EP. 58: 2026 Goals

Welcome to the Rotor Revolution RC podcast with Brian Birdsong, Alex Dean, Kenny Hutton, and Nick Wisdom.

Welcome to the Road to Revolution. I'm your host, Nick. This is episode 58 and happy 2026 from all of us to all of you. What's up, fellas? Happy New Year. What's up, everybody? Happy Year. It's the year of happy. It is the year of happy. And sorry we took kind of an extra week off. We were planning on recording last week, and so we didn't say anything about taking an extended break. But then just, you know, life, family, things.

And we said, let's just take a holiday week off. To all you guys on our Patreon page, we're still waiting for not supporting you. I was like, wait, we have a Patreon page? are you embezzling money from the show yes yes damn i wonder where your heli budget came from right so i know it's been winter but i feel like we've all kind of

Been doing stuff. I've been doing a lot, at least, this winter. Well, the weather's been cooperating, at least, around us. I think most of the United States it has been, has it not? Everywhere in Texas it has been. Guaranteed half the listeners hate your guts right now that you said that. Yeah, well.

It was 65 and sunny today. Nice. Very nice. Well, who wants to share some updates? Let's just jump right in. I'll go first. Brian's going to go. I'm not that long. Yeah. So last we left off, I believe we were kind of talking about going to our build party, Nick, and, you know, having a good time with that. Well, we did the build party and it was fantastic. Yes, we did.

Man, over the break, it was awesome. When was that? What weekend was that on? December 20th, 22nd, something like that? 20th, yeah. So right before Christmas. Right before Christmas, yeah. But myself, Nick. Sean K., Dr. Sean K., Archie came a little bit later, and another one of our Lambda buddies named Jay all participated, and everybody built some cool stuff, man. Yeah, it was cool.

Did you still, did you finally, did anybody finally do what I've been saying to do? Like just drop a bag of the old bag 22, like the spare parts on somebody else's table. Come on. No. No. I want to see that. I felt bad for Jato. So Sean's basement man cave hobby room space there that we built in is carpeted. And he lost a little bitty shim. And Lord have mercy, it went poof. It disappeared.

Three guys crawling around the carpet with flashlights trying to find this little washer. He didn't roll over with the rolly chair and find it oddly shaped after that. And we tried magnets. We tried all the things. He gave up eventually.

We were like, dude, what happened? He was like, I had it up. I was looking at it and it just fell out of my finger and it like hit my stomach. I said, is it in your shirt? Did it go down in your pants? I mean, look at your body person. Sean had some spare shims around, dude. Like, yeah. Did he not? Jay ended up not being able to finish that day anyway, so he was fine. But no, I mean, I built a Nimbus V2 electric bird, 550 size, which is pretty cool. I need a good practice bird to start.

Yeah, yeah. It's not like their old 550, their new one. And that build went really smooth. I mean, it wasn't bad at all. Just following the manual, I didn't have any quote-unquote QC issues at all. I mean, everything was pretty... You know, easily labeled there and displayed out. It was awesome. So I got through the build. I think we started like super early, Nick. What? Eight, seven, eight o'clock. Yeah. Yeah. And getting all the electronics installed and.

You know, at least going through the initial Rotoflight setup with the servos. I was going to say, is the build party like five hours and like the wiring party is 12 hours? Bro, I tell you what, like I told y'all last time, Nick, with that great idea of kind of... you know setting up your electronics just like a dry run of the electronics rather on the on your desk on your workbench

it was awesome it made it it made it that much quicker i mean this is probably you'll probably save about a good hour hour and a half doing something like that first yeah wiring a 550 or any small helicopters worse than wiring a 700 i think like yes um yes And you know why? Because the damn servo leads are too long. So you wind up with this bunch bungled up. Put a bundle somewhere. Someone should come out with some programmable servos with removable servo leads. Yes. Short ones. Yes.

Where the hell are they? It's 2026. We've been asking for that for three years, man. Four years. Where is the future? Oh, my God. Oh, but guys, check this out, though. So get this guy.

Built. Get it wired up. Like I said, go through the initial rotor flight setup. I made a mistake. I made one of our 51 ways to crash a helicopter mistake. Did it crash? I did not crash it, but... Okay. It was close. I had my gyro mounted backwards. And so it was responding that way. Right. And I noticed that when we got outside, well, Sean noticed it actually, because you know, you got to get that second pair of eyes on your bird when you finish building it, man.

So so he looked at he was like, oh, this watch is not going the right direction. I was like, oh, shit, you're right. So I go back in there. And we look at it. He said, oh, you got this. You got the display turned around like 180 degrees. So just take that out. I was like, oh, I missed that. So I missed it. And the correction. OK, the gyro was working properly.

Go outside, put that guy down, spool it up. But then I notice, you know, just on the ground, like my right cyclic wasn't responding right cyclic. And I'm like, uh-oh. But you had spooled up at this point. You were like at zero pitch on the pad at RPM. Yes. And the same with the tail. And so I shut it back down. I'm like, well, what the hell?

Because the gyro was backwards, I reversed servos to make it appear to be normal. So when I corrected the gyro, I didn't go back and correct the servo direction. And that was a problem I had. I'm all reversed. So I went back, fixed the servos the right, correct directions. And, and that was great. Took it outside, spooled it up. And I had this nasty wobble, nasty wobble.

And what I got to get used to and what I forgot is that 550 size birds run a higher head speed than like 1300, right? I'm thinking like F3C, like a 700 size. No, no, no. Even then, like 1800 or something, right? Absolutely. The lowest speed should be about 1,800. Nick was helping me out with that, some of the fellas. So when I took it to the field a few days later for like a field maiden, I increased all of those.

those RPMs for each mo flight mode. And it got rid of the wobbles. I was like, thank God. But, uh, it's interesting that it was wobbling like crazy. Yeah, it was, it was, well, it was very noticeable. I mean, it wasn't. so bad that it would crash or anything, but I was like, damn, this thing is wobbling. And I tried just increasing or reducing the gain some just to see if it was in the FBL itself, and it wasn't. I was like, whoa.

No, it's just too slow. Right. It's just spinning way too slow for that thing. And so once I sped it up, which I did at the bottom and I got about 1800 and the top end is about 22 and a half, maybe flew fine. You're like, Rotor Flight wouldn't do me that way. I know. I'm like, come on, dude. Don't let me down, you know? Oh, man.

But no, that was fun, man. Like I said, the build party was fun. Building a nimbus was fun. I'm a nice little bird I can go out and just practice some cool stuff with. Did a lot of roller flight tuning on, and I'm really close. Not done, but really close to getting it completely tuned. Or fully tuned, rather. But yeah, at the field, we had a few of our Lambda fellas come out with us. I think we have a guy named Peter. Matter of fact, Peter lives in Jamaica.

And he comes up and visit us from time to time. And he came out to fly with us. And he was like, man, you know, I see you guys talking about the black box tuning, log tuning in the chat all the time. Like, can you show me some of that? It's like, hell yeah. So broke out the laptop and, you know, did a couple of flights with each one of my birds to show them the difference, like show them how bad the or in the middle of tuning the 550 was versus like my Wraith, which was.

damn damn they're perfect and even the saxos I took out I was I was tuning so that was a really good session to show him how I tune my bird and so filters were really clean so I kind of showed him how to do the filters Then what was more interesting to him was the PID tuning. And so I PID tune with PID Bench, a little tool that I've shared a link with many folks on. But we watched how we set the PIDs.

through that graphical interface of the PID bench. And we said, okay, we see here how the graph goes above the set point where we can probably decrease I, blah, blah, blah. We just went through the motions of that. And we go out and fly, come back and look at the data and it would get smoother and smoother until my socks is like flying perfect now. Like, holy shit. So, you know, showing him that, teaching him that he was really impressed and happy that he can go back home and try it on.

on his own, you know, but that was fun. That was a lot of fun doing that. And you know, one reason I like showing people how to tune like that too, because it teaches me more as well. You know, when you, when you teach folks, it teaches you as well. So yeah, it does. No doubt.

So sometimes I made a mistake and I was like, OK, let me correct that because that's not right. And so, yeah, you learn more yourself, too, when you start teaching folks. So that was a lot of fun. But yeah, man, that was that was my update over the last three weeks that we've been off. You know, for days I could get out to fly. I mean, they were just horrible days. I mean, we didn't have a few bad weather days down here. Not that it was cold, but it was rainy and muggy.

You know, we've been having this crazy zero visibility fog lately, man. It's just like on the ground. The clouds are on the ground. You can't see nothing. For an F-3C pilot, forget about it. There's no way I can fly. 200 yards that way. It's gone after 50 yards. So, yeah, I've just been simming a little bit. But like you, Alec, with the VR headset, man, I'm like really digging the VR headset with simming guys.

highly, highly, you know, encourage you guys to try that. Give it a shot because it is a lot of fun doing it with the VR headset. But no, that's my update. That's awesome. Brian, I have a question for you.

So you're talking about tuning and rotor flight stuff, which if you're not flying rotor flight and you're listening, I'm sorry that you're listening to this. Let's go on about this thing you don't really understand. But some of us are starting to get into that at our field more. And one of the guys is chasing like the set point.

thing where you're talking about your eye gain and set point do you find does the helicopter still lag behind what the set point is supposed to be after you're done tuning it because of inherent blade design and lag and I don't know. And here's the deal too. You're not going to get it a hundred percent perfect. You'll get it very, very close. At least.

From a data standpoint, getting it close to that set point is a hell of a lot better than the look and feel of how the helicopter's flying. So the answer is that I think it's just too broad. I mean, it's not going to be perfect.

You know, that's some things that Archie told me, too. Like, you know, you'll never get that line perfect. You know, it's just the way the system's designed. I mean, this isn't 100%, you know, bulletproof or whatever. So you get it close and you'll know that it's flying great.

You know, you can, you can feel it, but, but now I don't, I don't think that's the case at all, Alex. I was just curious. One of the guys was chasing his set point and I was like, it's never going to be perfect because. Yeah. Your gyro is trying to achieve something. Your blades are not physically capable of grabbing air and doing what you're asking for. And one point I would advise too is, you know, start off in the RPM.

that you're going to tune. Like don't switch between flight modes because that definitely throws off a little bit too. Yeah, yeah. So like when I tune my aerobatics with the Wraith or even the Soxos.

I start at 1800 on the ground and just go fly, you know. If I'm tuning hover, I start at the 1400 and just fly. That way the set point is at least going to be consistent all the way across the flight and not... be have this medium set because you've right between your your flight modes there so yeah okay makes sense well cool all right i'm gonna jump in so

I have been ridiculously busy in the hobby. You know, we've talked a little bit about burnout recently, and I was definitely feeling that a month ago. Yeah. Something this winter, just like since our last episode, just kicked into high gear. And I have just been loving the hobby, like just cannot get enough. I'm like, I'm in the like, I need a fix feeling and like getting annoyed when like life gets in the way.

