EP. 64: Benjamin Britton

Welcome to the Rotor Revolution RC Podcast with Brian Birdsong. Alex Dean. Kenny Hutton. And Nick Wisdom. Welcome to the Road Revolution. I am your host, Nick. This is episode 64. And we got another good episode with you, with you, with us, with me, is everybody. I'm not sure I can do this. Not sure. Perfect. Is it your pet mouse? Your computer mouse? The computer mouse? Yep. I don't know if I can do this. You're okay. You you hit all the right buttons. Okay. Tinius to start over, Alex.

Click click. Didn't get to er interrupt you in time. Yeah. As fascinating as Alex's dead mouse is, we're uh doing a podcast thing. Um it's a good episode this week. And uh I wanna kick it off with some listener mail questions for you guys, some easy ones. I'm gonna throw some softballs at you.

All right, first one came in from remember listener Colin Caber Cabra, the gentleman who attended his first fun fly. Well he reached back out to us with a question. It's kind of an old as time question in the hobby, but was curious on your opinions. I'm gonna paraphrase it a little bit. So it's high until you can't see it. That's the first question.

I think he's figured out that one. He's moving on to the next question, the other age old question. Why do helicopter pilots get treated poorly at some flying clubs with tiny flight areas or plankers who get annoyed if you fly away He pays the same dues. Why doesn't he get the same access? Who wants to feel that one? Yeah. Yeah, you could show up with an airplane or you can show up with a helicopter and you're gonna get treated a little different, right? Oh yeah.

I don't know dude. It depends on the club you go to. I mean I've experienced A hor I've had a horrible experience at a club and I've had a great experience. My current club is a great experience. My past club, horrible. Those guys hated helicopter pilots. And you know, and you know what their problem was too? They thought, oh, that's too dangerous. Those blades spinning so fast. You know, you can hurt someone, kill someone, and here they go crashing planes every five minutes.

You know, you're talking about hitting pit areas and just runways Well, yeah. Exactly. Sticking their fingers in the press. Or just a foamy. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But, you know, I don't know. I mean for me, I mean I I I I quit the club, man. I just I just didn't want to put up with it. So I quit the club and found a club that

really caters to the helicopter pilots. I mean Hilltop Flowers Club, shout out to you guys. I mean here in Lawrence uh not Lawrenceville, but uh Loganville, Georgia. These guys are awesome. They love the helicopter pilots. We love them back, you know, we all take turns, you know, it's a five minute flight, you know, it's it's

It's cool. You gotta find a club like that. You know, when you guys can take turns and everybody's liking each other, it's all good. But yeah, when you find a club like that though, the bad guys I'm sorry, bro. I mean, I just luckily for me, you know, we have a lot of options down here. So I just quit that one club and and found another one that accepted us, but Yeah.

I don't know Yeah, I mean I I think the best you can do in that situation is number one, start attending club meetings uh where all these votes happen and new regulations get proposed and bring it up. Say, Hey, I'm you know, I'm made to feel not welcome in this situation. What's the official club rule? Am I allowed to fly over the main flight line? You know, what are the official sharing rules between helicopters and airplanes? You know, what behavior do you encourage?

Get him to put it in writing. Uh you know, advocate for yourself. Run as a club officer, you know, institute change from within is another option for sure. But But Brian's right, you know, flying at Hilltop over in Loganville, uh, the president of the club is a big fan of keeping the peace between the helicopter and the airplane guys. And anytime, and it's really rare, anybody gets grumpy about anything, he's the first to be like, No man, let's work this out. Let's Make sure everybody's happy.

It is not uncommon, unfortunately. It's it's this difficulty happens to you. But uh the best you can do is kill them with kindness, confront them, figure out what they're grumpy about. Ask how you can better alternate flights or how they wanna, you know, take turns, or even better, buy an airplane too, and nothing will drive them crazier than when you fly when all the airplanes land and then join them when all the airplanes are in the air.

Yeah, no matter what you do though, you can't you gotta resist that urge to go up and fly when they're flying with a helicopter'cause that just ends in disaster from first hand experience. Either they crash into you or you're hovering and they fly right by and and they don't even see you, you know, and just run through you, so You definitely You have to either wait your turn or wait till no one's there. Something like that. If you can't work it out.

I think it helps too at Hilltop. We've befriended a lot of the plankers. You know, we genuinely enjoy like chatting with them and you know they're the first to come over and go, Hey man, I'm gonna stay kind of to the right two thirds. If you guys can keep to the first third, we're like, great, you know, and and we space out accordingly and it works out.

Or if you're lucky enough to like change a few of them over to helicopters, then you get more of them on your side and it kinda the whole the whole club changes at that point. Mm-hmm. We we've converted a few at Hilltop. Um I mean they still fly their planes, but they bring their little two hundred sizes out there and fly'em too. It's pretty cool. Yeah. It's awesome. It's good to see.

I actu I actually don't think that this is just a helicopter and airplane fight thing. I feel like it's more of a three D versus flying the pattern club. And if you have a three D airplane club, they're gonna be more welcoming to a helicopter. But if it's The guys they just fly the pattern that maybe Who's not doing that? Yeah, they're they're you're out of control and that's why they think it's dangerous because they can't comprehend it themselves. I I think that's what I'm saying.

That's a good point, Alex. Because those those same clubs don't like the guys hovering over the runway on their airplanes, you know? They're like dangerous. Stay away. Totally feel you on that. These guys love to watch me fly my F three C stuff because it's kind of pattern like, right? I mean it's backing up and down a field, all that stuff. They love to see that stuff. They respect the three D guys too. I mean we're down in our corner, but again

You fly the pattern with them, they have some guys out there that fly their planes three D, so it's it's a mix and yeah, we all get along. So Almost all of them it's a left hand circle. So if you can do a right hand circle they're they're confused, like cross eyed, you know. That's it. Get a plane and only do right hand circles. Ha ha ha Oh man. Oh.

I do enjoy the the one summer day when in the Atlanta Heli Chat everybody says, All right, it's bring a plane day and a bunch of us will bring airplanes and all the heli guys go up flying airplanes at the same time and none of us are flying the same pattern. It's just mad chaos. It's hilarious. It turns into combat. The plankers are just crying with laughter. It's it's a good time.

If you do combat, you'll never hit anybody with combat. But if you just go up and fly, you'll hit each other directly without looking. That's true. A hundred percent. Or put a couple of cones on the edge of the flight box. Guaranteed. Hi. I got another one for you. Uh listener Anthony Hearns wrote in to ask us if he thinks it's worth upgrading to the OMP V three pro. So he's already got an OMP M two, I think maybe an Evo.

uh that he added the OFS3 FBL to, which he really enjoys and loves the way it flies. But he says, is he missing out on anything? Should he upgrade to the V3 Pro? What's the difference? So standard M2 upgraded the flybarless. Is it worth going to the V3 Pro? Do we all want to answer this the same way? I mean I I'd say a hundred percent yes because the V three Pro does have a lot lighter floaty feel in the air and has a more

aerobatic feel where the V three is good, but it has a little more weight to it, depending on what you want to feel. I mean the the V three was awesome. There's nothing wrong with that, but I think there's a pretty big upgrade there in flight. Yeah, I would agree.

I'll just add one caveat that it depends on what you're working on. If you're a beginner working on initial hovers, no, absolutely not. You're not missing out anything. That that weight difference isn't gonna make a difference. But if you're

Trying to learn three D moves and you know, running slightly higher head uh head speeds and the more flight time is gonna help you, the lightness definitely makes the whole helicopter fly better. So uh if you're working towards three D, then definitely I think the V three pro upgrades Yeah, the M two Evo. What was it? Evo with the OFS three. I mean, it feels great.

control wise, but it just has that extra weight. Like you can you it's like going from good to even better. You know, they're not neither one of them is bad. It's just there's different characteristics on each one and the lightness definitely plays a big role on the P three Pro. Yeah, well said.

All right. That done, let's do some recap. I feel like I haven't gotten first in a long time and I I'm short, so maybe I should just knock this out and get it out of the way. Do it. So I don't quite have a no fly, but I haven't flown anything bigger than a two hundred since we last spoke.

But uh uh I've been traveling nonstop. I've been in Salt Lake City and then New York City and then back to Salt Lake City and I only just got home uh and I crashed my S two Ultra after we recorded last time in Salt Lake City. I think it was after we recorded. I don't know. But it was a really windy day and I just wanted to fly and I flew anyway. It was like blowing me between ten to fifteen and

I completely lost the tail, inverted up high, and the wind did something weird and it like spun three sixty and spat out at a weird angle and it hit hold. Anyway, I crashed. I did some damage. I ordered some parts from Heli Direct who shipped'em to my hotel in New York City, the next city I was headed to, got the parts in New York, flew back to Salt Lake, fixed it in Salt Lake City.

And I remaidened it in my hotel room and uh it flies great. So successful repair with a hotel room maiden. Don't know that I'll do that again. Not the smartest thing I've ever done. But it worked. I didn't hit anything. But so that's good. Uh but that's all the flying I've done literally was just some stuff with micros. Nothing nothing crazy, unfortunately. Dude, I can't imagine what the people in the ho freaking hotel room next to you were like, What is Why is that?

What is that noise? It doesn't sound like a vacuum cleaner. Or a hairdryer or whatever. Yeah. I know. I finished fixing it at like ten thirty at night. I was like resisting the urge to maiden it then. I'm like, I'll do it like in the morning, like right before I leave my hotel room for the day at like eight o'clock in the morning. But yeah.

Uh, but I have been busy since I got home. I've been home for like six days now, I think. And I haven't had any flying time during the day. Tons of work and life and and stuff I have been wrenching every night and I've been working on moving the rest of my fleet over to Spirit. So I got the second Ill Goblin Pro all set up on Spirit, the one in the red, white, and black scheme. I got the I was told to tell you. That no one wants to hear about spirit anymore.

Uh no I just took two shots, Nick. I said I was gonna take a shot every time you said spirit. You can tell Doug to bite me. Love you, Doug. Uh I moved the Ultra over and I put the logo seven hundred on Spirit as well. So uh I have three helicopters to made in this week. I'm probably gonna fly maybe Saturday, I don't know.

Those three maidened and tuned. Uh still more FBLs on the way. The W threes are shipping now, at least from overseas. So Helidirect should have them in stock any day now. Uh so the W three FBLs. We'll be headed my way and that'll take care of the rest of my fleet. Uh I think they're expected to get stateside by the tenth of April. But other than that, uh not a lot here except I sold some things. Uh oh. time. All your V bar controls, did you still have some?

No, although I did I was when I was rewiring a model Uh it's like, Oh, what's this capacitor backup on here?'Cause it was wrapped in black heat shrink. And I was like, Damn, it's a Mikado one'cause those don't work with the Spirit FBL because they need Mikado they only work with Mikado basically. So I was like, damn, and now I got another Mikado capacitor backup to sell.

But no, I uh decided to sell my second RS seven Ultra kit that was still new in the box and uh I sold it to a local club member here. And gave'em a great deal on it'cause originally I was gonna put one on V Bar and one on Spirit and then when I just had made the decision already I was like, There's no point in having two of these.

