just two weeks ago and now we've announced the new V3. I just want to say thank you for trusting our products. And thank you for buying them because this enables us to do way cooler things and to drive the hobby forward as a whole. Even if it feels like you've misspent your money on an...

Evo Mark II now that the M2 V3 Pro is out there. Just know that you have made the hobby better as a whole because you have enabled us to develop new things that benefit everyone in the end.

No, that's well said. Well, right on, Jonas. Thanks for coming on, man. It's not every day that we get to talk directly to a helicopter designer, especially there's often language barriers there. So thanks for coming on and telling us a little bit more about OMP and what's going on over there. Well, thank you very much for having me. This was very, very fun. I really enjoyed this. And like, I was just on a podcast yesterday and...

I said many of the very same things, but I'm glad we could also cover some different topics. It's just a really nice experience to come together, talk to people. Share ideas, share thoughts. It is just so nice. Oh yeah, and also shout out to Sunny Eye Candy with Hooked on Helis. That's where I... Was yesterday. So if you want more of my ramblings. About OMP helicopters. Some of the same things. Some different things. Also go check out our episode. And don't worry guys. I also shouted you out.

their podcast i'm looking forward to i'm looking forward to their first episode yeah we are we've actually shouted out their show in our last episode as well so we're looking forward to their uh to see what they're up to over there yeah so thanks again jonas really appreciate it Well, thank you guys. See you soon. All right. Thanks, Jonas.

I'm sorry we weren't all able to be there for that conversation, but we did the interview kind of in the middle of the workday, so only some of us could make it there. But thanks, Jonas, for coming on. Yeah, thank you. It was great to hear the perspective from a designer. a brand in the hobby. So good stuff. Awesome. I do want to hit on message we got from a listener. So.

We ask for listener response often, and we did want to highlight one we got recently. Brian, why don't you take us through this one? Yes. One of our episodes, we asked you all about the GDW servos and how you like them. And we got a response from Rich. Oh my goodness, your last name, Rich. Desjarlis, is that it? Desjarlis, yes. We apologize, Rich, if we butchered your last name, my friend, but...

You're listening from the great state of Vermont. It's probably even easy to say. You probably say it exactly like it looks. That's jarless. That's jarless. Yeah. All right. At this point, the man is rolling over and cringing. Put him out of his misery. Rich, I'm going to get your last name right, my friend. I promise you. But anyway, so Rich is listening from the great state of Vermont. He said he's used the GW servos for quite some time now. He's installed them in three of his.

700 size helicopters and loves them. The servos are crazy fast and powerful, he added, and they are definitely his favorite servos. So thank you, Rich, for sharing your experience with the GDW servos. Any final thoughts, fellas on GDW? Yeah, they have a really neat color. And I wonder if you rolling rainbow those and to the end of the rainbow, there's a pot of gold there. They do have some good colors.

They got some interesting color schemes on those. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, they've been around a while, but now they've got a lot more options. There's like many sizes and different ones that they didn't used to have years back. Thanks for sending us. Rich, go ahead and send us in.

email if you uh you want to get some rotor revolution stickers we'll happily send them your way for writing in so thanks dude with that that's it for episode 41 you know what to do if you've got questions and we'll catch you soon i feel like we should start a we should try to bring back the radio shack saying at the end of the thing if you've got questions we've got answers there you go and that's true if you got questions so do we

If you've got setup questions, tuning questions, whatever, send them our way. We'll do our best to help you out for sure. And that new M2 campy looks dope. They do look really good. It's a really sharp looking model. Yeah, it is. Okay. All right, let's get out of here. Bye. Bye. Thanks for listening, everyone. Bye. Bye bye.

This concludes this episode of the Rotor Revolution RC podcast. To learn more, stay in touch with the team, and to join the revolution, check out our Facebook page at facebook.com. Rotor Revolution RC Podcast, or find us on the web at rotorrevolution.line. Help us spread the word and leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform. For listener questions, advertising inquiries, or to reach out to the entire team, email us at questions at rotorrevolution.line. Thanks for listening.

That was funny. Alex, you're like, what is there? I'm like, look up, you fucking dumbass. It's in Brian's announcement. I didn't see it. And then you're like, Nick says, look it up if you don't fucking know. No, it's right there. Are your headphones broken? That was good stuff. I didn't hear Brian say it. I'm sorry. Oh, it's all good. Now we know that Alex only listens to himself. Oh, God.