Do you still have those airplanes yet? Do you still have some airplanes? So I fixed the three blade, got the rest of the parts in for that. So the three blade specter, to just be brief, tail was fine. New boom, new pushrod, new links.

head was fine except for a couple of bearings i replaced and some blade grip arms frames fine read it all the wiring because the wiring chafe was the cause of that so i have to cut in here nick because what if someone's listening who doesn't know that you crashed it this is a rebuild

after we talked about the crash on the show they can go back and listen to last time but what if they didn't what if they weren't that interested in what we had to say and they skipped it or something well then they're smart Yeah. But yeah, I crashed the Spectre 3 Blade at the Winter Bash Funfly due to wire chafing against the frame, unfortunately, that made the FBL reboot in flight, which is bad. That sucks, man.

yeah it just fell out of the sky from like 100 it basically blade stopped 100 feet near and just had the saddest fall ever it took so long to hit the ground i could have i was like my my head was down looking at the ground feeling sad before it hit everybody just stand there you just kind of you know you have your head up and everybody here just kind of follows all the way down to the yeah because you know instantly i don't have control of this thing yeah

You should have said I don't got it and tried to hand the transmitter to someone else. I did say I don't got it, but I didn't hand the transmitter anywhere. But anyway, put that in. Got it fixed. Remadened it. And it is, the thing is, is before I crashed it, it was the smoothest, butterest, most perfect tracking three blade I've ever had. Like it was butter. Other people commented on how amazing it sounded and not like that three blade sound, but like three blade smooth sound.

Like it was dialed. That's cool. Okay. And now it's like 96% as dialed as it was. Like something is a tiny bit off. And you know, it's just like coming back from the crash. It's just not, it's not a hundred percent where it was and it might be tracking.

I might have another tweaked blade grip arm. I'm just going to replace all of them now and see if I can get it and set it again. I'm not giving up on it yet. And like I said, have you replaced every spindle? I didn't replace any. I mean, the spindles are so short and they're really thick that they didn't bend at all.

that i can tell they all seem fine i just wonder if it's going to end up being something small that you can't see like that you know it could be and like i said it still flies great there's just something a teeny tiny bit off so i need to keep chasing it but

I lost interest in that and moved on to other things because I had lots of things going on. So I talked about a new scheme I ordered from SAB for my original Orange Hill Goblin process. You teased us in the last one but didn't tell us, right? Yeah, so I think I told you the colors, but it's red, white, and black for the O'Goblin Pro, and it's in a gloss finish, which came out amazing from SAB. Their custom paint shop is amazing. I love that they do that. I wish everybody did that, but...

It really sets us to be apart as far as that goes. And it came out great. And it flies great, of course. And I'm just super stoked with that helicopter. It is not fun on a gray overcast day. The day I made it, it was like... It's really been gray and overcast like winter skies in Atlanta. And it was dark in the middle of the day too. And I was scared. I was like, I just got the scheme and I'm like losing orientation.

So it didn't fly that aggressively that day, but I have flown in since on other days and it's way easy to see and great. What color was this one before you did the change? It was stock orange. It was the first. I mean, that orange is like the most visible helicopter out there. Yeah. Although the SXC pink one is also crazy visible. So love that. One other note on my Old Goblin Pros. I just ordered. They just showed up at my house today. Of course, I'm not home.

I'm in, where am I? I've lost track. I don't know where I am. I'm in a city, not my own. I can't remember where I am. That's disconcerting. Anyway, it happens. You're getting old. At some point. Oh, I'm in Orlando. Oh yeah. Wow. Yeah, it happens when you travel a lot, you forget where you are. So I think I want to put rigid dampeners in it because I'm going to get to my RS7 Ultra in a second. And I love the rigid dampeners in that. Love, love, love them.

I ordered the X-Guard dampeners for the Old Goblin Pro, so that's the next thing I'm going to do. They're good, dude. You're going to like it. I loved it in that thing. I know you said you liked it too, so I was like, I love them in the RS7. Dude, it was like a totally different machine. Yeah. I'm stoked.

Did you leave the center pivoting when you put those in? I'm assuming you do. I tried it with and without, and I couldn't feel a difference at all. So I ended up just taking it out thinking it was just more stress on the head. Yeah.

I don't know. My RS7 Ultra, I left the center pivot in as I put the rigid dampeners in because I was like, why not? It's not going to hurt anything. I thought, and it hasn't. So I was just curious what you did. All right. Got to take that extra weight out of there. Yeah, it's a lot.

this is how crazy i've been i know right i fixed the spectra three blade before the build party because you know me i hate a new build while i still have a repair on the bench i'm like i gotta get the repair done before i can have fun then the sab stuff shows up on like the friday before the saturday build party so i did that friday night because i was like i gotta get this holy crap dude that's time consuming too it is but

The wonderful thing is I have this policy with my family that I don't pay money to be cold because I hate being cold at this point. And my wife took my children on a four-day ski trip. So during this time, I have the house to myself.

um makes sense no family commitments so managed to crank out all this work all right so build parties so i didn't have a kit to build for the build party i knew that goose guy was sending me the r7 ultra but it wasn't here yet it was stuck in customs so i was like i need a new plan And I was like, I don't want to buy a 700, but I want to build something because I love the build party and doing that. And I've already done all my repairs. What am I going to do? So I ordered an AK-420.

Just a small 420 size helicopter just to check out that build, see what it was like. It's a great beginner budget build. You don't know what that is. That's the Steam. Yeah, it's the Steam AK-420. So small 420 size helicopter, insanely reasonably priced. It's like 250 bucks for the kit.

It's the cheapest $420 you can buy. And I decided I was going to do this weird experiment with a Rotor Flight hybrid situation. So a Rotor Flight Nexus with a Mikado receiver, and I was going to run the telemetry from the... ESC into the Mikado receiver so I could have battery telemetry but fly rotor flight with a V control radio. So just a goofy experiment. So I got all that worked out on the bench just for a laugh.

so I didn't have to figure it all out on the build day. And as far as the build of the AK-420, I'm not going to get into a review of the helicopter. It's fine. It's an average 420. It's super inexpensive, so great for beginners.

fantastic helicopter for beginners on a budget who want a cheap heli to crash yeah i have one too they work fine yeah yeah flies fine build party was amazing i decided to film a ton of we often film a lot of content for the heli direct facebook group um for the build party So that was kind of how I had fun at the pill parties. I just filmed a bunch of goofy stuff and we just joke around like a bunch of fools. And God, it was crazy.

It's a lot of middle school magic, honestly, as you like to say, Alex. It's just like buddies hanging out and laughing all day long, like till your sides hurt laughing. So it was awesome. Last year, wasn't Brian drinking before lunch? We do sometimes have a beverage or three. Okay. Usually after we've made Nelly's.

But that wasn't fair, though, because Sean's wife brought down these lemon drops, and she makes the most amazing lemon drops. Is that this year or last year? That was last year. Okay, that's what I was thinking of. Yes, yes. But yes. Shouts out to Tawanda, who takes amazing care of us while we're at the build party. There's always food and things appearing. She's awesome. God, her pancakes are amazing. Yes. Go ahead. Go ahead. It's all good.

that's why brian goes honestly it's for the pancakes it's just for the food yeah um so got everything all set made in the 420 that all went fine for the most part had a couple quirks to figure out in the telemetry thing

I'd actually set up my battery wrong in V control, which is hilarious, which is why the battery telemetry wasn't working right away. But that all works fine. There's no reason you can't fly RotorFlight and get ESC telemetry. The only thing I haven't figured out is you don't get RPM because you need RPM to go to RotorFlight for the governor.

We'll just use the ESC Gov. Yeah, well, you can do that too. But what I was debating is, can you split an RPM wire? Like, could you feed RPM from one wire into both? rotor flight end into the Mikado receiver. And I don't know if you can split it. I don't know how the RPM signal works. It's just an electronic signal. I think you can. So I want to try that one day. I don't know because if V-Bar is trying to feed information back to it also and Rotor Flight is. Yeah.

and i just don't know if there would be any issue feeding it to both like anybody's yeah exactly back feeding a signal of some kind you need to put a directional arrow on one of the things so that the electricity knows to only flow one way like like those high-end speaker cables with arrows on them yes yes make me laugh

And Alex, you'll be proud of me here because this will speak to your soul, I think. I don't really like 420s. They don't really do it for me. So I sold it a week later. Oh my God. No, you didn't, dude. I did too. Who'd you sell it to? I like mine. It's just sitting on the shelf. It's just sitting back here. I like to fly it, but I think about grabbing it and I don't take it with me. I either take the M2 Pro or I take the big ones.

Yeah, I mean, I have a 550 for smaller. Okay, if you're a listener to the show and all you have is a 420 and you guys are like bricks, yes, but when you get used to flying something else, it just becomes what you're flying. Just like if you had...

If you had an M2 or whatever and you decided to build a 450 and you were only flying your 450, maybe you stopped flying. Yeah, if you get a 500, you're going to stop flying the 450. It's the same way. Yeah. It's just, it's an in-between size for me. I love my 550. That's great. And I love my 200s.

but a 420 like it's just like if i'm going to go somewhere small a park or something i'm going to take the 200s so 420s and if i'm going to go somewhere medium i'm going to take the 550 so the 420 just falls between the cracks for me so it doesn't i love how affordable a 420 is to build

But repairing it is a total nightmare, in my opinion, because it's so small. And it crashes kind of like a regular helicopter. It does. The steam is actually really open and easy to work on, though, at least. Yeah, that is true.

And it's a good helicopter, good build, easy, super low parts count, super fast build. I was maidening by, I don't know, four o'clock, something like that. And that's well, you know, cranking out little quick edits on short videos throughout the day as well. So, so did that. I took advantage.

I think this was Christmas Eve or maybe the day before, I went to Archie's house. So Archie always drives down to us and he's like an hour and a half, two hours away, depending on traffic. And so I drove up to Archie's house and Archie... Archie Harris, the rotor flight guru that we talk about a lot on the show and a good friend of ours in the Atlanta area. And so I drove up to his house. He's got a ton of property and brought some helicopters with me. And we just flew all afternoon.

Brought a bunch of batteries out. And the two of us hung out. And, you know, his kids came to visit every now and then and chatted with his wife a little bit. But just a nice day hanging out at Archie's property, flying helicopters in the afternoon. We got beautiful weather for it. So that was nice. Flew some other times as well.

during this break but the main highlight of what's going on is the goose guy r7 ultra came in and as i mentioned before heli direct and goose guy worked to send me a pre-production kit so that i could film a detailed build video so it's essentially like a video manual like every single step of the helicopter filmed every nut every bolt how do you know it was done right

How do I know it's done right? I follow the manual and do my best and use the knowledge of my brain and somebody will always comment on the video and tell me when it's wrong. It's wrong. Especially when there's like... you know it's a situation like it's a thrust bearing and there's two different lubricants you could choose whatever i do someone will tell me that i use the wrong one no it was a great video so so i don't know if folks know this real quick nick but

I post up a lot of the HeliDirect videos that we put out every Friday. And so Nick said, hey, I got the detail build video. And one of the things I do, I kind of, you know, watch the video just to get some notes out of it, make sure everything looks good, blah, blah, blah. Nick's video was three hours long, but it is the best three hours you can watch. It's awesome. It's a really good video, Nick. You did a good job on it, bro. That's cool.