I let one go and I did sell it because I wanted to replace it with something that too many people around me have tried and liked and I can't take the pressure anymore. So between Alex and Kenny and Kyle Yeah. And some others here in the area. I just couldn't do it. And so today an OMP M seven R arrived at my house. So I have that to build. I already had all the electronics lined up for the R S seven Ultra. So

Pretty much a direct swap, uh money wise. So I just replaced one on built kit with a different one so I can try the M seven R, which I'm excited to try. Oh. You're gonna like it dude. The tale is like I can't explain. It's like magic. Yeah, you're not. And I enjoyed my M five and obviously the micros from OMP, so I'm sure it's gonna be a great helicopter. So but that's it for me. Short and sweet. Cool. Who's going next? Well we can Yeah. You going? Okay. Stay in Georgia. You got I don't care.

Okay. Okay, well. Check this out. So

Like it's my flying season, dude. I mean, it's time to practice and all this good stuff. Like, not last weekend, but the prior weekend, I flew Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Crazy times. I mean, I was out there for like a Cut. six hours man flying all day long, having a good time. It was really gusty. The wind was blowing and so didn't have a lot of uh plane guys out there. I mean it's a few that come brave the wind, you know, and fly the birds, but

I had to fail pretty much to myself, you know. So a couple of the helicopter guys came out too, but lots of practice with the Genesis. And so when I flew this guy too, like with the like the wrong electronics in it, right? Remember we talked about how, you know, the ratio the gear ratio's really low, so you really need a really low K V motor and, you know, a lot of people been talking about this light you know, this light mindset is everybody've been thinking. And so

You know, kinda got a good reason behind the light mindset as well. So, you know, what's new in our precision flying world is lower head speed. And so back in the old school days, you know, you're hovering at like fourteen hundred RPMs, you're you're flying upstairs at like nineteen hundred, you know, some people get eighteen fifty to nineteen hundred RPMs, which is pretty fast.

So you need I don't know, a beefy setup and you know, the heavier it was too, the faster it would fly, you know, you have a uh a heavier battery pack, a bigger motor, bigger ESC. And it worked. Well, this new light mindset come around and it's like, well, What what we do, we we we decrease the head speed.

So you're you're hovering right around twelve hundred RPMs and you're upstairs you're probably no more than seventeen hundred, which is really slow. And so if you're so heavy flying so slow or you know, with a slow head speed, you can really feel the heaviness of the bird. Um, I found myself um over speeding through one of my maneuvers. I never did that before. You know, I saw the telemetry where I'm like hitting nineteen hundred RPMs, I'm like, whoa, never go that high.

Yeah, you know, from seventeen fifty to nineteen hundred and So I was like, Well, where is that happening? I mean, I wish I could I should pr uh you know what I didn't do is load it up in the black box to to take a look at where that happened at but I got a feeling it happened in the inverted Cuban eight that I have to do.

It's when I come out of this forty five degree angle down and I pull up and I come back across. When I do that second one, I that's where I feel like I get the overspeed'cause it just it just I mean it hauling ass, you know, at that point. But um

But I'm like, okay, so let me think about this light thing they're talking about because if you make the bird lighter, then yeah, it makes sense to lower the head speed and and it'll probably fly as proportional as it flew with the heavier set and higher head speed. So

Went ahead and purchased all the electronics that I needed to uh downgrade those things from my genesis and make it, you know, the ESC efficient now. So instead of the big cosmic, uh catronic cosmic ESC, I put a Uh a calibre in it, which is a little bit smaller. I'm expecting you to say you put one of these secure No. No, I gotta stay true to my game, man. And I know the Calibri's awesome, uh uh, ESC. So it it's the Calibri in there. Um, the motor I selected was uh

Here's here's the cool thing about this motor. Like it it's not made anymore from uh Contronic. It's an old seven hundred thirty four. And the thirty four represents three hundred and forty KV. Well, this is what the Genesis manuals recommend in three hundred and forty KV, no matter which manufacturer you get, but if you can find that, you can f that'd be great. Well, the lowest one to date on the current website of uh Contronicas a 400.

Or forty rather, four hundred KV. And so which means I would probably have to, you know, um put a new pinion on, the smallest pinion I could find probably uh which I think was an eighteen, which will still get me close to where I wanted to be. But, you know, I I really wanted to find a three forty. So I almost like, you know, just gave in and got that Scorpion three forty that they have out there.

And then my good old buddy Ben Minor was like, Hold on, Brian, I got one. I think I got one. He said, I got a very like one of the first models of our seven hundred thirty four pyromotor. Um that we discontinued a long time ago, but I have one brand new in the box. They sent it to me because they wanted me to change the the shaft out of it. It was a little short shaft, so I put a longer shaft in it.

And then, you know, it was discontinued. They just said, hold on to it, you know? And so I have it. And, you know, talk to Tim and see if you can purchase it. Talk to Timmy said, Oh yeah, purchase it, blah, blah, blah. You know, went through the proper channels and and I bought this guy. So I'm like the only one now flying a a seven hundred thirty four Pyro Motor, which is awesome. So

Bought that. I also downgraded the battery pack. So I went from the big twelve S stick that was uh fifty three hundred milliamps to two six S packs, the uh forty five hundred. Let me tell you how much weight I shaved off this thing guys. So I went from like what I said, twelve point eight pounds. Right, with everything that the the heavier stuff in there. When I put the lighter stuff in there, drop this thing down to eleven point two pounds. Wow, you lost weight more than a pound.

Isn't that crazy dude? That's a lot of weight shaved. That's huge. Yes, bro, yes. I'm excited to hear how it flies. I am well, here's the deal. I just did that today. Day. Matter of fact, um I was almost late running in here from the garage. I've uh I got the uh electronic wired up. Covered it in the garage. I did not test it. At all. Yeah. But I what I did do is on the bench just ran and test out the uh the RPM. So

The RPMs are running efficiently now, so I'm at like fifty two fifty three percent for hover, which is right where I wanna be at twelve fifty. And then upstairs I'm right at like seventy two percent. That gets me seventeen fifty. So Looks good on the bench. Tomorrow I am going out to the field and test fly this guy. I'm excited. So super excited that uh the weight change. Now I wanna if do you have to change PID, do you think?

When you shave that much weight off the burden, I don't know, it's gonna be a lot I mean it's gonna feel like a whole different helicopter. Interesting to see what especially because you know what it looked like before putting it in black box, what the change is. I feel like you won't have to. I don't know. You're not changing servos, you know. Their servos are just having to work less hard.

Well, I'll let you know. I will let you know. Oh man, I forgot to tell you guys right before that. You know, I took it out and it exploded. Well, you know, today we're recording. It's April Fool's Day.

And so I posted this uh this crazy crash picture of my Genesis up there. And then when I tell you the responses I got from that thing, it was just hilarious. Ha ha ha. Did some people take you seriously? A fake craft picture. It's like a series. My whole helicopter caught fire picture.

Yes, yes. Some people took it very serious, man. Brian, I'm so sorry, dude. I know how much you wanted it. I just like wanted to tell him so bad. And that's like oh that's fake AI, it's fake AI, it's fake AI. Yes, it was AI. I love it. I love that you woke up and chose evil today. Yeah. Right.

Now granted, let me tell you, I did knock on wood because I'm like, man, I'd be jinxing myself, you know what I'm saying? So I knocked on wood a few times to just say, you know, uh helly gods up there. This was just the April Fool's joke. So I'm just playing. It's a ballsy joke to put up the day you swap the ESC out. Oh but here's the deal too about the E S C so because the canopy is so enclosed and there's no vents to ventilate air through the sky.

Um, Ben said, Be careful and watch the temperature of this guy. So I do have the temperature of telemetry hooked up to check it out. But I told him, I said, You know, I think I'm just gonna cut some vent slots in there like I did uh my O Genesis which really helped reduce the the temperature inside of this guy. So I might just do that. I I I was on uh what was it? NACA. Is that the name of it? Where they give you these little airfoil Yeah. So I'm gonna take one.

Uh Diablo used to have those, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right. I would think you could probably go up a tooth on the pinion too if it's running hot. Like if you're at fifty seventy two. You could probably go up a tooth and get closer to like sixty, eighty five. A little more in this sweet spot.

I'm gonna I'm gonna play with it. Tomorrow I'm just I'm not gonna cut anything in it yet. I'm just gonna fly it around tomorrow, check the temperature. Uh bench set an alarm for like eighty degrees Celsius, you know, and I'm like, Oh wow, that's high. You know, even with the uh the cosmic on it, I never breach like fifty-five degrees Celsius, you know, running that thing. I mean hell, I only you know, ninety amps total, you know, this D L I'm saying it's overpowered, you know, the way it was. So

I don't know, we'll see. We'll see how it goes. Uh but yeah, super excited about the new electronics. I want to get out and fly, so I'll let you guys know how it went on our next episode. But yeah, ready to go fly some more, man. Ready to go fly. Yes. I feel, I feel. Is it possible you do all this and you're like, oh, I want my machine to be heavier again? Have you thought about that? No, because I do enjoy the the um the lowerhead speed.

And I and I'd say this because um the battery's lasting longer now too. You know, before I would land at like three point seventy five, I'm landing at like three point eight two now. Like I really have a lot of battery left and I'm like, holy cow, this is pretty cool and it's quieter. It's so much quieter now too with lower H so yeah. I'm gonna give this a shot. It's the new mindset now. It's the lighter mindset. I get that, I get that. I'm just curious, I guess, is all. Yeah. A lot of

3D birds on twelve S forty five hundreds. My RAWs all flew on twelve S forty five hundreds. And I love that pack size. Especially if you fly lower head speed like I do, which, you know, my bank three is usually, you know, just sub two K. So I I'm a big fan. But it's a bummer. Nobody makes a twelve S stick that size. You gotta make it yourself out of six S packs.

And that was challenging too, because as much as this is like I said, the only thing I really hate about this burst architecture is that rear loaded battery entry. I cannot stand it. It just irks me and so now, you know, I have these cables. I got the battery looking nice and neat and I go to slide it in and it's like nope. Rejected. I'm like, why? It's like, because you need like two more millimeters on each side to get that thing past the wires. I'm like, this sucks, man.

Oh. That's annoying. Yeah. Yeah. So I had to re sh you know shift the wires around a little bit to make it work. So Come on, SAP, we gotta do something about that tray, man. I hate it. When does the new PD printed cutout thing arrive? Good question. I haven't seen any additional news on it, so maybe I'll uh go tap on someone's shoulder and see if I can figure that out. Yeah. I know. You got one of the early prototypes of the kit. It only makes sense you get one of the cutouts. Yes, sir.

Well, cool, man. I'm excited to uh to hear more about how it goes once uh you get some uh practice time on it. But who wants to go next? Who's jumping in? I can go next, I guess.

So I uh kind of like it sounded like Brian stole my weeks there. He uh had nobody at the field and so so did I. Like I went out there Saturday and There was just nobody. I guess'cause there was over a six mile an hour wind, that was it, you know. There was just empty fields. So I'm like, okay. And I was just charging packs back to back flying and finally got out to actually get the M seven R, you know, some flights on it, other than just like a side yard

test couple flights that were just, you know, flipping to make sure stuff worked right. But I took that and I took the um the R S seven Ultra together and was flying those, you know, kinda going back and forth. And I think I'm I am just having more fun, I think, with the M seven R at the moment. I don't know if it's just because it's

the newest telly in the the fleet or just because it's like its characteristics, you know, it does fly really light and it does roll really good and and it's not just the rolling but like the pirouetting. Seems like it's more effortless, I guess you could say, like doing regular, you know, rideside up to upside down flips, you know, Piero flips. So So I I have a theory about this. What's that? I I could be wrong, but the trend here has been to go to like the one-to-one style ratio for

Mm-hmm. And it gives it a unique feel in the air, I agree. However, I wonder if what we're liking about this other type of geometry is where you get a little bit more torque out of your servos and it feels like the center more. Like a snappier feel or something? Yeah. I'm looking at the height of the head. Like I think That M seven R has like a sweet spot. Yeah.

Heights for the heights down from the head down to like where your center of gravity is versus some other helicopters. You know, they've been on a trend of going shorter and shorter, you know, heads on them and stuff. And that puts it into a situation where you have this more abrupt stopping when you're tipping the helicopter left to right, you know, and it's real snappy, but then it kinda locks in more where this slightly different head height, you know, gives you that

symmetrical role feel and it feels like that's what I'm feeling. It's just, you know, same thing theory, but kinda feels that way. Like it's just a a an adjustment of the head height and everything and the layout, you know. That plays a role in it too. But both of them do fly a little different. But had a lot of fun with it over the weekend. And other than that, like I guess at the same time, like, you know, I'm always trying these different servos. Like I'm always playing with

You know, I got Protex Experts, you know, saw those reef servos I was trying, the N S D R Cs. And I got a couple other just random cheap ones I've been trying in in different brands and Now that I've been flying some of'em, you know, at the seven sixty Pulse Center and and raising the the hurts on'em.

that that's changed everything a lot too,'cause I it's interesting. When I started this M seven R out I had I think the torque on there and then I switched to this other set and I changed the Hertz to a higher

frequency and it's like super quick and snappy now. So I actually had to go back and like retune. You know, I had to lower my the gains on rotor flight and stuff just to give it a more locked feel, like where everything wasn't as like f smooth and floaty, you know, just to kinda bring it back down'cause it's so quick.

that you have to kind of retune. But you still get a lot of quick response out of that faster uh refresh rate though. And it's pretty noticeable, I guess, when you change the servo to that extent, you know. Hm. I don't know if you guys have messed with it like changing there, but it does make a Yeah. It's pretty cool. And uh other thing was rebuilding my M two V three pro Powerline de boxing. Yeah, the power line d departure to the pavement is I guess what you call that.

So after you know, I can't call that a crash really because that was once it happened, you know, that thing's fallen from fifty feet straight into the pavement. So it was kinda it should have been worse than it was. And I kind of thought at first, oh, it only broke, you know, the canopy and blades and a couple little linkages.

And it was a little worse. There was like a stripped ball on the swash, you know, in the lower part. And my boom had shoved itself like a half inch into the rear of the frame and and broke down. Hello. part on the um anti rotation plate piece. But I mean it's kind of expected. Like, you know, you just look at it at first, like, oh it's good. But you know, when you dig into it deeper, you start finding three or four more things'cause it hit the pavement really hard.

So I did get it all back together just a couple of nights ago. I just haven't got the flight yet, but it should work. I just it took a little longer'cause I got through it and you then you realize you have more stuff to buy or put on it, so Not a big deal, but I'll get to test it out again here in a couple of days. And I bought something. I believe you guys might already know that. Yeah. Yes! I got damned. S some un unobtainium servos are coming soon. They I ordered the Aeon servo set.

Nice. Like tracking number in hand or theoretically. Yeah, no, no, they're theoretically shipping still. I think they're on the way to A main right now, I believe. So hopefully in the next few days they will ship finally. Right on. That's it.

Go I want to jump in with a question here that ties into what Brian was saying. And so I got my M seven R and I have my choice between forty five hundred twelve S or fifty three hundred twelve S. Which way should I go? If it's already light, I'm leaning fifty three hundred. Maybe so you'll get a little longer flight time. I mean it's not gonna wait that much more. I honestly think w it depends on what you One out of it, dude. Do you want a heavier machine or do you want a lighter machine?

I know that's stupid to say but I mean I'm running those SMC, like the larger ones. I have a set of those and you don't really notice the difference in weight versus like a five thousand. Yeah. Yeah. I mean five thousand would be ideal, but uh what I have are forty five hundreds or fifty three hundreds, so I'm debating. I think I'm gonna go. Yeah. Uh the Eagle Drift forty seven thirty. I know a place where you can order new batteries and get whatever you want. So do I.

But I have a lot of uh a decent amount of twelve S sticks already. I don't necessarily want to own more or spend more. I was gonna ask you, what head speed do you run? I would think on the M seven R I'll run a low head speed bank around fourteen hundred to fifteen hundred. And then my high head speed, I usually have bank three around nineteen hundred for windy days, and then I'll primarily fly at around seventeen fifty, eighteen hundred.

Nick are you flying that ego drift at forty five forty Uh I think the one I have is the five twenty. Did you order a smaller pinion? I did get another opinion just in case. The stock gear ratio is nine point two. It's pretty low. Like it's made for higher head speed, you know. Yeah. But yeah, the lower the head speed, the heavier it's gonna fit.

Yeah. I think I have the five twenty five KB motor in mine and and even pretty high throttle I'm getting like two thousand ten RPM somewhere in there, like not maxed out I don't think, but pretty close. Maybe I'll go fifty three hundred. I can always change my mind and go to the lighter pack. So put the fifty three hundreds on the tray and see where see where it it lands. Like low head speed it does fly pretty good, just smooth and real light.

Yeah. I love me some relaxed low head speed flying every now and then. It's good stuff. All right, sorry. I don't know what that is. I know you don't. Uh hey, can I ask you a question, Alex? Speaking of A and B of things. Uhhuh. Do you have enough do you have enough time on the Egodrift forty seven thirty versus forty seven twenty six to share any thoughts on that? No, because I haven't flown the twenty six since I Yeah. Literally put the forty seven twenty six in an in a kit today. So

Okay. Actually it's sitting in front of me and I I'm gonna need to do the rotor flight setup on it still. Well I have not tried one, so I'm curious what your thoughts are on that. Well when you get to that point. In the past, I you haven't tried the thirty or the twenty six? I haven't tried the twenty six. Oh well the thirty is a torque monster, the twenty seven the twenty six is no slouch either though. Like it's good. So Yeah.

You know, I started this episode in my notes by saying I didn't buy a new kit, but I did buy a new kit. I don't think I said in the last episode that I bought another M seven. Ready to fly from somewhere. M seven or someone reached out to me or another team yeah. Yeah. Someone reached out that's on another team that uh can't act it I guess they just build everything to try so they have the experience of knowing what the other people have.

And uh he sent me a message and said, Hey, do you want this? And I was like, No, not really. I already have two basically And then he told me how much it was gonna be with servos and an E S C and a motor. And I was like, Okay. So My my second M7 kit that I was gonna build, because remember I crashed one, got here at the same time the other entire helicopter that I bought came.

And I put the other one together first'cause it was like a ten minute thing. The guy that packed it did a fantastic job. So Instead I have flown the Mensah whatever motor that is. What is it? The combo? C yeah, the combo motor. It is a torque monster also. Holy crap, that thing is strong. And they're cheap too. They are cheap. Yeah. So, uh... I did buy a new kit, wow. I didn't mean to do that. Remember the beginning of the year I said I'm gonna You next week. Machine and fly it. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. I also was like, this is a good enough deal that if I'm at my field and someone's like, I want that, I'll be like, Okay, here you go. You know, this is a good deal. And You can have it. Like helly crack dealers. Yeah, actually. I already I'm already sure that I'm gonna show up at the field with this thing and someone's gonna be like I want one and I'm just gonna say, Well you can have this one.

But uh I didn't crash anything this week and actually I haven't flown that much, guys. Like I hate people that complain about the wind. But it's been pretty windy and uh Yeah. I'm tired of the wind. Like I'm tired of I decided to come home to cook my family dinner on the grill and it's not fun to grill because this I I only use charcoal and so there's like freaking stuff going everywhere.

Yeah. Yeah. And and the entire time I'm standing out there like I can't be flying right now either and I shouldn't be cooking on the grill. Yeah. Yeah, we have a windy season too. Like I mean we have constant normal wind, but this is like constant twenties and gust in the thirties, you know? Which yeah. Yeah, but if you live here and you're gonna fly, like you choose to just fly anyway. You c you kinda go, Well, I'm gonna do it anyway. So uh I'm sick of it and now it's raining.

And I bought some new stuff and I wanna go fly it. And Kenny, I I had some of the Aeon servos get delivered to me yesterday. Nice. Whenever there is hype around a product, I typically am like very n derogatory about it. I don't buy into it. I'm like, whatever, I have to see it for myself. Like anytime my wife says it's gonna snow this week, I always say, I'll see it when I believe I say that. Yeah.

You know you're going to be proven wrong or something, right? And yeah, I got proven wrong. This is this is very impressive so far. And what I mean by that is. The amount of power these things put out is ridiculous. Like I had one powered up in my hand trying to like make the servo arm bend, you know, and I literally couldn't move it at all. It is very, very strong.

So Kenny, I'm excited for you to get'em and hopefully we'll have some sort of Strength and like the precision of the how hold how good it holds its centering without any play is very Super amazing. Yeah. Like setting up, um, doing the rotor flat setup I've done like my it's interesting'cause the cyclic calibration numbers are different than they were. Um You have to go down like thirty points, thirty whole numbers. To get the cyclic calibration correct. Right.

The throws are different, like way different. Yeah, so you might have to go into the servo and you can change its endpoints like to a different if you wanted to also, I guess. I guess we'll have to talk about that on another episode. But yeah I You can do it. Go to those slider or change the degrees and just slower it down to a certain amount. Uh no it's not that. It was just that it's almost like

Their resolution is just totally different in this server than other servos I've messed with. So when you start giving it you know, points on this on the calibration percent, one point actually does something whereas some servos it takes like five points to get it to move one little tick or something, you know? Yeah, sorry. I mean. Yeah, sometimes you gotta click up like five or ten points to watch it jump up a little bit on the swash when you're doing settings.

Yeah. And these are more smooth and happens more naturally and takes less numbers to do it. Nice. What protocol and refresh rate did you decide to go with? Seven sixty and I have it set at eight hundred eight hundred hertz right now. Which is what I was running anyway with Thetas. Okay. I'm surprised you didn't go right for a thousand. I believe the highest is like eight fifty six or something. Can you put it at a thousand?

Protorfight will probably allow it, but I don't know what the servo. I think the servo at seven sixty is good for a thousand hertz. One. Yeah. I have it plugged in. Hang on. Did it let me?'Cause I had it I just let it sitting here still. One thing I've noticed on Rudder Flight is the first time. Um if it won't let you on the PC are you using like the transmitter? No, I haven't tried it on the transmitter yet.