I mean, it's a resource, and I'm not comparing myself to Nick's Mac 12, similar to Behind the Build, where not only do I build the RS7U, but I just talk about what I'm doing. And I give build tips as I build on how I do things. So even if you're not building an R7 Ultra, if you're new to building helicopters, I want it to be a good resource for you. Dude, I can't imagine building a helicopter like this. That is a ton of work.

honestly it's really fun to do while you build because i'm just used to it now i've done i think five or six of these on different helicopters so i'm used to talking to the camera and building at the same time the part i hate is the edit because the edit is I mean, to get three hours of footage, there's probably nine hours of footage because I don't stop pressing record while I'm like doing up 12 bolts in the step or whatever. I just let the record roll and stop talking.

And then I'll edit out all that dead air or say, here's what you're going to do. And then I'll do it quietly and then edit that part out. But so the edit is a ton of work. It takes hours and hours and hours to do the edit. So it actually worked out that we didn't record that week because I used the time to edit the video.

We'll definitely do a review of the RS7 Ultra. I got the purple is what they sent me, which looks great. Very easy to see in the air. We'll do a full-on review of it. I got to say, I loved this build. Like talk about fall together. Like the kit is a fast build. The machining quality is amazing. Like it's just a great, like.

Somehow he's just have those steps that are annoying and you don't like them and you get a little like, you're like, whatever. But this was just a really, really good build. But I've made it since. We got some amazing weather in Atlanta. out of nowhere it was like 60 some degrees and light winds and so i ran out to maiden it it flies amazing like just butter i i love this thing it's fine fantastic it's got a v-bar evo on it

And I'm still learning that they're just not great at low head speed. My hardest tuning job on the V-Bar Evo is the low head speed bank. So my low head speed bank on this helicopter is 1400 RPM. And I feel like the V-Bar Evo struggles a little below 1500.

And you got to work at it. I got it, but it takes a lot of work on the Evo, I find, at low RPM to get it the way you want. But now it's flying great. It's super fun at low head speed. There's not a wobble in the thing at all with the rigid dampeners. It's amazing. We'll do a full review of it. We'll talk about it more. When you say Ranger, are they palm dampers? Yeah, they're palm dampers. But it's just a solid, the entire width of the head block dampener.

there's no washers or spacers between the head block and the blade grips it's just put this giant chunk in each side pop it in and you're done oh really yeah like the magic like the augie style damper then yeah exactly okay But there's no rubber or dampened component to it. It's just put the rigid piece in. Whereas Augie has the O-rings on his. Oh, that's right. They do, don't they? Okay. I also...

Fixed my scale helicopter. So when I crashed the 550, I stole the tail off the scale heli because it's also got a Nimbus 550 in it to fix my 550 XL Power Electric. So I got the parts and fixed the scale heli. So I flew that once. That's back in the air. So I've got to fly it once every two years.

I got that done. And then this is what happened to me the other day and then I'll stop. I'll be done. So I'm in Orlando and every time I fly to Orlando for business, I'm like, that's awfully close to torches. Yeah.

And I'm kind of obsessed with flying right now, and I'm kind of obsessed with the RS7 Ultra. I can hear that. Yeah. So literally the night... before i think or the day before i flew to orlando i like get on the computer i'm like all right rental car change my flight to really early the morning and so the time frame so i flew into orlando early on the travel day here

and rented a car and drove out the torches and flew. You packed your golf bag and everything for it? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Got a golf case. Good for you, dude. That's awesome. So flew in the afternoon because I had some flight delays. So by the time I made it into Orlando and got to the field, it was about one o'clock, 1.30.

So a whole bunch of guys out at Torches on Sunday. So Patrick Mock, other Patrick, a whole bunch of other dudes. I'm going to not stop naming names because I'm going to forget some. But just had a blast hanging out at Torches on Sunday. Flew the RS7. I decided to play with blades on the RS7U, so I brought... Venture 716s with me, the Azure Pro 715s, and VTX 717s. And my two favorites, and this surprised me, are the VTXs and the Azure Pros.

And right now I left the VTXs on it because that was the last blade I tried and I really liked it. But I think I would be equally happy with the Azure Pros on it as I am the VTXs. Can I talk some smack about the RS7? You sure can.

You sure can. I have looked at it and I really appreciate some of the features like the tail belt tensioner. There's some cool stuff in it. Do you fly it the whole time and notice that there's a duck on the side of the helicopter? Eh, flack! yeah exactly terrible all right let's get this out the air once and for all the green canopy we've made a lot of mallard jokes it looks like an american mallard duck it's the same color

I even like green. That's like my favorite color. The pilots I know that have flown the green canopy say it's very dark in the air and it's very hard to see. I don't recommend the green canopy at all. I think the green canopies are going to end up getting swapped out for others eventually, honestly. Maybe there's guys that love it and can see it, but it's dark. It's hard to see. The purple shows up really well. The orange shows up amazingly well.

and i really got to say over the original rs7 that i struggled to see in the air because the side profile of the canopy was so small this is so much easier to see like night and day difference I know Diego Arce actually modified the sides of his canopy to a slightly different shape because he was playing around with that. I like that. I really like it. I like the side profile. I like the aerodynamic shape of it. It's got a really aggressive styling to the front when you see it in person.

I like it a lot. No, I actually like the shape of the canopy other than the duck thing. So whenever people are shaving it off, it looks better. It's funny when I'm there in person, I didn't see the duck that much though. Like when we had it in Florida down there, I looked at him and the duck like goes away. But in pictures, you see it like stands out more or something.

Yeah, there's something about the way it photographs, but for sure. I don't know. I'm super stoked with it. I didn't like the original R7 as much because of the open mouth, and I had a hard time with that tough side profile, but I love this thing. It is quickly becoming...

it's already flying as good as my El Goblin Pro that I love. So equally happy. Like if I fly the El Goblin Pro, I'll tell you it's my best heli. And then if I fly the R7U, I'll tell you it's my best helicopter right now. Like whichever one I fly last. How did that tensioner work out with your tail? Did you have to, did you?

do anything with that like pull it out hard as you could or did you just kind of like slightly pull out the belt and let the tensioner do its job or what was the setup on that so i followed the manual in this regard and i love that that manufacturers are doing this now and i'll cover this you know in the

review as well but you know sab has got a belt tensioner where they tell you it's got a measurement gauge on it where they tell you how to set the correct belt tension and goose guy did the same a similar thing with the r7 ultra so there's a vertical line on the belt tensioner

And then there's a line on the piece that rotates as the belt tensions. And what you do is you pull back on the tail boom until those lines make a straight line. So you just get the white line to make a straight line and you tighten your belt and you're done. And it's that simple. So super easy. The hardest part, honestly, of the belt tensioner is that the way they show a picture of how the spring orients when you put it together is super confusing. So everybody I know that's built one like...

stares at it for five minutes and then finally figures out how to put the spring in so that it actually works. But it's not a big deal. Speaking of that, on the 420, did you put that contraption on the boom or did you just pull the boom back and tension it? I put the contraption on the boom and was like, this is a contraption. It's just extra weight. I just left it there.

I never even used mine. It was still in the bag. I just saw him like, I don't need this. If you've got bolts to clamp the boom, why all of this extra stuff just to pull it backwards? Yeah, it was a little silly, but I wanted to try it because I'm like, all right, let's experience it as designed. It's like an adjuster.

Yeah, it's weird for sure. And so I'm still in Orlando, but I have Thursday. All I have to do is fly home. But I decided I was going to take an evening flight because that worked out schedule wise. So I'm going to go fly all day Thursday at Torches. Yeah, that's awesome, dude.

And then like do the same thing I did when I visited Alex. I'll like fly, fly, fly. And then right at the last minute, I'll be like, all right, got to put it back in a box. And then I'll take it apart, throw it in the golf case and go to the airport. Very cool. So I'm just freaking absolutely loving the hobby right now. Just loving it.

So I'm a happy camper. Cool. All right, Alex, Kenny, who's diving in? What'd you get for Christmas? Either way. I'll go. I'm going to follow up on what Nick had to say because I was also kind of feeling the burnout. And it's gone. Like, I don't know what happened, but I'm like, like you, I'm like hardcore into it again. I've been freaking having fun. I like want to fly all the time. I've been on the sim like crazy again. I love the new Spectre. It's flying like perfect.

I've been very happy with the ultimate kit. Even I have the purple, which now in my field, we were referring to as the Easter egg canopy and it should only be flown in the spring. well you're just mean to all canopies i know i know but but i got the new the new dampers for it for the head and they came in you know on like a friday and we're going out to fly saturday and i installed them immediately

And I was like, cool, I can sleep better at night now. I know we're going to cover this in the news, but do you want to tell us a little about these dampeners? For those that don't know about them? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the kit comes with standard palms.

and when i say standard palms i don't mean like every helicopter has that but i've seen huh it's it's delrin with a little o-ring which a lot of manufacturers have been using so it's what's in the omp if you choose the palm dampers the augie magic dampers are a sim i mean i don't know if they're the same material right but it's the same looking design at least where it's a piece of

delrin or something with a rubber o-ring around it and the new design is interesting i've never seen a damper like this where it's a two-piece conical design where part of it goes in the head first and then the other part slides in it in meats so there's no o-ring and it's a solid mount at this point nice when i installed this guys i i went to bed at night happy because now i knew that

my life was complete because I had the most up-to-date helicopter I could get. Dude, having the most up-to-date XL Power helicopter is not easy. Yeah, XL Power, yeah, yeah, XL Power, okay. And I was like, cool. I didn't expect it to actually feel any different because the helicopter already felt rigid to me. You know, you can feel it. I was surprised. So more snappy, more snappy at low RPM specifically though, like.

It feels just more direct. And I was worried that with damping like this, you would get low RPM oscillations and stuff.