Yeah, if you do it on the transmitter and save it, it will send whatever you type in on there. Oh really? Yeah, I found this out a while back.

All right, so I've been playing with these different ESCs. I got these secure ESCs and I got these different motors I've been kinda playing with. And I've noticed since I got this ESC my flight times are down and like my buddies were like, Hey, you know, try this thing at nineteen hundred. I got like five minutes or something of flight time doing this thing. And I was like, okay, I only got three minutes and

I realized it's only with this secure ESC that I'm getting the low flight times. And I've learned some different things about ramp up times and things that you can change. To help that and I've adjusted them, but I haven't gotten out to fly. But in the meantime, all my very popular ESC in my local field is Scorpion. I don't have any Scorpion ESCs and all these guys are getting these long fly times. I was like, huh? I'm gonna buy a scorpion. Do a comparison. Yeah.

Yeah, and so my goal here is now I have three M sevens. If I have one with a Hobby Wing in it, I have one with a secure, and I have one I'm gonna have one with the Scorpion in it. And so I'm gonna go up and do like just TikToks for a flight and see at nineteen hundred, like which one gives the longest flight time and then look at the black box and see if you're getting similar, you know, holding power and stuff. Try to do the same routine basically every flight or sit somewhat same.

Yeah, same thing. Not necessarily just looking at which one holds the RPM the best, but cool. Is there really such like these different ESEs I'll talk about, it's so efficient. It's the most efficient one. Well, does efficiency actually mean it's just reporting numbers that it it doesn't report the spikes, you know, or is it actually more efficient, it's not getting those spikes and therefore the flight times are longer? I'm curious.

Yeah. I will tell you that with the Egodrift motors, playing with timing definitely makes a difference as well. Okay. I've got'em set at fifteen right now. So maybe I need to go down to like nine or something on them. Actually the forty seven hundreds tend to do better a little higher, closer to twenty five.

Oh really? Okay. Yeah, a lot of other Ego Drift Motors do better at fifteen to nine, but the forty seven hundred series, um, you know, we've been leaving the hobby wings at default, which is twenty five now, and they perform very well. So now you're gonna have to do a flight with the same ESC and check the battery versus another flight on the old timing. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good idea, too.

Okay, I'll put that in there. Okay. Well nothing super exciting, but I am excited about this ESC project that I'm working on. That's fun. Just comparing it. Yeah. It's kinda cool. And after that I'll probably have some ESCs for sale. Ha ha ha. Just gonna have a posse following behind you at the field. They're like, I got an M C I got a new ESC. I got whichever of the forty seven twenty six or forty seven thirty Alex didn't want to keep.

Yep. 'Cause with my Scorpion E S E I also ordered a Scorpion. fifty f whatever it is, twenty four motor to go with it. I think that makes sense. I think they're definitely engineered that they work very well together. Yeah. I just wanted to try the combo. I would have done the same thing again Cảm ơn các bạn đã theo dõi.

Cool. Alright, well let's uh let's do there's not a lot of news cause you know rotor life happens and everybody like shoots their wad and then it's like huh, it's the week after rotor life. Everybody's tired. Nobody wants to talk to anybody or do any marketing, anything. They're just done. Done, I agree. Let's taste some news. And now With all the news from inside the RC helicopter hobby, we bring you the Rota Report. Yeah. Do it. Okay. I'll do it. Is this the intro of the show?

Except it's Brian's turn now. Ha ha.

Alright, cool news out of Mikado USA. So it recently ran a promotion starting April First. Through the 30th, that includes the pro software with the purchase of an Evo FBL. This apparently purely of the Owner Brian Burroughs design, so not necessarily from Mikado, but kudos to Mikado USA for doing what Mikado mothership should consider doing permanently. And I think a lot of people are excited about this. So kudos to you, Brian, for doing that. He may be paving the way for something here.

Pretty cool. Absolutely. Hashtag called it. I didn't hear you say what he's what Makado USA is doing. Did No, they posted a an image that said promotion coming soon, something like that. And Nick replied, Oh, you're gonna give away pro for free to that extent. You know, I'm just paraphrasing and uh you know a few days later, pro is free. And Nick said, I called it.

Yeah, they I guess they've kind of worked a deal out where it's kinda you know, he's losing some there, but it's coming out of um you know, someone's pocket basically, but you'll be able to get the pro version on the firmware now. So it's coming out of Brian Barrows at Mikado USA's pocket. So Mikado mothership is not

have anything to do with the sale. It's just something that Makata USA decided to do on their own. Perhaps'cause they recognize I I'm not trying to put words in their mouth here, but maybe they recognize that, you know, things are priced in a different way than other manufacturers and maybe they need to try being a little more competitive.

Uh, which is something I've certainly said over and over again. So we'll see. But I don't know, I'll give him credit for for doing it, man. It's cool. So save fifty bucks. And get the features that should be included anyway. All right. Alex, what do you got? Uh OMP Hobbies has announced a pretty good update for the firmware for the OFS flight controller. That's for your Mark II and your OMP M2 Pro. Is that on the V M1? Is that going to be an OFS3? M one M V three is O F S three. Cool.

The new version, fifteen point one nine improves attitude and rescue modes, and also adds V control telemetry. So VPAR users can now take advantage of flying to battery capacity with OFS3 enabled models. And I was planning on having us test that, but Nick doesn't fly VPAR anymore. Huh. But I've seen plenty of posts of guys saying it works and they've tested it. Well it's cool. So I'm impressed that they did it actually. You know? It's smart. Just opens you up to more customers.

All right, so I got uh Radio Master update thing that was just posted today. Um, they have the two point one two uh software now that's finally out for the um new transmitters and the H7 based uh processors that are on'em now. So um has some of the features is a faster startup performance on the F four version radios, improved user user interface features across the black and white screen and the color screen radios.

Also added tools such as a QR G A P S locator, which I don't even know what that is, but I'm a guessing maybe there's a QR code like when you're trying to locate your model and you Scan it with your phone, I don't know. And then it goes to GPS. I've never messed with that, but so you can look look it up on maps. Expanded screen layout options, a companion update. is including improved flashing support now with UF two for express LRS Lua integration also is on there.

and better model data handling. It's the first full release of the 2.12 branch and it's as always, it says backup your models and settings. bench test before you fly. And if you want more of the actual details, there's a lot. There's like a fifteen or twenty items at least that were on this new update that are new features and everything, just go to uh the GitHub for Edge TX and look at those before you download it. And if you're

Working good. Like I know some people posted like they're like having good luck with what they have now and they'll stick with it. You can always do that, but it's uh there to check out now for the newest expanded features. Is this an official firmware? Like is this official firmware for the T X fifteen or

It's supposed to be officialed where yeah, basically it's the new one for the the new T X sixteen and in the fifteen also. So they're now included in that instead of like before where people were just using what came with them or just trying other ones that weren't really compatible. So supposedly it is, yeah. Right, good.

I think you should clarify for people who don't know about Radio Master, what they're saying is previously the firmware that was on the radio was not necessarily just a full release. It was like a beta type thing.

Yeah, since like Edge T X has nothing to do really with Radio Master. Edge T X is done, you know, on its own. So they kind of work with them. But Radio Master, I guess when they released the new MK three and stuff, they kind of do their own self build. You'll see like in the firmware, we'll see a self build. So it's done

off of like a base firmware, but then they change settings and things to work with that particular set of hardware, you know, on the new transmitter. So now this is like, you know, different format to where it's compatible with the new model transmitters too. Nice. So everything should work, but definitely test before you fly and make sure it's all good and the new features are there. So better to be safe than sorry.

Absolutely news. Spirit has announced a large update for both their transmitters and flight controllers. This latest update offers improved cyclic and tail response, giving separate stop gain values now for both rotation directions and Here's my favorite part.

They labeled them clockwise and counterclockwise stop gains instead of A and B. So thank goodness. Um sorry, minor pet peeve. Team pilots have reported ridiculously locked in hurricanes, tail performance kicked up yet another notch from the already great place. started. So users who update their flight controllers may have to tweak your stop gains slightly from the default values. But uh I'm told it mostly transfers really well. But uh if you give it a try and you wanna, you know

Dial things in a little further, uh, head to the stop gains uh once you update your FPL. On the transmitter side, Spirit adds more audio call out functionality. and now includes support for the now shipping W three FPLs. That was the biggest driver of the update that we talked about earlier on the show. These are the less expensive version of the W one. that uh is a little bit less than a hundred and fifty bucks with the onboard receiver, case and pro features, et cetera.

But here's the huge news from Spirit, and man, they have been busy lately. Most importantly, Spirit announced something huge, a massive price reduction in the cost of the Spirit Wave radio. Spirit has reduced the cost of the radio down to six hundred and fifty two dollars US. Now that doesn't include taxes or tariffs. So I'm guessing the street price in the US will be closer to seven hundred bucks. But Spirit has done a ton of work to change their suppliers, vendors.

you know, manufacturing process, et cetera, and has managed to reduce the cost of building these transmitters and fibrilless units for us. So they're passing on the savings to us. So you now have one of the two Easiest ecosystems in the hobby to use at an insanely affordable price, under 700 bucks for the transmitter, under 150 for the FBL.

And then add all the work that they've done to obviously flight performance and everything else. And I think we've got some pretty badass competition for some of the other easy to use systems on the market. So well done, Spirit and uh Tomas. Cool. So I'm still stuck on like when you said something about the stop.

gains like C W and C C W back in the day wasn't I don't know if it's still like that, but wasn't V bar the same way? I remember on the old V Bar PC software you could look at your tail, either the gains or the endpoints, and it just said like A or B or something the same way. Like you could never figure out which one you were doing until you actually moved the tail. Yep, V bar's the same way now. It's still stop A and B. Oh wow. Yeah, it should at least say which direction it is.

We haven't done a road replay in a long time. I got nothing. No.

Although I feel like Kyle Stacy should get an honorable mention for the Spectre flight over the pond. Pond. I was thinking it too. I was like, I don't know, the over the pond thing was pretty cool. It was pretty cool. That was a great flight. It's just it's harder to share'cause I think it's just posted on Facebook. Who was the guy doing the um like front and back flips off the post uh with the skids on the post flipping upside down? That was Timo, that's Timo Wenland. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Flying spirit, by the way. I saw that. This is He basically takes like a railing, like a single pipe railing, and hovers the helicopter till the skids touch it and then rolls it inverted, maintaining contact with the railing with the helicopter.

I remember I did a video a few like three or four years ago like that where I flew my backyard and I went and landed real fast on my fence and then like flipped uh took off and flipped around backwards off of it, but I didn't do a flip upside down. Well, cool stuff. Definitely some great flights. If you can find either of those, we'll see if we can put some links on it. If it'll let us share those things, we'll uh we'll throw them on our Facebook page.

All right, event news. We got one new event that came in that I wanna shout out and I think we'll do some reminders, just some quick ones for some stuff right around the corner. But Brian, why don't you kick off events with uh telling us a little bit about the new one that came in? All right. Um, so the three gents behind the Heli Fun Fly reached out to us to showcase their new event coming up June twelfth through the fourteenth in Norway. Norway. Yeah.

Um so the all right, let me get these names right. So I apologize if I pronounce any of this stuff. ご視聴ありがとうございました What? Ha ha. Go to it, Alex Coe, and you can you can be the reporter and interview folks and all that good stuff. Um theor the Solandic um RC model fly club um is located in Birkings uh municipality, thirty kilometers northeast of Christopher. Christiansen. Um the landing fees are two hundred and fifty knock. That's in okay. I think that's the currency. Um dry camping is available.

I don't know how many kilometers or miles that is or Yeah. Yeah, but uh but dry camping is available um and 12 volt power is also available for charging. And for more info you can find their event page on Facebook by searching for Helifunfly as one word with no spaces. And they'll have waffles, chocolate, and coffee on site as well. So That might be worth the trip right there. Absolutely. Bye. Um let's get into some other quick reminders for some of our spring events. Kenny.

Bri Brian, actually, can I jump in real quick? Sure. With a con a confession. Okay. Sometimes I find the hardest to pronounce stuff and I assign it to you because it makes You know what? Make him work. Let me tell you. I looked at this early and I said, What the bro, why do I always get the hard stuff? I got the Colombian thing. Business. The Dominican Republic. That's hilarious. I didn't know you did it on purpose. That's really funny. Oh I sometimes do it on purpose, I admit it.

Run Ray and Ron Ron Burgundy? Did I pronounce that right? I know. Bye. It brings me joy.

So Ranch Helly Beaters Fun Fly take place uh this weekend, April ninth through the twelfth at the R uh Marshall Ranch in Livermore, California. There is uh the I don't know it what year it is. The annual Golden Triangle F Fun Fly is April twenty fourth of the twenty Grand Parade, Texas, at the Golden Angle Triangle Club. Also wanted to give a shout out the guys at the

Abilene, Chopper Madness have announced they are going to continue and have another one this year as well. That is September eleventh through the thirteenth. Uh great Texas event. If you're wanting to come down, we'd love to see you there. All right, the Heli's over the glades on April seventeenth through the nineteenth will take place in Delray Beach. Oh yeah, Spring Fling's coming up, dude.

Spring Fling is in Virginia, April twenty second through the twenty sixth. If you've never been to that, is it is uh not to be All right, check out the Buckeye Blade Scrape. That's set for May first through the third in Delphos, Ohio. And the Austin, Texas Radio Control Association event will take place May twenty second and twenty third. And for more event info, contact uh C D Richard Spiegel.

We got the Cincy SmackDown coming up down here in uh Cincinnati, Ohio. It'll take place June fourth through the seventh. We got the Club Crash Heli Spectacle in the province of Quebec in Canada. It'll take place June fifth, sixth, and seventh. More info on their Facebook page, search for Club Crash.

All right, and back to the first fun fly here in the state of Georgia that I know of. The Georgia Heli Gallerin will take place June fifth through the seventh at the Sarah Farms R. C Field in Good Hope, Georgia. So that's about an hour east of Atlanta. The pilot's fee will be forty bucks.

There'll be a food truck there, night flying, dry camping's available for an additional fee. And there will be a three D section, multiple three D sections, as well as a precision flying section on the flight line.

Um Friday will feature open flying for the 3D folks and a precision flying clinic perfect for those who want to try it out in a low stress environment. There'll be plenty of skilled pilots available to help coach you. Um Saturday will feature the auto rotation contest on the 3D flight line and Thank you. I just wanna pause here for a moment, so Brian I know you're going. I know I'm going. Uh, I think it's safe to announce that Ben Storic's gonna be there. Sean Hall's gonna be there.

I think I'm going. Pretty sure I'm going. Alex Dean's gonna be there. Alex Dean's gonna be there. Kenny, I know you have another event the same weekend closer to home. Yeah, ours is here in Cincy at the same time. Weekend, yeah. Yeah. We've been working hard to try and get as many people to this new event in our neck of the woods as we can. So definitely come on out and uh come see us and hang out and fly.

Yeah, and you know, real quick too, I mean apologies to Kenny and his group up there. I think Lira Hall is a C D there. Um We you know, we we normally have a fund not a fun fly, but a precision flying contest in June and so in uh Nash Vegas as they call it, right? um up in Tennessee and it was canceled this year due to the field is is not available anymore. So we we try to

find where we could do this thing and and unfortunately the same dates overlapped um with you guys event. And so please folks, I mean show love to the Cincy SmackDown as well. If you live in that area, please attend that fun fly. Um if you're down here in the southeast come check out the Georgia Fun Fly. Just think I mean we're pretty far apart from each other, you know, either way. Yeah. Yeah. And there's another event that weekend too that Kenny's about to tell us about.

Oh there is another another June fun fly, the Ash Creek. R. C. Hellifun fly in Anderson, California will take place on June fifth through seventh. I think we just need to do June fifth through seventh every year and just g meet in the middle of the country somewhere. Right. Let's all just get together in one big giant urch two or something. Ha ha. Classic event will be June eleventh through the fourteenth in St. Charles, Missouri. Check out the STL Whirlbirds.com for more info.

Sorry, I'm trying to f get my mouse to work again. Yeah. Yeah, mouse. Uh Alright, so the CCRCC, Heli SmackDown event in Farmington, Connecticut, has announced dates. Their two-day event will take place June twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth. Alright, right on. We certainly got lots more events on our list in July and beyond, but we'll save those for when we get a little closer again. We just wanted to shout out the springtime events coming up.

So summer's right around the corner. We'll start talking about those again soon. But as always, if you got an event you want us to shout out, send us the details. And uh we'll be happy to announce it on the show. And uh I think. Hi guys, this is me Johnson with Commentator, you are Lifst.

Puta revolution. So You know, one of the goals that we've set out for the show is certainly to try and bring in pilots and content creators and people in the hobby from all over the world, not just focus on US pilots. So Obviously there's a lot of challenges with time zones and working all that out, but uh this week, kind of in the middle of the day here, in the evening there, uh I sat down with UK pilot Benjamin Britton.

If you don't know Benjamin, he is a pilot on Team Goose Guy, uh based in the UK, who is also a proficient content creator on YouTube. He's got his uh YouTube channel, Ben Flies RC, and he's been putting out a ton of really helpful but very simple videos on tuning rotor flight, pilot progression, uh setting up the S2 Ultra with I think four different transmitters he did videos on. And I wanted to get to know him a little bit. So earlier today I sat down with uh with Ben.

Alright, so welcome to the show, Benjamin Britton, coming to us all the way from uh the UK. Welcome uh Ben, how are you? Yeah, good thanks. Great to be on. Thanks, Nick. Yeah, no, glad to have you. You know, I'm always a big fan of content creators in the hobby and super intrigued about lots of things. Why you do it, why you know, why put all the work in, all kinds of stuff which we'll get to in a minute. But

I think before we do that, I don't know much about your history in the hobby, which means I know my listeners don't. So can you give us a little bit of background how you got into the radio control hobby and and found your way into helicopters?

Yeah, for sure. I I've sort of been in and out to be honest. So I think I actually started the hobby way back, like two thousand and five. Um, but I was flying I know, don't boom me, but I was flying fixed wing back then. So I was like ten years old, started off flying, sort of

all your typical fixed wing stuff. And then I think it was about two thousand and ten I first saw R C helicopters flying three D and I was like, Oh no, this is this is so much cooler. Um so I was like, I need to give this a try. Uh I think my first sort of steps into it were not necessarily the right ones. I I bought some rubbish Chinese thing. Um no one will have e even ever heard of it. It was uh Art Tech Genius five hundred.

And yeah. Was a amazing machine. And uh the first time I ever hovered it is not the way that anyone should do it. I actually hovered in my garage for my first ever hover with Heli. So yeah, that probably isn't the smartest thing. No one should try that. But yeah, it survived and I went through lots of rubbish models. And then I think I flew mostly just on my own for like three or four years. And then one time I went to an indoor

fun fly event and I met this guy called Stefan Simmons. So people in the UK may well know him and he was a really good three D pilot. And it was actually him that I first saw flying. And he saw me fly and he's like, Oh man, you're you're really good and I was like, Oh, really? So I ended up jumping from never flying with anyone to that year I did my first competition at Weston Park.

Which back then was, I believe, called Air. So I went in for like the intermediate competition, I think they called it advanced. and I won. So I was like Oh wow. Oh. Yeah. I I didn't really uh expect it. So yeah, it kind of went from literally nothing and not really being in any way involved in the hobby to like all of a sudden I was flying competition and I did a few years. Uh I did like multiple years of that competition and other ones here in the UK.

And then I kinda just life got in the way. So I think around like twenty fourteen I started my actual career. So I'm actually an airline pilot outside of doing the heli stuff. And that just kinda took over. So I did ten years of of doing that and then I came back into the hobby like twenty three, twenty four and realized that things have changed a lot.

I I had loads of new stuff to learn. I was flying V-bar when I first stopped and then I came back here and there's all new flybar assistants. V Bar was still around, so that felt comfortable. And yeah, I started seeing all these new helys. I saw new new people's flying. We had obviously MCK came into the scene around that.

that time, or I should say back into the scene. And uh yeah, I was like, wow, the flying that people are doing now is something completely different to when I was flying back then. So it's been for me on my sort of three D flying journey, it's been trying to catch up with the way that people fly nowadays, which I will never do, but it's all fun, isn't it?

And then I found Road to Flight, which was a whole new world. And I think it's probably that that initially got me thinking about making content for YouTube. I did actually start the channel kind of a little bit before that point.

without any actual aim. And then yeah, just a combination of knowing that I have random bits of knowledge and different things, both with the flying side of things and then also getting into the road flight stuff, I just thought, hey, why not add to the information that's out there? Because there's always like so many pockets of great bits of information in this hobby. Um yeah, I just wanted to create another area where people could go to get information.

Yeah, that's great. And I want to dig into that a little more, but I want to go back for a second. How old were you when you won that first competition? That is a good question. I think I was like fifteen, fourteen? So was it family that supported you in the hobby early on then? Yeah, more or less. Um a bit of both I suppose. I had like a a weekend job so I I made as much money as I could to do it and then a little bit of family help. Um yeah, I went into that. I think I was flying the

old T Rex seven hundred flybar nitro. Wow. I didn't I didn't have much kit back then. That was that was my only proper heli. I'm always impressed that people who came up and learned on nitros, because I feel like I didn't start nitro until I really knew what I was doing as a pilot. And even then it's challenging. So I can't imagine learning nitro and how to fly at the same time. I have mad respect for that.

I I mean to be fair, I had no idea how to actually do Nitro. I'm sure like I I'm still not an expert in that at all, but if I went back and looked at things like how my engine was tuned, I I don't think I was the guy to go to when it came to that. But it survived, so you know. That's wild. That's I mean, how fun is that to come into competition for the first time and realize like, wow, I actually stack up really well against other pilots I've never seen fly.