On the first flight, I did an auto and came down and kind of held it in the air as long as I could. It never oscillated. Just sat down nice. Oh, that's awesome. I'm impressed. Yeah. Pretty cool. My wife kindly got me.

i did get a christmas present that isn't necessarily hobby related because i'm using it for other things but i got a a new vr headset a virtual reality like headset it's not the oculus which is what i've only ever had before so i got what's called a pi max 50 pp which is basically twice the resolution of what the oculus is i got tired of vr simming with the oculus dude i'm

I'm loving this thing. It's an expensive headset, but if you are enjoying VR and you like to sim with it, it's freaking amazing. Totally changes it for me. lighter it's more yeah it is more bulky it's heavier but instead of it only being a us before i had the three the three s the newest one three s okay which i think she got me for christmas last year ironically

And I've been using my headset for other things. I built a sim racing rig. If you're into sim racing, you know what I'm talking about. So I'm using it for that too, but I ended up loving it for sim flying. way more than i expected to i've been using it a ton it's incredible display wise like you know how the oculus always looks a little bit fuzzy this just looks like you're looking at the monitor like it's super clear it's really good it's good dude

Yeah. That's awesome. And it uses a display port and a USB instead of only the USB-C cable to get, you know, the video. Okay. Alex, this is the V3 you say you have? V3. Oculus. Yeah, I have the third generation also. Yeah, okay. Cool. Which I pretty much just got for simming, ironically. Okay, I think that's about all I got. But dude, I'm back flying. I'm excited about it.

I went out at lunch today and lunch flew. Nice. And while I was out there, some of the older guys were coming out because it was a beautiful day, January 6th, like 65 and sunny with like three mile an hour winds at lunch. Wow. Awesome. And so some of the older Planker guys were coming out and I'm packing up my car like I'm running away. Like, holy crap, I'm late. I've stayed here for too long. And this guy goes, yeah, I really enjoyed being retired. I turned around and looked at him and I said,

but I'm not tired yet. That's terrible. If it's a calm, sunny day, you got to watch out. They'll show up. Yeah. Oh yeah. Oh, yeah. They'll try and bait you with politics and other things you don't want to talk about at the field. Nope, nope. Yeah, Nick, before we recorded, I glanced down at all your notes about all the stuff you had to say, and I was like, wow, I have nothing to say.

But I've been pumped about the hobby. I'm stoked, guys. It feels good to be back at it, too. You got plenty. That's awesome. Awesome. Hey, Kenny, I'm going to jump in with one more before you start. I like that. I've got to have one more. Now that we're talking about XL Power.

things i forgot to mention that as i was fixing the tail on the scale helicopter i ordered all these parts and i got bit by the there's 97 versions of this tail oh gosh dude and is that the excel Yeah. Dude, they're the worst about it. For the Nimbus 550, I thought I had everything right, but the tail push rod on the Spectre 3 blade, like, somehow I ordered the wrong tail push rod. Like, I had the wrong size ball links, and then...

So I was literally digging through my parts bins, looking at different ball links and threads. And if I had like different servo balls, and then eventually there's like literally two different size balls on my tail push rod right now, because that's how I managed to pull off.

the right size on both ends for servos and the bell crank but that bit me and then the head block like fortunately i ordered enough stuff and had enough stuff in my spare parts but like trying to get that just the tail rotor correct with the right parts in the head and i know

Some XL Power team pilots about to message me and say, oh, it's easy. It's just these three part numbers. But if you don't know and you're not on the team doing this all the time, figuring it out, which is the current version, is a pain in the ass. But I got it. And I was excited that I managed to cop it together out of all this stuff I had in my house. But for a while, I was like, man, am I going to have to order more stuff? But anyway, enough for me. Kenny, go ahead.

Hey, well, wait, wait. While Nick's throwing disclaimers in there, if you're a Goose Guy pilot and you don't like what I had to say about the canopy, I don't care. Please don't message me. No, message him, please.

I think you've made your opinion of this canopy clear at this point. When we get to the review episode, you're done. I think I'm going to like the red. Now I kind of want to see it. I haven't seen it in person, but the red looks sharp. It's more like an orange. It's bright and vibrant. Super visible. I do love the gold on the side, so. Oh, do you have yours, Kenny? Is it there? It is not, but I did just get some notification that it shipped today. Finally. Nice. Nice.

Or did I ruin something? Have you not said you bought one of those? I think you said you ordered one. I think I did. Yeah, I think I did mention it last episode. It's just now getting shipped, though, so I should see it in three or four days, hopefully. Nice, dude. Nice. If you need help building, there's a video you can watch. Yeah, I'll watch the build video of you building everything. FYI, on that note, in the table of contents or the description of the video.

There's video jump links for every major assembly. If you just need help with the belt tensioner, you can just click on that thing and watch it. I saw your thing about the belt tensioner. That was the only thing I saw. It looked, I liked what you did. I was like, yeah, I could see that being confusing. So good job patting you on the backs. I'm going to stop. I'm like Kenny-ing everyone today. I'm going to shut up now. One more thing. I'm going to go off of Alex's.

everybody apparently i got a pair of goggles too i went ahead and bought myself really the there's you know there's three different versions of the oculus or meta quest goggles so i got the newer the three ones which have a little better resolution than the 3s they are way better than the previous ones um Well, there's like a 2, a 3S, and a 3. And the 3 has more. The Pimax thing is like four times the cost of that.

oculus like it's ridiculously expensive these are like i think they're 500 so yeah it's quite a bit more i'm sure It does work quite a bit better. The goggles I have now are not that bad and I'm probably not going to need them anymore just because of these, but the viewing area is wider on these and wireless is nice too. Are you doing it wireless? Yeah.

dude it never worked for like it was always laggy or choppy for me doing wireless simming it might just maybe my pc i don't know i got like a good video card and all that kind of crap in there so maybe it's something i don't know and sucks or something maybe pretty in sync like not behind or anything

That's cool. I'm using it on Helix. Other than that, working backwards, I guess, just the past few days, I finally decided to go ahead. I talked to Raja down there in Florida and stuff, and he was saying, yeah, just go ahead and run a RPM sensor on the turbine.

glued some magnets in there and i'm working on getting the sensor set up on that i just haven't been rushing it because i haven't been you know decided to take that thing out it's like a hell you take out randomly you know because it's huge yeah it's gonna sit there and just go out once every couple months probably but

Are you still excited about it when you get it out? Yeah, it's kind of cool. It's different. I mean, that's the one thing I'm looking forward to is like putting that on there and seeing how the motor reacts now versus with no, you know, RPM control other than just like a V curve, which was kind of difficult.

You can't fly a V-curve with a turbine because it comes down and revs up even if you try to set a good curve on it. It's always over-revving or bogging one or the other. Are you flying it on rotor flight? Yeah, it is. So did you buy a governor to use for it, or are you using the electric governor? Using one of the magnet sensor ones, just putting on the main gear and running it to the RotorFlight, using RotorFlightGov. Oh, you are using the RotorFlightGov. Okay, that's cool.

I didn't know how well that was going to work. Yeah, just like Nitro setup, you just set up a governor, RPM, you know, one in there and how many pole count and everything and it should work fine. So what else did I have here? Okay, yeah. Have you been simming a lot?

I just got this. I just got the goggles like a few days ago. So I've only been on the sim about 45 minutes or an hour with it. Something like that. That's freaking cool. But it's nice now. It does work a lot better in that sense. And it seems pretty nice on the VR for sure. Let me ask you guys real quick. Do you stand up or sit down when you see them with the VR? Sitting, which is odd because you're used to flying standing up. I know. I do both. I try both ways. I thought about that. Yeah.

If I know that I'm going to bring a maneuver to the field now, I stand up and do it. Yeah, yeah. Nice. I got to try that some more because I haven't really done standing up much at all. Seems like it'd be weird too because you got the goggles on. Don't go diving towards the wall or some crap. It's not that weird other than you get tired because you normally don't stand up and fly for 40 minutes. That long, yeah. I just want to see a picture of you standing.

with a neck strap on and VR goggles please actually yeah what I usually do is I turn a podcast on like I'll turn on an old podcast or just one that's new or something and turn that on while I'm simming and then the time goes by quicker because you're not focusing on how long you're

You're doing maneuvers and stuff. And I always listen to music. You can play it, yeah, in your goggles through the background, you know. So I bought something, and I decided I didn't need this. I have two RS7s, and I was like, I'm going to try.

one of those secure the 200 esc that everybody's starting to use here and there you know just playing on rotor flight and they don't come with a governor you know so you have to run the rotor flight gov which i was like okay this will force me to to tune and play with the rotor flight gov you know it's another thing to kind of learn because i've only used it on nitro i'm like this will be something to you know kind of see how it works on electric and everything

I had a little couple hang-ups just getting going. There was nothing wrong with it. It was kind of my own fault. My Fly Dragon that I had didn't want to do D-shot, like throttle, for some reason. I think it's like the firmware target was wrong or something. I tried another one I had, and it works. I'm like, okay, this is...

dsc's fine i went ahead and flew it a couple backyard just quick tests and got everything to where the throttle was where i wanted it and then went to the field sunday and i think i got two flights on and I was just having all kinds of fun, you know, just getting used to it and flying and adjusting the RPM that I want in each, you know, flight mode. Third flight, I'm like flying and flying and flying. And I went, you know, I heard it call down the timer.

and you know you got telemetries and timers everything and i still over flew my timer and my telemetry by like a minute or so a minute and a half i'm like intentionally i'm just still playing like oh well And then I go, I'm flying away from myself. I flip upside down, like tail away from myself, inverted. And I give it like a hard, you know, negative pitch and go up in the air. And then it shuts off.

Oh no. It's always when you're upside down too. Oh my gosh. So it didn't do a soft shut off. It like just shut off. It's a hard cut off. Yeah. So I'm upside down going upwards and it cuts off. I'm like, oh crap. Oh no, dude. So I center stick, you know, and did like a pirouette kind of, I did a tailspin and flipped it over and like just did a half pyro. And I'm like, okay, I got to give it like three quarters negative now. Like I just let it fall to the sky.

and left it like, you know, three quarters of the way down negative so it could build some RPM up. And it finally, like right near the ground, spooled up just enough to not have an insane impact. Like it bounced three or four feet.

and then it was rs7 and luckily those skids you know rs7 are really strong and flexible so i got lucky in that sense it bounced in this field landed on its side and the blades folded and everything it broke a link and two servo arms but i mean the canopy wasn't broken the boom wasn't bent like it actually survived better than i expected for it impacting it was like if somebody dropped it like seven feet off the ground you know just threw it on the ground yeah but uh

Got lucky. I broke a tail pin too. So a couple of little things. And it's totally my fault because I changed the stock settings to have a cutoff. I should have left, you know, just leave the ESC. Well, it also saved your battery, I guess.

I should have put it, if I was going to do it, I should have put it like at three volts or less. And I had it like 3.4. So when I punched it real hard at the low battery, it went to 3.4. And I knew the second I did it, I'm like, oh, shouldn't have set that cut off. You know, right as soon as it happened.