How nervous were you? I can't imagine. Yeah, I I w I was pretty nervous. In a way though, it's almost like because you don't have any expectation, it doesn't seem so bad. So in a way coming back and then thinking like, you know, you go up into the top class and and then you're amongst all these names that you've actually heard of and it

It's a whole nother world. That was almost more scary, I think, because the first time I went in I was just like, Well I have no idea what I'm doing. So I just I'd put something together because that competition was just flight to music. And like outside of all the other things I do, I also am a musician. So for me, like the flight to music side of things

I think when I'm doing it I'm just in the zone and that's something that I feel more comfortable doing. So I it definitely was scare, I'm sure like Every time I've ever done competition flights, I definitely shake like a leaf, but I don't realise it. It's like you're so focused. So it's like although you're under massive stress, you don't necessarily realize it.

Yeah. That's interesting. So you s mention you're an airline pilot. Do you ever travel with helicopters and get some time to fly at your destinations or your your turnover's pretty short? No, because I uh yeah, I do short haul flying so it's pretty much just always there and back. Um Well that's nice you get to sleep in your own bed more often than not then.

Yeah, which is exactly why I do it. It's not my lifestyle. To go when am I gonna do helies if I start flying around the world? That's uh that's not what I want at all. Yeah, welcome to my world where uh you're out of town for half the year and uh try and keep the hobby going at the same time. Yeah, you bring stuff with you when you do that.

I do sometimes. It depends. You know, there are some cities like Orlando when I travel there I always try and catch a little extra time and and steal some hours over at Torches or various other clubs with friends. But more often than not I can't fly when I travel. But uh that's all right. I still get it in. I find it.

I'm curious, when you came into Rotorflight for you know, recently it sounds like, how did it feel to you? Did it feel complicated? Was the learning curve okay?'Cause you went from jumping into it to teaching others how to use it.

Yeah, for sure, it is complicated. And to be honest, if you see like when I first flirted with the idea of creating my my channel, when I did like a little intro to what I was gonna make, which I had no idea what I was gonna make, I scrolled through the rotor flight page as a joke. Like, oh, maybe we'll look at this. And then I don't know how long it was afterwards, like a few months later when I actually got round to properly making videos.

then that was kind of a a core part of the stuff that I was making videos about. I guess the S two Ultra was a big kickoff for it. But uh yeah, I don't know. I think I've been doing it six months, eight months when I got into sort of showing other people. But you know, I guess that's always been my angle. Like I'm not professing to be an expert in it. But it

just getting that level of understanding that is necessary to get things working. And sometimes with stuff like road flight, I feel like because it is so complicated, if you go really deep with it and you can take it to a level that becomes like you would have a degree for it almost, then it's those people who have all that knowledge who are absolutely like amazing sources

of knowledge to go to. But sometimes those people can forget how difficult it can be for other people to learn. So I guess I almost saw it as a pro in my head that I didn't not know it too deep, but effectively it's trying to make it approachable for everyone. And from that You know, I I don't want to take things too deep and then it's a community, right? So we're learning from each other. And there's always stuff that I'm learning as well as a as I go along.

Yeah, it's interesting. I I know when I first saw some of your S two Ultra setup videos, I was like, Oh, he's taken a bunch of shortcuts. He's not really labeling any of these, you know, inputs he's creating or channels, whatever you want to call it.

And yep. And that was my initial take, but then I started to realize that no, your aim is to just very simply get people in the air. You know, the goal of the video is not I'm gonna teach you how to use your radio, it's with this radio and this helicopter. follow these steps as I do them and you're gonna get this thing in the air. And I think that is a really important thing that's missing. I think Goose Goose Guy and

I mean, all of these brands honestly should be creating more content that teaches you how to set it up. And what I want to talk about next is one of the things you did is something I don't think I've seen any other content creators did. is you not only said, here's how to set up the S two Ultra with this radio, you did it on Spectrum, you did it on uh V control, you did it on an edge TX base, Radio Master Transmitter, I think.

You know, what made you decide to tackle it with so many different transmitters? And are you just borrowing these from from your buddies? Do you own them all?

Yeah, I guess it's a it's a blend. I I have a few, but yeah, I did borrow them from from friends as well. I guess it comes from that same angle, right? Like in order to be able to get someone Like it would be lovely to be able to be like, look, if you if you know these things then you can set it up on any transmitter but the truth is in order to do that you kind of need to deeply understand what you're trying to achieve and not everybody wants to go that deep with it.

and even with their other transmitters or other fly ballots that they used before, they never took it that deep. Like they just did the basic setup and they flew it and they enjoyed it like that. Or they even had a friend set it up. So the only way with the way that I wanted to make it easy for people

to do that would be to actually show it on every single transmitter. And as you say, it's not necessarily explaining why, which can cause some issues. But the truth of it is if you do follow those steps and you have that exact setup, then it will work.

So that's sort of why I wanted to go down a line of going through multiple transmitters and just showing it step by step so that someone could enjoy that model and enjoy road flight without having necessarily initially at least take that too deep and learn too much and then they can see if they like it or not.

Yeah. And I think that is a valuable uh I don't know, service is the wrong word, but it you know, it does a huge favor to the hobby. Uh especially with micro helicopters. We talk about this on the show sometimes. People just wanna get it in the air. They don't wanna tune it. They don't wanna mess with it. They they just wanna fly a micro. And so when, you know, we get these helis like the OMP V three pro and the S2 Ultra that

show up for the most part ready to go, you know, that's what folks want. So the fact that they can go to your YouTube channel and see how to do it. You've even, you know, offered up the configuration file for V control to just download and upload to your transmitter and uh and you're off and running, which is great. It just gets people going right away.

Yeah, exactly. And that's kinda your well maybe it's a bad thing. Then that's your gateway drug into uh rotor flight and then maybe you end up putting it in one of your other helicopters and then it does all start to get more complex perhaps'cause maybe I'm not such an advocate for saying that you should just blindly put these things on without having any understanding and just follow exactly what I say'cause as I say, I don't know everything and also there's so many variables, but

at least when you've done it once and you followed those steps, you already now have some grounding of some understanding and the next step that you take should then be easier.

Yeah, it's funny. There's some interesting schools of thought on that. People who offer up tunes and people who think you should never share a tune. Where where do you fall in that debate?

Yeah, I mean this is my standard answer to almost everything in life, you know, somewhere in the middle. You know, I I think again, just taking a tune from someone, especially if you don't necessarily know exactly what that person's experience is in tuning already that is a risk, but even if that person is is very good at tuning, obviously there's so much variables that goes in that.

But if, for example, amongst my friends someone has a near identical setup, it doesn't necessarily have to be identical helicopter, but you know, if you're flying a seven hundred size helicopter with very similar servos, very similar blaze like those kind of things, then

You know, not blindly copying someone's setup, but, you know, using the P I Ds that I had on my model that weren't like set to the absolute extreme and putting that on someone else's probably is a reasonable starting point. But it's not a black and white thing. So I guess

You know, I totally understand the idea that when people say that you shouldn't do it, is exactly because the fact that at the same time if you have something really tuned to the max and things are like really high gain and you've got a bit of a unique setup or

you know, the way that your servers are is slightly different and people just blindly take those things, it could be completely unflyable. So it's uh it's almost uh the person who benefits most is the person who actually understands a little bit, but then they could technically have set it up themselves.

anyway, so yeah, it's give and take. But I do definitely think there's some value in actually talking about the setups. You know, this idea that oh I will not pass my PID gains on to anyone, like I don't understand that logic'cause otherwise how does anyone see what the right one is. Like well not the right there is no right one, but it helps you build up a an image.

So I can look at other people's set ups and have an idea whether it's likely to be in the right window or not, right? But yeah, it it's so hard. Th there's definitely not a right or wrong. And I think with anything, it's for someone to say like it should only be like this or it should only be like that is not really The way I see things.

Yeah, it's funny, you know, as the as the resolution on some of these parameter changes and there's a hundred and fifty point range to something, how do you know where to start other than the defaults or? just, you know, being able to realize like, hey, a lot of guys are running seventy on gain, you know, or whatever it is on whichever parameter is helpful to people. So no, I agree.

Um, and one of the things I wanna I wanna give applaud you for is you were the first person that finally released a video that was a common sense approach to tuning rotor flight. Like here is how I'll take a new model off of the default. and set my basic PIDs. What made you decide to do that? Pretty much exactly because you said no one did it. When I came into it, I was like, There is really good information out there. There's there's different videos, I think

you know, Bert did an interview, talking with different people. It gets a bit into what I was saying though, that some of these people, they know so much. And like, that's amazing. And like I would love to sit down and have a long conversation with these people. But it can be difficult for

someone to watch that for fifty minutes and then actually take on board what any of it really means and apply it practically. Although there is really good advice in there and it's the advice that I learned from and like lots of other videos and lots of other content and the and the uh Discord group and so on. So I just was trying to figure out a way between all these different sources and my experience of using it what would be

a sensible approach to try and go about tuning, again, that's another thing. There's not one way. And also some models just are awkward. The problem is that other people have issues whereby their helicopter is not mechanically set up well in general or it's just not overall a good helicopter.

and then it wouldn't have flown well on anything. So it is difficult to just say, Oh, you follow these steps and it'll work because it might not. I don't know what someone's flying. But I thought if I tried to find an approach that was logical and simple. It should work for most people. So it should make most people fairly happy and understand the principle of what they were trying to achieve. That was actually a lot harder than I thought it was going to be trying to

find a way that might work. But it seems to have worked and it seems that it's helped some people, which is what my goal was.

Yeah, I find that sometimes those videos are hard because it feels simple and you're like, I don't I don't need to script this or outline it. I I feel like I'm just gonna hit record and and go for it. And then this absolute word salad comes out of your mouth and you're like, I just this is not effectively communicating and you really have to think about like how do I simply and generically talk about this without getting too specific to this model or this whatever it is, transmitter, et cetera.

It's hard. Yeah, exactly. And with a topic like that, how do you not end up just going off on a tangent and and talking about what all these I think my biggest goal is always like don't add too much just try and say the things that are necessary initially and I can always make more content going more deeply into something else later, if I find time, which is obviously, as I'm sure you know, the hardest bit. But if I have unlimited time, there's the I have loads of ideas.

No, it's funny. We talk about that on the Helly Direct Content team all the time. Just aggressively editing. Like just remove the fluff. Just keep it, you know, direct and to the point and the information people need. And but it's so easy to go off on tangents for ten minutes. And before you know it, you're in a tuning video talking about Loctite choices. So you do have to be careful. But no, I thought your your rotor flight tuning video was great.

You know, I'm fortunate that I travel in circles where I get to listen to, you know, Hack and Archie and Jia Wen and, you know, some of the ultimate guys tuning rotor flight you know over here in the States. And but I only understand what they're talking about at a very high level, not at at

Not at the direct nuts and bolts level. You know, I can listen and be like, Oh, that sounds really interesting, but do I really understand it? No. So I I think your approach to giving direct, understandable, clear every man in the hobby sort of instructions is fantastic. I think we need more of

Yeah, thank you. Yeah, and absolutely I think that's where, you know, sometimes I'm almost nervous to make this content because, you know, I've I've spoken with these guys. Obviously Archie was involved in uh and actually completely pivotal in doing the the S two Ultra tune. So, you know

I've spoken with and and sort of worked with with those guys and I know that like the actual deep understanding of the system that they have is a whole nother world to my own. So it's almost scary to try and produce videos to help people, knowing that not everything I necessarily say is to the book correct.