So I think I'm going to disable the cutoff again like it comes and that should be good. But otherwise it flies really smooth and no real issues with the ESE seems fine. And it's, you know, it's affordable. Like if you're building like a budget build or anything, you know, it's a strong ESE. What did it cost? I think they're 150 and it can handle up to how many amps? 300 burst and 200 steady amps. Wow. And the BEC is also a 15 amp with 35 amp bursts on it too. So it's got a strong BEC and.

can handle a lot of amp drawl so pretty cool i flew some ones at our field that got one recently and i tried to shut it down and i couldn't he was flying it was actually the guy i sold my old goblins to and he had like

722 blades on it at 2200 RPM. That was a lot of grab on them. Yeah, I was flying it as hard as I could, and I was like, it's not shutting down. I didn't even try to really push this one that hard. I was flying it like I normally would, but it was my fault that it... kicked off and it actually works like it's supposed to because my telemetry said I had 3.27 per perf cell at the lowest point so you know they stop they go back up you know they were like 3.7 on the bench but

You know, when you're getting that low and you punch it, they go down pretty far and dip, you know? Yeah, they do. Sag. You always get to set your cutoffs like a few, three or four tenths lower than what you really expect, honestly, like on any ESC. But I'm used to having soft cutoff, and there's no governor, and there's no soft cutoff. So you have to be aware that if you decide to use the cutoff, it is going to completely shut off. Is that any issue with the firmware with the ESC or anything?

The well, the one that like the HD version, I would say go with that if you're going to do this, because I mean, I went ahead and played around with my own settings and stuff, too. And you're just going to wind up back in the same place. You know what I mean? Like.

there's only so much you can do with the esc settings most of the tuning you're going to be doing is going to be in rotor flights gov you know gains and stuff so i would just go with one that's pre-done another thing is i mean if you do have to change anything the only thing you may have to change is if you're say running normally it's going to be set up on a tin pole motor and cut off it is turned off so if you're gonna use like

maybe you got a dynamic or something where it's got like a 40 20 motor and it's like a 12 pole you may have to do like the instructions state and connect to like the web portal and change it to tin pole and then save it you know some small setting like that you might have to do but everything else should work pretty good you know with this with the setup firmware that comes on them yeah what we're talking about this is an open source esc so

And the ones that you can purchase from HeliDirect, there's a custom firmware that Archie Harris, one of the team pilots, built and worked with Secu to put together. So it flies right out of the box. Yeah, I would recommend just use that.

It's an amazing budget option for a 700 size ESC. It's a fantastic price. Yeah, if you get it on your own, you're going to end up having to go in there and tinker with it. And if you don't want to tinker and you just want to fly, then that's the way to go. So you can just plug it in and, at the most, maybe change the pole count and go. Yeah. But the budget savings are in the industrial design because it is like a square box with no sexy.

fins or cutouts I didn't even run the fan because it's cold out right now too and the fan I did plug it in just on the bench to see it's really quiet like you don't even hear it running so it's blowing pretty good air so it's not like a noise maker or a vibrating some of the fans are kind of loud you know But yeah, it's quiet. It works good so far. And we've got about five flights or six flights on it so far. Nice. Seems to work pretty good. So while we were out at the field...

Well, I did post a few pictures online, if you guys saw those or not, but we had, I took my canopy, even though it was willing to be out there for like three hours, maybe. I just wanted to see how that would work because I got that diesel heater, like an eight kilowatt Vivor sells them. They're fairly cheap, but... you can run that tube like into a canopy if you've got walls on your canopy or like, you know, the zip up sidewalls either way, something just to block the airflow and.

It was 35 degrees out, but the canopy, we had our table in there. We could wrench on the helis and stuff and tune them, and it was like 60 to 70 degrees inside there. You know, you could just walk out and fly right back into the canopy. Yeah, that thing's awesome. It was blowing plenty of heat. And that was with the door open. I left the front open like three feet. Just left it. That's very cool. Yeah. We had chairs and table in there so you can sit in the.

you know, 12 by 12 canopy and use that for the heat and then just step out and fly for a few minutes, come back in, warm up and still wrench on your stuff. So that'll probably be my setup when it's chilly outside, but I still want to get out and fly now. I flew one day this week and it was, you know. upper 40s it was super cold that heater i've used my basement to run the exhaust out the the chimney part you know because it just has a small exhaust pipe like an inch around stainless and

I plug it up to the 24-volt, that big battery, and it doesn't use maybe 5% or 6% of it after four or five hours of running the battery. And it uses like a quarter of a gallon of diesel. Yeah, I kept running in my car to warm up. This is very cool. As long as you run the exhaust out, you can use them in anything because the air flows through it separately from the exhaust. You know, it's got like a heat blowing over metal coils, which is totally separate from the burning section of it, basically.

and they're cheap they're like 90 bucks for the heater so it's really cool that's really cool very nice other than that i had let's see okay you guys get any christmas gifts that's what i was gonna ask too because i got a she got me a table one of those husky

Adjustable height. I don't know if you've seen those. They sell them in black and white. This little caster leg. They have a wooden table on them so you can crank them up and down. It's a perfect setup for working on there. I've got to assemble that still, but that'll be cool for wrenching. Nice.

Did you guys get any Christmas gifts like that for heli-related or just anything in the hobby? I got something to help with winter flying that I love, although I bring it to work all the time. I'm cold all the time, and my wife got me one of these battery-powered, heated, like... puffy jacket vests that's awesome like keeps your core nice and warm

Yes, that's nice. I have one of those, but it's kind of worn out now. I had to actually re-solder the USB on it the other day. It has like a battery plug-in. Of course you did. The wire ripped. Yeah, I had to do my enriching on my tablet. Oh my God. That's hilarious. That's pretty sad, right?

I was like, why isn't it working? And I look in the battery plug and the plug's got like a little frayed wire. I'm like, oh, great. I even have to wrench on my jacket. That's pretty bad. But it works again. That's funny. I think that's cool, though. I did not get anything hobby-related other than my headset also, like you did. Waiting on the Ultra and wrenching on more stuff. I'm going to go down and fix the RS7, though, in the next day or so. I started assessing the small damage it's got.

Mainly nothing, really. Have you been flying the Neutron? I have. I brought it with me when I went out on the weekend and flew it also. I'm flying both kind of back-to-back with each other. You know what? Another thing, I had those Adventure Blades.

were on my rs7 when it went into the field and it i mean it hit hard enough a lot of times you would crack them or something these blades have no cracks or anything on them they just got a little dirt on them have you flown again since then no but i mean i flexed them up and down and they're they look like fine

Like they didn't even hit the ground. I'm surprised. Survived. If the blade's surviving a crash, anytime that's like a winner right there, you know? Absolutely. Yeah, I agree. It's a hundred and something bucks now. It's like winning the lottery. If your canopy or the blades survive, the little parts, they don't even bother me. Like the airframe parts and stuff. That's because those are the most expensive parts. Well, cool.

I don't know. We've all been busy. That's about it. Now that we all have goggles and stuff, we're all going to have to get on and have a Rotor Revolution Sim Night or something here and there. I like it. That will be fun. Sim Night!

If I had a build party, it would be a crash party. Right. Well, with that out of the way, let's jump into some news. Not a lot this week, but a little. There's quite a bit, isn't there? Yeah. And now... With all the news from inside the RC helicopter hobby, we bring you the Rota Report. All right, I guess I'm starting the news off.

The Paul 7, you know, the Precision Agile Ultralight represents a new direction from Heli Professional combining the best elements of the Strike series entirely with the new carbon frame design and canopy. And it says that it's the lightest. True 700 Heli Nitro available. So the key features of the helicopter, I'm going to go ahead and go over the whole helicopter. I know we've mentioned this before, but just because of this.

The main rotor diameter is 1560 millimeters with 700 millimeter blades. The length is 1360 millimeters. Height is 342. I don't know why these really matter, but I'll give the specs anyway. It's weight. Now this is what's... kind of got me it's like crazy it says the ready to fly weight with standard components and this is without fuel is 3.7 kilograms which is 8.15 pounds like I think when I weighed

The Tron Nitro is like 9.4 with fuel. I'm not really sure what it was without, but 8.15 sounds pretty light. Yeah, it's probably going to be under 9 pounds then with fuel in it, I would say. Wow. Gear ratio is 8 to 1, basically, and then 5 to 1 on the tail, and 600cc tank. You can run up to 710mm blades on it, and...

I mean, it says 685 to 710, so I guess even so light, I guess you could get away with some smaller blades too. Tail blades, you can go up to 115s, and you can run 90 or 105 engine in it. Cyclic servos are standard, and you can do optional mini-sized. Tail servo is a standard, and the throttle servo is a mini-sized or standard size. Now, these are up for pre-order, so it's $849 for the pre-order price, and...

They are doing its two separate prices, so if you buy it after pre-order, it is going to be $8.99 US dollars. And this is including any tariffs or import taxes at the moment as they price this. It says that they possibly could change, but... I don't know if I see that in the near future, but maybe for getting one, now's the time to jump on it. Pre-orders start 1, 2 of 26, which has already started, and it says there...

due in basically at the end of January or early February of 2026. That's interesting. Anybody thinking about picking one up? I don't know. I mean, I've flown one and I thought it was... flew fine but I just don't know if I want to build another nitro I got two now I'd have to like disable one you know to build another I'm getting out on that right now yeah I'm good I'm sticking with my one I can't have more than one

i'd have to like maybe fly one a little more to like see if it's really like back to back if i want to switch you know what i mean like i didn't get enough time really to think should i get one or not you know already having one sure flies great It did, yeah. It's a good looking helicopter. It does feel light and it moves around fast in the air. I think what it was is I didn't get a feel for it much flying it because...

It wasn't my transmitter and my setup. You know what I mean? Like I was flying somebody else's so it doesn't feel normal, but it did fly well and it was very light. No complaints in that area at all. All right, Goose Guy team pilots have been showing some photos of what looks to be a complete line of electronics for a 700-size helicopter. Likely won't be long before Goose Guy is going to offer combos for the RS-7 Ultra featuring a Goose Guy motor and Goose Guy servos. Not sure about the ESC yet.

Also, by the time this episode releases, RS7 Ultra kits should be in stock at all retailers. And lastly, Helix just added the RS7 Ultra to their simulator, so you can download that right now. Cool. It looks really good on the sim, too. representation of it looks now i gotta get on there and download it i didn't try that i gotta go download it now too you can like now fly the duck right up to your face while you're flipping that's right check it out it's like the first thing i did

with the green canopy. I love the idea of green. It's just the wrong color green. And it looks like it does. Needs to be fluorescent lime green. Are there different colors in the sim? Yeah, every color is on there. Pink, purple, red.

green i don't remember what else all right well i'm going to talk more about the xl xl power new rigid dampers for their rotor heads which is for the 700 it's a two-part damper with a tapered insert it is two parts and

We've seen videos from Sean and Kyle Stacey talking about them recently, Sean Hall. And XL Power had a number of things listed on their website. So I'm going to kind of at least highlight some of the things that they're claiming from these things. Also going to tell you about my own experience.

They talk about how it comes with additional shims now, basically six, three for each side. And they say you can choose how much preloading you're getting. Well, everyone that I know has installed these has had to use all three shims.

And the guys that were using two that I talked to all ended up with just a little bit of play after the first flight. So I'm just letting you know if you use all three shims, you're not crazy. Everyone I know is using those. That's a good call out because I would feel like... weird if i use them all yeah i i actually went with all three right away and just kind of felt the the machine and everything was obviously very free it didn't feel like it was preloaded at all it's like perfect so

From the website, they talk about progressive tapered engagement and a stable radial support. No sudden stiffness or jumps and there's no random play. Why tapered instead of straight dampers? Straight dampers rely on material compression alone, and compression changes with temperature, age, and assembly force. A taper relies on geometry first, material second. Again, this is from the XL Power website.

I'm not sure I follow that. This gives you a more consistent and damped feel, reduced sensitivity to temperature changes, and a stable head geometry whenever you're rebuilding. they are claiming cleaner more defined center feel smooth progressive cycler cyclic response and stable behavior at higher rpms and he gives you the same feel every single time that's pretty much all i'm going to go over there but

I did notice that the dampers were nice. I like them. So if you're flying XL, it's worth jumping. Look at your local retailer. And the XL power part number is XL70H02-5. Again, XL70H02-5. I haven't looked at these up close. So are they...

Are they like, is the inside of the two pieces, so it's like a cone, is it actually squished into itself basically? Is that what it's doing when you tighten it? Yeah, they fit into each other. Okay, yeah, so it's compressing and giving it more pressure on the outside as it goes in.

so it kind of stays steady, I guess. Yeah, I mean, the material's hard, like super rigid. It doesn't feel like you're compressing anything. They just slide together, and there's no movement once they hit. That's awesome. Interesting.

Might have to try those in the wreath. We'll see. You should give it a shot, dude. Yep. All right. I got some Radio Master news. So Radio Master has started to tease us about the release of the updated TX-16. We've seen this silhouetted, beautiful image on their Facebook page there, but it appears to have the new antenna shape on top similar to the TX-15. It has the large color touchscreen, and it's rumored to include the faster processor.

That of the TX-15 itself. As well as the light-up gimbals, if you're into those kind of things, which I'm not. Dude, I'm into that. I love it. Do you really? I mean... Yeah, I think it's so cool. I think it probably would be great for night flying, but in the daytime, come on. I don't know. Yeah, but then when you're swimming and you're sitting in your room and it's dark, it's cool. Think about it like...

Kenny can set it to flash red when his ESC shuts off. Yeah, I'll know. I'll know once I crash and I look down at the transmitter like, yep, confirmed. Oh, gosh. But anyway, so... I guess we would expect it to include the AGO2 gimbals as well, as the TX-15 did. But the largest upgrade is considered.

for the TX16 user is that faster processor, which, especially when communicating with Rotor Flight FBLs, makes a noticeable difference. So that should be really cool. No worry yet on pricing, but according to their... Facebook-mercial, I call it. It should be available this month sometime, January 2026. I never heard if this thing was kind of affected by the new FCC rules and regulations, so...

I've seen that question asked but not answered. So for those that don't know, you know, we have these new FCC regulations out there where they're going to stop certifying. foreign components built outside of the usa are not made in the usa so stock up while you can stock up while you can you know any anything that has been grandfathered or kind of certified prior to that date, I believe, which is 12-26-25, is okay. But anything after that date that needs to be FCC certified now.

will probably not be FCC certified and you won't be able to buy it. So I don't know how that's going to affect this guy if it does at all. Maybe they had it certified before. I don't know. But fingers crossed because I definitely want this upgrade.

It could be certified within the TX-15 already, and because it's the same hardware potentially, it may be fine. The one thing I will say about what's going on in the FCC, we're not covering it in detail in the news because honestly, nobody really knows what's happening.

I don't really have anything concrete to report that we understand to be true. But if you remember back to when they started talking about putting location trackers in every model before we heard about, what's that thing where you certify your whole field? Freya? Freya, yeah.

You remember how everyone was like, oh my God, the sky is falling and they're going to take our models away and you're never going to be able to fly again and you're not tracking my helicopter and you can have my transmitter when you pry it out of my cold dead hands and all that stuff. Like we're in the overreaction phase right now.

Obviously, the administration is rolling this out clumsily with no specifics and kind of like a weird just shock, gibberish blast. So we don't know what's happening. Well, it's a wait and see. I don't know that we need to run out and stock up on things. We know, maybe. We don't know yet is the answer. So that's why we're not talking about it a lot. Yeah, yeah. Fingers crossed that nothing even comes from it. So we'll see. All right. In other news, so a 3D competition event organizer, Global3D.

has announced that there will not be a European-based competition this year due to the lack of sponsor interest and therefore the lack of funds. So, for now... Global 3D will be focusing just primarily on their Asia-based competition. So if you guys want to see this event go to other hosted countries and such, we need to kind of really petition and message.

the big brands in the hobby and encourage them to consider sponsoring this you know the global 3d event and organizers in the near future i think it would be super exciting to see one of these global 3d events On each continent, right? I mean, hell, one in Europe, one in Asia, here in the States. I mean, it's beautiful. It's wonderful. The prize money is great. I bet a lot of pilots would love to see that.

You know, reach out to your big brands out there, guys. Let them know, hey, throw a couple of dollars here to sponsor these guys. Yeah, I think if they can get prize money, kind of like the Australia event did, you know, if you get some prize money out there and stuff for people, then I think everybody's going to show up and you'll have more.

Sponsors willing to jump into, you know, more interest in it. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, for sure. We saw that in Puerto Rico as well. Or the Dominican, sorry. Yeah. If not, they're going to have to change the name to Semi-Global 3D. Regional. 3D. Regional. Oh, goodness. Quick note about social media as far as the podcast is concerned due to Facebook's automated anti-spam robots.

If you're an account like ours, like the podcast account that posts on a regular interval, like we do every two weeks saying, here's the new episode, it now gets marked as spam in every group you put it in. So I've been... Like because I'm an admin of the HeliDirect HeliAddiction group, I can actually approve the podcast posts, which is a pain. But like in the Hangout, it usually takes those guys about a week to approve stuff. And I get that. We're all busy. So we're just going to stop posting.

updates in anything but our own page on Facebook as far as when new episodes release. So follow our Facebook page if you want to get updates on when they release or just subscribe to the podcast on your favorite service and you'll get a notification if you're set up that way when a new episode drops.

All right, I think, and it's been a minute, I think. We kind of wrote a replay. What do we got? So Adam Small has made a relatively long video. Thank you, Adam, for taking the time to put... it together about black box tuning for rotor flight and if you're kind of interested in diving into it but don't really know where to start because the information's out there but scattered obviously there's many ways to do things but this is kind of how i've been getting started also

getting back into looking great thing to follow like it's long but if you watch that video a couple of times just the beginning of it like he tells you how to do it for every pitch roll and y'all you don't but you're repeating it so

The video is going to seem very long, but if you keep watching it, it really does keep good and kind of teaches you how to do that. So, Adam, thank you for taking the time to put it together. Yes, I really enjoyed it. And it's about 45 minutes long. It's not that long, but... If you really want to learn some black belt, black belt, black box filter tuning, this is a great video for that. If you're into that stuff, so highly recommended.

All right, that wraps it up for the news news part, but we do have lots of events coming in and sending us dates for 2026. Let's fire through these a little faster since we've announced most of them. But let's just go through these fast, mainly highlighting the location and dates, and we'll try and get through the whole list. So we'll skip the details. We'll just shoot out the dates and the location. All right, go ahead, Brian. Okay, so we got the Puerto Rican. Puerto Rico.

RC Helicopter Fest that will be February 6th through the 8th. Check out more info on their website, boriquenrcmodelclub.com. And then the San Diego fun fly dates are coming up February 25th through March 1st. Great place to go. Huge field, night flying, spotlight flying. Everything's there in campers are welcome there to get out there.

All right. New to the list, RCHO has announced dates for their chillout event that happens the same weekend as the San Diego event in Knightdale, North Carolina. So February 26th through March 1st. a small well-equipped field but always draws a crowd of amazing pilots puts on a great event and a great show on the field now features electrical power on site for charging and whatnot and some of the best night flying in the country so definitely check that out

We've got Rotor Live. The 2026 Rotor Live is in Germany, and that is on March 7th and 8th. The same venue it's been at for years. Okay, we've got the Spring Fling, too. I forgot about that. April 22nd to the 26th in Virginia. And then we got the Buckeye Blade Scrape set for May 1st through the 3rd in Delphos, Ohio. And the Cincy Smackdown. That'd be my local event usually. And that is June 4th through the 7th.

The Whirlybirds Classic event will be June 11th through the 14th in St. Charles, Missouri. $30, and that includes a pilot's dinner on Saturday. Dry camping. AC power is available in the pits also. Check out stlwhirlybirds.com for more info. Okay, we got the 8th Annual Mile High Heli Showdown. Couldn't say that.

In Colorado, and that is September 11th through the 13th, registration is $35, includes a pilot's dinner and participation in the pilot's prizes. More info can be found at milehighhelishowdown.com. There will be night flying, a taco truck, and on-site camping without hookups is available. All right. The Hoosier Heli Hangout is happening near Fort Wayne, Indiana, September 25th through 27th. Top-notch flying site.

Five flying stations, free camping, light towers for night flying. Check it out. Southwest Heli Rodeo wants you to know this year will be November 5th through the 9th in Coolidge, Arizona. All right, right on. And if your event's missing from this list, it's not our fault, it's yours. Go ahead and send it in. Message us on Facebook or to our email. You can find all those links on our website at rotorevolution.live. And that is all we got for the news.

This is Daryl Thorpe from BK Hobbies Flight Team, and you're listening to the Roto-Revolution Podcast. All right, main topic. It's time for New Year's resolutions. And it's time to see if we kept up with our New Year's resolutions from last time. So we always do an episode at the beginning of the year talking about our goals hobby-wise for the year.

and we're going to go through we've got uh we keep records of our goals from last year see how we did and then talk about what we want to work on for this year I think I went worse, so I might just go first and get the humiliation out of the way. I went worse? I don't know if that's a thing, but go ahead.

So I've been posting the same flying goals for like three years now. It's terrible that I really want to get my inverted orientations and inverted, you know, forwards and backwards flight dialed. And I've made progress. Definitely made progress. Got inverted nose in. Wait, inverted nose in or tail in? I can't even remember unless I have a transmitter in my hand.