At the same time I'm only trying to do what I can to help and off my own lived experience and my understanding of, you know, what these guys are telling me and what I've found. So yeah, I'm just doing my best. No, I think it's great. And honestly I love all those guys, but to some extent they need a translator, someone that can say, Here are the actionable steps for the regular person to install this on your helicopter. So

Yeah, and you know, you know, that was one of the the things I actually said about it was I kinda see it as like I feel like I learned things relatively quickly, or at least I try to. So my logic is like if something is so difficult, if someone tries to tell me how to do something and I find it really, really difficult to do

then there's no way on that I'm gonna there's no way that I'm gonna be able to pass that information on to other people in a way that, you know, ninety nine percent of people can understand. So that's exactly kind of the position that I'm trying to put myself in, is that middle ground between these guys that know everything and people who are just starting from nothing and hopefully making it relatable.

Yeah. No, I think you're doing a very good job of that. And speaking of that, you've s recently started a well well, not too recently, uh a little bit ago.

three D flying tutorial series. You know, a learn to fly three D series. What made you decide to take that on? I mean, that's a tough space. Like a lot of great names have done it in the hobby. Yeah, exactly. That was I don't know. I I guess that was from the fact of a similar thing is that there are some really awesome like

complete sources of that and there are, as you say, lots of big names who've who've done that stuff. And there are modern creators who are still doing that. You know, in the UK we've got RC Helicopter Richard and he's put out loads of really, really good videos talking about all sorts of different things. I guess the reasoning why I thought, you know what, I'll do my own version is A, I thought it's a slightly different angle. It's probably closer, you know, snack talk RC

back in the day, did kind of go through an almost progression that also. They talked about putting it into routines. So it's probably more in line with the way that that was done. Much less ca sorry, much more casual than that was. That was a serious production and I loved those videos. But yeah, I guess I'm not sure.

The logic is just that everyone learns differently and I thought, why not, you know, throw my hat in the ring and see if my voice and my way of explaining things can just help people? Because yes, there is only so many ways you can explain how to do a pair of TikTok, but

At the same time I'm like, Well, it's no harm in in creating more content and honestly those are quicker to make so it's it's a nice thing to be able to get out that isn't too difficult to produce, but it does seem like it's helping some people and I've had nice feedback on it, so Yeah, and I enjoy it, you know? It it almost shows me what I need to work on because when you do these basic basic things and then I try and explain the philosophy of what I think is important.

you realise you're like, Yeah, but actually I'm not as good at this as I feel like I should be either. So learning what I need to learn more of as well. And I think it's an art form to be able to fly in the sim and talk at the same time and accurately reproduce the move at the same time. It's amazing how difficult that is. Yeah, that's becoming harder and harder as we get into the more advanced stuff. But uh

Yeah, let's see how we get into this when it starts getting into doing, you know, complex pyram maneuvers with reversals and then I'm trying to speak. Yeah, I don't know if I can do it, but I'm gonna try. I think you can always press record and then do the voiceover later if you need to. No, I've committed now. Uh yeah, it's good fun. So speaking of unique parts of your videos, you have kind of a unique British wit, which I don't know if I've

Americans are as familiar with, but you've done some kind of fun sequences. The rotor flight nightmare sequence was kind of fun. You've been known to record in your dressing gown, which for our American listeners is a bathrobe. What brings out that side of you?

Yeah, you know what? I don't have a clue. I mean I mean the the the second thing you said, I have no idea. I think it just comes from I almost when I went into doing all of this, I was like, I don't wanna put pressure on myself to be anything other than me, so

I guess that was that manifesting itself in reality when I'm like, you know what, I need to video something, I'm just gonna do it now. I'm not gonna put any crazy effort into why where but then I also I guess that is a element of maybe British humour of just being silly. But Yeah. The other sequences, I don't know. I I have loads of those ideas in my head as well. I just thought

Maybe it comes from, you know, again with the road to flight stuff being sort of very structured and and data driven and everything else. I was like, I still want the hobby to be fun. So I was just putting a little bit of uh a playful side to the videos as well to try and again, I suppose it helps with them being accessible still. It makes them, hopefully, be more interesting to watch. Um and it lets me do silly things which are actually quite fun to make to be honest.

Yeah. Yeah, they are fun. It is good fun. I applaud. I enjoy th those moments. Everyone c we can be a little too serious sometimes. Yeah. But speaking of your channel, let's just take a moment to plug it. How can folks find you on YouTube? I think pretty much just search Ben Flies R C on YouTube. It should be the first result that you see. You're welcome to follow me on Facebook. It's just Benjamin Britton as well. I turned that into a page. Um as I say, I kinda wanna

be a community, you know? People message me and I'm always happy to help if I have time. So yeah, check out the YouTube. Drop me a message if you need help with something. It's fine.

Where does the channel go next? What future plans do you have for it? I guess it's very much down the line of of what we're doing now for the most part. You know, I I've got other things I wanna do about roads of flight, I've obviously sort of mentioned it and teased it and then people are like, Where is it? And I'm like, I know, I'm sorry, it's hard. But I wanna look deeper into the black box side of things and and deeper tuning parameters, three D flying stuff is

Gonna carry on slowly. I've already got a few of those recorded. Maybe it'd be nice to get some of those actually shot in real life as well. So it's just nicer to see a real helicopter doing some of those manoeuvres, but I'm sure as you can appreciate that just is an extra amount of time to to get those created. Um and then I don't know, I got all sorts I'd quite like to cover some events, but

without it being crazy long as a vlog,'cause I feel like it's that's pretty niche. Like I personally don't find the time to watch like fifty minutes of people vlogging at an event, but it would be quite nice to just get some snapshots of events because

I think when I was in the hobby in the past, like twenty twelve, twenty thirteen, there was a little bit more of a presence in the hobby then and there was more stuff getting videoed than what I feel like at least in the UK we get now. And it seems like in the hobby the thing that Is missing the most, particularly here in Europe, is events in general. So it'd be really nice if, you know, looking at the people who watch my videos, there is

more people watching stuff online and more people going to fly in the field but never seeing anyone than I ever see actually at events. So I know it's not for everyone, but I would love to be able to be a part of trying to grow the hobby back to being a sort of bigger scene where we all become friends and see each other in real life.

Yeah, that's definitely one thing I've realized, uh, from doing the podcast is we hear from a lot of listeners who are solo flyers who don't fly with anyone else and you know, they're very happy that way and that's fine. Um but uh events are amazing. So sharing that experience is is definitely worthwhile or

I don't know, I've always wanted to do a video, I haven't done it yet. That I don't know, maybe it's a series of interviews of people at a fun fly to show how unintimidating they are. I think a lot of people are and we hear from these listeners, they're scared to show up because they're not a pro pilot. Um but Yeah. We need to get we need to get more of those folks there.

No, I think that is very much it, isn't it? A lot of the time it's that people think somehow I I need to be uh a god at three D to be able to turn up to that event and it's That's just absolutely not the case. I actually did start off filming. We had a fun fly this weekend in the UK is the first one. Uh Charmouth fun fly. But as always the first and last fun flies of the UK.

is a bit risky in this country for weather and it ended up just being very cold and very windy and I decided not to really go ahead with filming that much of it. But it was great to see all my friends. So it's always worth it, even if it's just to see people. Hundred percent. So going back to your your earlier roots in competition, have I heard that you're considering coming back to competing again?

Uh I actually did. Um yeah, I I competed well actually yeah, when I came back in twenty twenty-four, uh I did that same I mean under a new name, but it's at the same place, the now called Helifest competition at Weston Park. Um and yeah, I got uh I got dropped back to inters, so I uh it feels kinda bad to say it and then be like, and I came back and won.

Uh but it wasn't my choice. So that's that's where I was put. And uh yeah, that was a nice way to get back into it. And then, you know, off the back of that I I joined Goose Guy. So I sort of when I came back I bought like a used SAB Kraken. And that's what I used in my first competition back.

And then yeah, since then I've I've joined the Goose Guy team, I joined the Midland helicopter team. And yeah, last year, twenty five Helifest was my first time sort of back with the UK pros and I came fifth. So I was really happy with that. Oh that's amazing. What is the UK competition scene like? Is it active?

Yeah. I mean, we have like Helifest has very much become basically the only competition that we have outside of F3N, which obviously is kind of a a global thing. I think you guys are doing it over in the States as well. Mm-hmm. So that's actually what I'm planning to do this year. But but yeah, the sort of Helifest, I think we had like more than ten sort of ten, fifteen competitors in each class in Helifest. It's it's active from the standpoint of the guys who are in it do it.

pretty much every year and and I really enjoy being a part of it. I'm slightly sad to see that the sort of grassroots side of it and the new people kinda up and coming is slowing down a lot. There are a couple, but, you know, when I came in as kind of a new person back in twenty eleven, twenty twelve, I feel like through that era there's been lots of new pilots that came in.

But now, like, you know, for me coming back and doing pros and coming fifth, it's almost like the new people are just old people coming back.

And uh yeah, it would be great if we could see, you know, some new kid on the block who shakes it all up. So that's sort of what I feel like we're missing here in the UK. As I say, that's not to say that there aren't any. Th there definitely are some, but it Yeah, we're talking one or two and it would be great if all of a sudden we just see five new people appear that we've never heard of and go like, Wow, that flying's amazing.

Yeah, I think we're in in much the same situation in the States. Not to say we don't have any new pilots coming in, but we need more. And I feel like everyone on the competition circuits is trying to figure out how to bring in more folks to the hobby or to the competition side of things. And on that note, I know if Brian were here, he would ask you, have you thought about combining? And I know this is difficult while you're competing.

but your ability to create content with your competition side and sort of explain it a little more to people and perhaps bring more people to competing through content creator. Yeah. Uh it's funny you say that. That is yeah, that is something I've definitely considered. And as you say, I think it's when I think it through, it's difficult from the standpoint of when I'm competing

I end up becoming quite distracted by that and and my focus is on it. And it's figuring out whether or not I actually can get something that will fall together into actually being a video while feeling distracted by competing, but

Yeah, I really do want to show it. I am tempted to do it since for me this year. So I'm expecting a baby in June. So this year's a little bit crazy. And I'm doing F three N for the beginning of the year. And it's something completely new to me. So that is my opportunity that I could perhaps be like here is what it's like to start a new competition or your first competition, you know.

seeing what the criteria is and what you have to prepare and then what it actually looks like when you turn up and try and do that competition.'Cause as you say, I think it's also scary for people because they just don't know what it looks like and it Well it isn't not scary, but like it doesn't need to be unnecessarily scary. So that would be pretty cool. I do agree. It would be nice

to make content around that,'cause to be fair, that is something I don't know if I've ever seen. Has anyone ever done something like that? Like actually followed doing a competition effectively? I don't think so. I think we see a lot of competition flights recorded, but that's it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So kinda like a first person view of doing a competition. But then when I suck, then it's all recorded.

Well you just have to do the sideline interviews. You don't have to film your own flights. You can you can, you know, film other people's flights. That's true. You far from suck as far as flying goes from the looks of your videos, so I don't think you have much to worry about there.