So I've got one inverted orientation really good, getting better on the others and slowly working on drifting the helicopter around inverted and getting those, you know, I spent a lot of time inverted like in movements, but I'm just not good at flying. Like I can't fly an inverted four figure eight.

working towards that. So still not there. I said I was going to sim a lot more during work travel. I have failed epically at that, like couldn't have done a worse job of that. I think I've simmed maybe twice while on the road last year. Yeah, there's that. I also said I wanted to work on learning the rest of Rotor Flight and being tuning and black box and all of that. And I did achieve that goal by switching to V-Control.

that's hilarious so i failed epically and in my frustration changed fbl prints um which is not a slander i wrote a flight i just i just never got there Oh, I did this one. I got a gold star for this one. A 10 more than one fun fly. I hit three or four last year. I forget. Did Urcha and Winterbash and Helix. That's three. I think there's one more in there. But anyway, hit more events last year. So that's great. Podcast wise.

We posted some goals last year as well. I'll just hit on one of those. The others were, you know, we kind of hit on. But the main one is we said we would finally get the swag store done. And we did. So good job. One of us took. to lead and did that and we're thankful for you yes we are and it's fun going to random events and seeing people wearing swag so thanks for supporting us that way you can find the links to the swag store on www.rotorevolution.live

So that was my goals for last year. That's how I did. But let's talk about Patreon. My Patreon's been doing really well. I don't know why I bother with this swag store. You're only ESC fans? Yeah. All right, my goals for 2026, the same, more, more, more inverted, more, more, more simming. I've got to get there on the simming. That is the key to everything. And this one, I'm going to try it. Spend less on the hobby.

I went a little overboard on 2025. Between kits and new radio systems, I went a little too deep, so I need to behave myself. You did kind of go crazy. I forgot because you bought all those radios too for... Yeah. And I sell them all and I get a lot of stuff back, but you know, yeah. And you know, it's podcast fuel and I enjoy the hell out of it, but I would like to spend less. I went a little too far last year. So reduce my spending in the hobby a little more.

to a more reasonable level. But man, I look at my wall right now and I'm so thrilled with the helicopters hanging on my wall. Like I'm stoked. I have an amazing fleet. So I'm really, really, really, really happy with it right now.

And we'll get into some podcast goals a little bit later, but that's it for me. Who wants to throw themselves to the wolves next? Okay, I will. I think I wrote down I had move more helis to rotor flight. And I think at that time I was only flying maybe two or three on there out of my, like half my fleet or less. So I did, I think everything I have pretty much now is on rotor flight. So I kind of achieved that, I guess. I mean, I took the time to sit down and.

do them all and get them all working and stuff so I took off the old stuff and in with the new I guess second one I kind of I'd say I have failed on that like post more videos and stuff online interact with the community I do that but I still want to do more videos and more stuff like that and what stops me most of the time is like I'm either into doing what I'm doing like working on stuff too much or when I'm in the field

I want to do it, but I end up talking to people and flying too much. You know, you get distracted way too much is the problem. So I got to find a way to, to work on that for this year, for sure. But get to further events.

didn't do many this year that were anything different i mean i made it to florida and some others but i'd still like to do some other ones like even some of the ones we just mentioned in our events you know in the news like i'd like to go to some other ones even like some of the ones that are closer fort wayne is still like three hours from me i think two or three hours so

Places like that that are doable, you know, or even fly to a few that are far away would still be a goal, I think. And the last one, I think I'm just now making it to, getting on the sim more. And I'm just now, I finally, you know, decided, okay, I'm getting this. And it is a goal still. So I'm going to sit here and use the VR sim and do it, you know, 30 to 45 minutes, I think each session and keep that up for as long as I can. And hopefully that pays off too. I like it.

the sim definitely works dude play around you know you have to kind of i mean you can play somewhere in there but you have to have a goal you know you got to get on there and say i want to learn this i want to learn that and do it for a little while even if you switch maneuvers and play around for a little bit you got to go back to what you were having trouble with

and work on it and i've already just in that 45 minutes a couple times i've done this now with it i'm already learning things that i wasn't doing before without the the newer setup or anything you know it's actually helping that's dope I like to get on there and join random online sessions. And I've noticed that when I do that, I end up just randomly flying around and not actually practicing what I want to do. Yeah.

What about new goals for 2026? Let's say you stacked up against 2025. What do you got planned for this year? It's kind of like you said. Some of them we just drag on forever. It's like we have bad habits that don't die. So, yeah. Like I said, I'm going to take the simming, the practicing more seriously this year and actually work on it, like make it a goal, you know, to spend time and do it.

Same thing, go to farther events. I want to get to some that are in different areas. I've been going to the same places quite a bit. I need to go to some of those, but I'd also like to get to some new ones and meet new people. spread the hobby joy I guess you'd call it I don't know

help people out and go to different ones I haven't met. I like that. Hobby joy works. Yeah, it works. You know, you go to different ones, you actually talk to different people, you learn their different, you know, styles and setups and all the different stuff that's going on in that area. It's kind of, it's neat going to new events too.

definitely I got to do it. And maybe narrowing the fleet is one of them possibly. I don't know. I have so many helis like that. I don't, you know, I have multiples of one, like the RS sevens and the nitros like. Maybe I need to swap to something else, or maybe I need to take a few and just delete them because I don't get to fly them. You can only use so many, you know?

Kenny, I feel like you should just, you know you're going to fail this, right? I know, Alex. Well, Alex has done this, right? Is he down to like four now or something? I have four helicopters on my wall. Yeah, see, he's narrowed it down and he's surviving. I see he's still there. But does it count? The count is narrowing if you've had like 72 different variations of those four throughout the year. I have, but I'm...

We'll talk about this. But wait a minute, it's narrowing, but it's like the wintertime, so that was just like the hibernation. He's probably going to come out at least in the spring. Nope, I'm not coming out this year. Okay, he's not coming out. I think, okay, my last goal is dive into the Rotor Flight tuning some more. Maybe I'll watch Adam's video and spend some time on that because that'll shave down some of the time of learning, you know, like get into the black box stuff some more.

Know the ins and outs completely, you know, because there's a lot more to learn always. So work on that too. That's awesome. I probably have more goals, but that's the base. Brian, you or me? Brian's goals look very, very big.

All right. How'd you do last year? I did pretty good, man. I mean, so now I'll go through these bullet points very briefly here. So continue learning more about rotor flight, right? I'd be... And become an advocate for it. Right. So I think I learned a lot about it and helped a lot of folks, you know, get set up and understand how it.

It's, you know, some of the setups and tuning and stuff like that. So yeah, that was fun doing that. So I would say I accomplished that one. 100%. One of my next goals was to start learning Schedule F routine. and practicing it more. And that's one that I didn't do primarily because I wanted to work on this other goal, and that was to take Gordy Mead's expert title at Nats. And so I practice my butt off on the expert class or schedule rather versus learning the newer one.

And I took Gordy's championship belt. Suck it, Gordy. Suck it, Gordy. I like that. That's awesome. That's a great Cole win. Love that. So that was a lot of fun, but I'm glad I didn't because the F3C schedules changed for 2026. So... This leads into one of my newer goals, and I'll finish these goals first, but I'll get into those. So learning more of Schedule F was really not on the list there to be done because of Expert.

Sim more was one of my goals and I did that. So Sim with the VR headset. And I swear, this is so funny looking at these goals because I hadn't looked at these things since we wrote them a year ago. And so for me to see. Sim with the VR headset is like, okay, I mean, I didn't remember that being on the goal list, but I love Sim with the VR headset. Isn't that crazy? So that was fun. I've done a lot of that and continue to do that.

And just to, you know, attend as many fun flies as possible. I attended a bunch of fun flies last year and, you know, not just F3C competitions, but actually getting to some of the fun flies to watch you guys just throw down with your 3D birds. So that was a lot of fun. One of my podcast goals here was for us to take on more user-suggested topics. And I think we kind of did that by bringing in some of their email questions and kind of giving them answers.

We had a little bit of user interaction with our podcast. We didn't necessarily have a lot of folks come on to be interviewed, so to speak. But I think we did have a lot of user interaction last year. So that was pretty cool. Yeah, for sure. And we love when you guys send us suggestions, by the way. They do stay on our list. Absolutely. Absolutely. So going into 2026.

I don't have that many out here, but they're huge and they're going to take the full year to really, you know, work at here. And so just have, I mean, extreme focus and ultra practice. on this new 2026 F3C schedule. So there's the preliminary rounds. There's SF, which is kind of the semifinals round. It's a totally different routine now.

And then the finals is a totally different routine. So I have to learn three different routines now. In the past, that routine was the same for P and SF. And then only F changed. So now it's three different ones now and I have to really, really focus to learn them. But what makes it more complicated too is the maneuvers are a little bit more.

complex now for me anyway it's a lot more inverted stuff and you know I don't fly inverted so it's really forcing me to learn how to really pay attention to the burden for flight when it's inverted doing some of these reverse loops and push over the top loops and such these funky little all kinds of crazy maneuvers but it's really going to take a lot of focus and so I'm thinking now that I kind of you know

On my own small business now, I have a little bit more flexibility in my time. So I'm going to try to put in at least, if I can't get at least 15 hours a week in there, you know, at least 10, 10 to 15 hours a week at the field. practicing my butt off like I did when I was, you know, doing expert in sports. That's a lot of time a week, dude. It is. It is. That's a lot. Because doing that would help me with this next goal and that's make Team USA at Nats.

So this year's the team trials. That's cool. Team trials this year at Nats. I have, what, eight months to get down there, right? And trial for the team. These guys are great. I mean, they're awesome. Me even just starting to practice the preliminaries and then semifinals, I can see I'm horrible right now. I'm like, wow, I got a lot of work to do if I really want to compete with these guys. So I'm going to put in the time.

And I'm going to make that damn team. I'm going to make that team. Remember, Alex is still going to come and wear his skirt and umbrella over, hold it over you while you're flying. Oh yeah. I would love that. Big ass blue hat on. Yeah, I'll have to make that my own goal. Thank you, Kenny. That's one of the new goals. Yep. That's awesome, dude. I mean, I've seen you set goals like this and hit them, so I have no doubt you'll make that team.

So I got a new goal that's kind of a new role for me this year, too. So I'm sure you guys have heard through the grapevine here. I'll see you on Facebook that I now manage Team Pulse batteries and Team Torque servos. So my goal is to, you know, really run those teams efficiently and truly promote the brands of those products. So I want to get that shot. I know it's going to take some time and effort to do that. So, you know, you got to be patient with me, work with me.

This is going to be a lot of fun. So those are my three big goals for this year. And of course, to get around and what counts for those inside of those goals as well is to. get around to fun flies and visit folks and talk to folks and things like that. So all that stuff is encompassed in that. And that's going to be a very busy year for me in this hobby. So looking forward, man, looking forward. That's awesome. Good goals.

Alex, what do you got? How'd you do last year? I kind of rocked it last year. Like I had a flight number goal of 1300 and. I changed radios mid-year, so I did not get to continuously keep count, but I think I hit that, dude. I was flying like crazy. There were months where I flew every day three or four flights. I feel pretty solid about my flight count last year. I'm sure you did. I also had said I was only going to.

like build and fly this one helicopter like I used to do with the Saab Ra. I flew the Saab Ra for a long time. I said in my goals that I was really wanting to build a Nail Goblin and I achieved that goal also. Nice. I also achieved the goal of building way too many machines last year. Like six others. Yeah. That wasn't a goal. So.

In fact, it says here in your goal that the Ill Goblin Pro will be your only new helicopter this past year. For the first two weeks. But let me tell you, to all you guys' defense stuff, I mean, it's awesome to watch you guys. keep up with these birds coming out. And I think it's just part of...

That should be part of your goal, to really keep up with the upgraded model. Because you guys did. You got every single one of them that came out. You sold the last one. You got the new one. You sold the last one. You got the new one. I know. That's what it's all about, bro.

That's what it's really all about. So I commend you for that. Well, I'm going to address that in my next year's goal too. I just want to counter that, Brian. It's not, I mean, that can be what it's all about if that's your thing. But also keeping one model for 10 years and flying the hell out of it and progressing is what it's all about, too. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, too, at this point, sorry, Alex, but I don't know how much better the technology can get.

I know, right? What's the next bird going to do, bro? But there's cool convenience features. Think of engineering. Yeah, yeah. But there's still room for convenience features. There always is. Sorry, Alex. We derailed. I also set a maneuver goal every year, and I wanted to be able to do pyroflip reversals relatively low. And, dude, I made it.

I had started doing that at the end of December, being able to do that stuff. So I feel confident doing it. Like I can keep it under before when I would do a reversal, it would like fly off all over the place. And now I can really, I'm pretty happy with it. Like it looks awesome. That's badass. Congrats. Pretty cool. I also, you know, it's funny that looking back on these goals, one of the things that I said was not in a negative way, but I know that I get heavy into the hobby and I get burnout.

and i wanted to recognize it when it was going to happen and relax and i did that too like yeah i recognized i was getting burnt out and i took time and space and i feel really good about that so that's cool I don't remember setting that goal, but how cool that it was in there. I was going to say, you didn't set the goal of competing, and you competed this year, and that kind of led to that. I know, dude. I know. That should have been in my goals. I know.

Yeah. I think it was just kind of, you know, an impromptu thing that you just say, I'm going to go pee. And you put in the time to practice and you did it. And it was awesome. I felt good about it too. I was very happy with that. Absolutely. Did you let your helicopter sit long enough to see dust on the blades? That's when you know it's time to fly. You're like, oh man, I might dust off of my finger. I gotta go out and fly now. I will say, if you remember...

The last Texas fun fly was the Abilene fun fly in like September. And the M7 that I crashed because the main gear stripped is still sitting here unfixed. One of the four helicopters on my wall isn't crashed, but it's not flyable either. Yeah, I haven't messed with that at all. And I think not rushing to fix that has also been a...

one of the ways I saved myself from being burnt out, just beyond belief, you know? You mentioned crashes. That's something I got to mention too, because you guys, like, I mean, you guys all switched completely from different fly barless systems in this past year. and not just talking about rotor flight but like just you know setups in general and everything we all made it a whole year with any of the crashes most of the stuff we had was our own fault that we didn't have any

fall out of the sky moments where he set something up wrong or plugged it in wrong or anything. So it just shows the robustness of the system and our setups. Nick had a disconnect from him rubbing, chafing. I made a poor choice when how I wired a heli and it caused the crash.

So I think I failed that one. Yeah. I mean, rotor flight wise, none of them failed. I mean, just switching systems, you guys actually all had good luck overall, right? Yeah, that's true. It's good to know. I didn't make a rotor flight mistake. No mistakes.

bombing in yeah i'm sure that's not on or yeah i've not really heard of many people having that issue i mean most of the time even any of these fly barless systems if you take the time and and do this setup you know check everything over usually you're good but Yeah. Just sometimes it just takes plugging something in wrong or going too quick, you know? Yep. Yeah. Just surprised we all had such good luck really as far as that goes. Knock on wood. Let's hope it holds.

Man, back in like 2012, 13, 14, those days when there was a lot of electronics failures because of bad servos and just shitty batteries and fly barless everything. Fires. There was a lot of stuff happening like that. You know, it'd be like a weekly occurrence. Well, this failed, this browned out. It doesn't happen as much now. Now it's user invoked, basically. Yeah, we're spoiled. All right, Alex, what do you got planned for 2026? All right.

All right. Okay. Are you ready? Ready. My goal for 2026 is continue to fly the same machines all year long. Predict failure. okay so i have something i have like a caveat to this goal and is that possible meaning if this is all i'm flying and i feel that burnout feeling

And I know we've talked about this. Getting a new machine can fix that burnout sensation. Dedicated to the hobby. I love the hobby. If I truly feel like I need a new machine to keep me happy in the hobby, then I'm still going to do that. My goal is to not build nearly as many machines. So truly the goal is to fly the machines I have on my wall now. You think it's possible instead of just like now when we need a new machine or you feel like you need a new machine, you just...

get rid of your canopy and buy your canopy to boom. I do think that changed the look of it. Yeah. I don't know. There's something fun about changing stuff up, dude. It's just the way it is. Yeah. And that's okay. I know that. So. Like I want to sell my 550 Nitro. Like I don't plan on keeping that. So maybe that will be the helicopter I replace with something. And then I have myself open to this other thing. But right now I'm really happy with the M7 and the Spectre. Like I don't...

I want to upgrade my M7s to the new M7. Does that count as changing machines? Nope. I don't think so either. I also, we've talked about the burnout stuff. I want to not be so obsessed and keep it happy. Last year when I decided to compete, I went freaking off the deep end. I don't know if I'm going to compete at Urchin this year or not, but if I decide to, I don't want to make it to where I am going to the field.

brian every single day like i can't yeah do it i think that burned me out i don't want to do that oh yeah So if you're on the Urcha board and you're thinking about doing a competition, let Alex know now so you can practice just once a week all this time instead of having to cram. Exactly. I'm trying to decide if I'm going to do the Urcha cup again.

you know, submit to be able to do it because there's plenty of other good pilots out there that might do it. Yeah, we'll see. Awesome. I like to set a maneuver of the year and my maneuver of the year is the time warp. which is an f3n maneuver it is very difficult but i've already started on it and i can i can ugly do one side of it so i think it's achievable for sure what is it

The time warp is a tick tocking circle in which you are changing. So you're using rudder and you would do like all 12 points of a 12 points and then reverse skids in 12 points.

correct yeah so it's rough the i can do the i can do the inverted right rudder clockwise circle to talking while the disc wire you know you're going from basically a nose up tick tock to at the six o'clock portion you would go to a nose down tick tock and then back up when you come back all the way around but i can't go the other direction with the left rudder yet so i gotta practice that

i can kind of do those face me like that but not skids towards me not not right maybe like a four point the thing i had to practice first was nose down circle tick tocks i wasn't able to do those but no what's scary is you can do that whole maneuver in reverse too you know left-handed and that's that's even more mine yep screwing it's gonna be left-handed tiktok 12 point yep right on dude that's awesome um yeah

Let's talk about podcast goals. I got one, which is that I would love to try and get more European guests. I really want, and we've tried and failed scheduling wise on some of this because the time differences is a thing. But I'd love to get Rob Bingham, RC Helicopter Richard, others, Colin Bell, maybe. But you get the point. I want more voices from other lands.

And the hard part is we can always get one or two of us at the scheduled time. But a lot of these guys in Europe are like, no, I want to talk to the whole team. I like, I want all four of you to be there. And then it becomes really challenging to get that schedule. I'd like to have Stu Smith on. I'd like to hear. Yep. Stu Smith would be great.

So hopefully we make that happen. If we didn't say your name, we'd still like to have you too. Yes. We just have to record at like 4 a.m., 3 a.m. I know. I don't know, man. Anybody else got any goals for the show? I would like to personally do a better job of... This sounds ridiculous spreading the word, but I've done no self-promotion of the podcast at all for basically two years and I would like to contribute. So I'm sorry for not helping do that, guys.

On that note, I would like to thank Jeremy Strickland for overspeeding into the ground because it's brought more followers to our Facebook page than anything else. If I get another notification. Oh my God, it's ridiculous. It's beyond 75,000 views of that short right now. It's crazy. It's insane. On that note of numbers, I'd love to see us hit 100,000 downloads this year, and I think we will.

which will be yes that's awesome my download generator is still going it's counting slowly i know the mom's committee is working they're building the numbers and i got one personal goal for 2026 that y'all can wish me luck for in how many days? What's the date today?

In six days, I take my U.S. citizenship test because I'm actually a British citizen. I've lived here forever. Oh, that's right. I forgot about that. I'm finally going to take care of U.S. citizenship. So I'm petrified to take the U.S. history exam because I haven't taken a test in I don't know how many years. You have to take a U.S. history test?

Yeah, there are a hundred possible questions and they will ask you 10 of them. You have to get six right or you cannot become a citizen. So I'm trying to like relearn my U.S. history. It's good fun. So wish me luck for that.

All right. I think, I know we promised covering the S2 Ultra versus OMPV3. I shouldn't say versus, covering both of those helicopters. It's not a versus. All you team guys can back that thing up. But I think I'm going to ship Alex my S2 Ultra. So he can get some time on it and then offer some commentary as well. So it's more than one voice. Some people off no matter what. I know we're going to piss somebody off. I feel like the micro helicopter thing is like the most like.

It's the thing that people are the most passionate about. I don't understand at all. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I post photos of mine on a scale on our Facebook page and there was, you know, commentary and rightly so clarifying things. But like people are just picky about things like there's painted booms on both of mine. So like that was called out and whatnot. So we're going to do our best to cover both details.

both helicopters fairly and honestly and review how they fly. So we'll do our best, but it's just our opinion. So don't, don't get mad. All right. I think that wraps it up for this episode. Thanks for, for sticking with us. Thanks for joining us again in the new year. Hope you all have a happy new year.

Set your own hobby goals, write them down because it's fun to go back and look at them a year later and post them on our Facebook page. When you see us drop the new episode, let us know what your goals are. Put them in writing somewhere and what you're working on for this year.

I like this Maneuver of the Year. I got to come up with one. I'm going to work on that. I like Maneuver of the Year a lot. It's very cool. It is good, too. Yeah, I think I'll play with that one, too, now. Now I can play with it on the sim. Yeah. Right on. All right. With that, I think we're out of here.

All right. You're welcome for not interrupting you today, by the way. I know. I was like, that's really kind of you. I thought it was something new for 2026. Yeah, I know. Look at her. New material. I like it. Holding my breath. don't forget check out our website www.rotorevolution.live for ways to email us messages facebook swag store all the links subscribe all that good stuff anyway thanks a lot everybody Later, guys. Thank you. Happy New Year.

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 rotorevolution.ly. 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.