What do you think of the RS seven Ultra now that that's your primary platform? Oh yeah, man, I'm absolutely loving it. It's it's so interesting because if you look at it in a lot of ways, the the head design is super similar to the to the old RS seven, but actually everything aside from that is completely different.

But in my head, I mean, I'm no helicopter design expert, but I would have thought that the head has the largest contribution on the way the helicopter flies. But clearly I'm wrong because it flies totally different to the last model. The last model was a really nice model. I described the last model as like a really comfy model to fly. It always felt safe is a weird word, but I always felt really comfortable flying it and it never really scared me. It was edgy

There are other models on the market that are really fun to fly, but sometimes they just always feel really on edge. Um and like the old one was just like that comfy pair of shoes that I could just throw around and that was really nice. But sometimes I wished it was just

A little bit more directional, a little bit sharper, faster in certain ways. And the new one just seems to like keep that comfy feel, but it's just so fast and agile. The feeling obviously nowadays we're all running these crazy high rates, uh thanks to sort of what we've seen over in Asia and I think uh the new star that's coming in is is much faster rates. And that really quick rotation that you get off center

i is completely different on this model. And then when you you fly it in really fast forward flight, it's really aerodynamic. So it it flies fast, it tracks lines really cleanly. I don't know, it's crazy. I mean you can see it in videos. I don't know if if you've flown one. Um but yeah, it's just a it's just a wicked all round heli. And also the build is just unreal. Like all Goose Guy stuff has always been like the quality of the build is

the first thing that when I got on for the first time I was like, Whoa, like the machining is so nice. Um, so it's really cool to have something that, you know, I love working on and I also really love flying. I feel too important I love my RS seven Ultra. It's quickly just about the favorite in my fleet. It kind of is, but you know, I'm one of those

I love more than one helicopter and y whichever one you fly recently feels like your favorite. But I love the ultra. I don't know what it is. I didn't the R S seven and I didn't get along really well. I don't know what it was about that helicopter, but I liked it. I just didn't love it. I passed it on.

I think the side profile was a little hard for me to see with that thin canopy and was part of my problem. But I don't know, the ultra, they just got a lot right with that helicopter. It flies fantastic. And it's so simple too. And you're right, it just falls together out of the box. It's uh it's a really fun build. And I mean I've only put like fifty flights on mine I think, but uh if it's anything like the old one was, then I'm hoping that's also gonna be like

I get all of those qualities with a helicopter that is also super robust. Cause I pretty much I don't think I ever broke anything on the last one. Maybe a belt once. So it was like over hundreds of flights on the old one, I never had any issues. So it's like for me that's a big thing'cause if you're practising a lot or you're going to events, it's like I really don't want to have something go wrong with the model.

Yeah. It seems like a another super robust heli, so for me that's a a massive plus. Yeah, for sure. When when, you know, you guys are putting these things to the absolute limit at very close range in front of spectators, it's nice to have confidence in your model, for sure. Yeah. I know you've kind of mentioned a few sponsors in passing as we've been talking. Are there any you want to shout out specifically?

Uh you know, I think I I pretty much I pretty much did it. But uh yeah, I've been flying in the last Yeah, the last couple of years I've now been flying pretty much solely for Goose Guy, Midland helicopters, and then for blades I use Azure Blades, Maniax batteries, and uh X D fly ESEs. Have you had Like, did I miss anyone? I hope not. Did I mention a motor sponsor? I don't remember. Have you flown the new extremes from Azure yet?

No. Um yeah, I'm really excited about that to be honest. I've been you know, on the side I'm always playing with with different stuff obviously, but uh Yeah, I have actually been quite excited about the idea of a stiffer blade using the same profile as the pros, because I personally fly the seven one five Pro blade.

pretty much all the time. But for example, like the seven hundred reds, which are kind of like a nice, stiff, playful blade, I really enjoy. I just feel like for my flying style I get a more rounded Sort of flight feel out of the 715 Pro. But again, with this like super fast, agile, modern style.

then I think sometimes just from a pure look standpoint, those stiffer blades can just make everything look that little bit more poppy, that little bit more directional. So yeah, I'm absolutely like super excited to give them a try because in theory then that should be you know, a lot of the pros that I really like about the Problade, but then with extra stiffness. So I don't know. I'll make a post about it.

Yeah, I'm interested to hear to hear more about them as well. Although I have pretty much I made a quiet resolution to myself that I was gonna stop buying new blades every week. Yeah. and trying everything on the market. And I'm just settling on the seven fifteen pros pretty much across my fleet. And I'm really happy.

They remind me of VTXs in some ways. The the things I like about VTXs, they do really well. They're very stable, very uh just very predictable. I don't know. They're just a great all around blade. I really like them. Yeah, that pretty much describes exactly how I feel.

So in terms of to go back to sort of competing and flying progression in the hobby and learning new skills, what what works for you? What are what are your sort of go to's? Yeah, I guess like in the early days I I rode on that that nice bit of youth where to be honest I don't think I had a technique. I was just fortunate in being young and having a fast brain and th now I'm like, yeah, I don't have that.

Uh I mean of course I'm still fairly young, but I definitely feel the difference from from being sort of fourteen, fifteen. Um yeah, for me I think It's it's two things. It's like A, trying not to do too much,'cause I definitely think that if I practice too much, if I spend too long on the simulator, I just hit a wall and I don't get any better and then I'm just wasting

sort of mental energy that I won't have later where I could do more productive practice. Same at the field. Like I'm not someone that can go to the field and grind out 30 flights. It's like after even seven, eight, I really don't think that I'm getting any better at anything. And it's like it's finding that balance between enjoying it because Let's say if we rewind to like when you're trying to learn how to do things in the first place, I was absolutely so guilty of just skipping ahead.

So I kinda got okay at doing a few hovering orientations. And because I flew fixed wing, I guess the forward flight side of things was okay. I got that pretty quickly. But then it's like once you can do a flip, I'm like, yeah, I wanna do a paraplip. I didn't want to do other maneuvers that may have been more beneficial to my overall core skill. So I guess as I got older, I learned to be a little bit more disciplined. And I think that

kind of mixing it where, yeah, sure, if you are on the sim and you wanna try and do a pure TikTok even though at the moment you're struggling with your inverted orientations, like it's fine because we gotta have fun. But if I'm being honest and serious about improving, then I think it's really important to force yourself that little bit of time to do. As I said in my very first like one oh one video where I talked about the importance of nailing the basics.

then I think, you know, getting good at collective management, getting good at your orientations, it makes it so much easier to learn everything afterwards. And I wish in the past I'd spent more time on that because it's something that I've had to improve again later on. And whether that actually slowed down my progression, I'll never know.

But it certainly made it feel disjointed because you end up flying in one way that looks really good and then you you try and do something that should be simple, but because it's in an orientation you don't like or a direction that you don't like, it you can't do it. And that really holds you back.

Yeah. Guilty, for sure. I think many of us are. Is there a pilot out there that did everything the right way? That learned all the orientations and progressed the way that we all talk about being the ideal? Do they exist? I think they do exist. I don't know about the ideal. I don't know about like truly, you know, just to the book they followed every step and they never jumped ahead. But you know, I know for example here in the UK there's a there's a really good pilot

George Isaacs. And I remember chatting to him and I don't know. He may have to correct me if I'm wrong, but I I I'm pretty sure I remember him saying, like, because he grew up with his dad flying. and his dad was sort of helping him learn, his dad was also saying, like, Yeah, but you need to make sure that you can do it the other way

And that kind of voice in your ear while you're young to say like, Oh, well, you can pirouette left, but you need to be able to pirouette right as well I guess is super helpful because I think on our own it's just too tempting to start running with the stuff we know how to do'cause it's like, Wow, that looks good. I wanna do more of that.

Yeah, that's a good point. And maybe I I just don't have that voice. But yeah, we often hear Carl Stacey talk about his dad when he was a kid and some of these younger pilots, you know, not forcing, but you know, working with them on orientation practice uh early on to Get those skills drilled in. How though was it? Sorry. No, I was gonna say I'm like, was it Carl Stacy that I saw saying that

he's starting to work on his on his right tail and I'll be like, Well, you fooled me because I swear I thought you you'd you're doing uh tail reversals but he's like, Oh, it's just cheating. I'm pretty sure it was Kyle that I saw saying that. So it's so interesting, you know, even uh People who who we all look up to, but they all have their weaknesses.

Oh I know. It's wild. If you asked anybody from Kenny to MCK or anyone, you know, they would probably be able to name four maneuvers they can only do in one direction or struggle with reversals or uh But to us they're all aliens from another planet. Uh flying on a whole other level. It was it was it was eye opening to see them fly in person at Urcha this past year. That was amazing.

Yeah, yeah, no, I I really wish that I got to see them here at Road to Life. I had to work, but you know, we had them all here and yeah, I still haven't seen sort of that that kind of top five in the world level of modern flying done in person still. And yeah, I'm sure it must be absolutely unreal'cause

by how good it looks on video. And I know that like if I for example film myself and you watch it back, you're like, oh that doesn't look as good as I feel like I flew. So the fact that they're flying looks so amazing on video, then I can't even imagine what it's like when you see it in person.

In in person, it's you spend a lot of time with your jaw on the floor and then it's so fast, the rates are so fast, the reversals, the changes, that you literally can't process w what even the control inputs are or what just happened. You're like I don't under like you you want to break down the maneuver into what just happened, but it's you you just can't. You're you're behind immediately. Um it's wild.

Yeah. It's actually interesting'cause I feel like in a way it's like it's so amazing for us who can to some extent see what's happening. I have asked the question to myself before though of like with the way that flying has gone and it being so fast, does that actually make it feel less accessible to people if that's the example that they see? Because they look at it and they cannot process what they're seeing.

So in a way, like when you first see a helicopter fly, if you just see it do like a loop and a roll, you're like, Oh yeah, that looks cool. Like I I know what that is. But if you see like Campanoi fly, you I have no idea what's going on. It it just which

We find absolutely amazing, but I do sometimes wonder if like it now feels so terrifying for people to try and get into that instead of seeing it and looking in awe, we're actually getting people seeing it and go, Wow, I'm never gonna be able to do that, so I'm not even gonna bother.

That's an interesting take. I've never I've never thought about it that way.'Cause you're right, it is it is feels unreachable uh even though when you break it down to its smallest level, they're all a mix of just the basic.

But that's interesting. How do you speak of breaking things down, how do you break down a new maneuver to learn it? Do you have an approach that, you know, if you're trying to figure out, say, a pure wedding loop or something and and you're struggling in a portion, how do you break through those uh roadblocks?

I guess it's funny you say paroting loop, that's uh that's what the next video is on. But it's for me, it's like looking at what the maneuver is, because underneath most of these maneuvers, the core of it is gonna be something you already know how to do. Like most of the time at this point we're doing like a loop or a flip or a TikTok and it's just

a variation of it by, you know, with some form of pirouetting or some form of rolling. So like the first question is am I controlling the basis like if we take that pirouetting loop as as an example Is my control of a loop in general good? Am I using good collective management? Is the reason that I'm messing up this loop over the top not because actually I'm struggling with stirring the pirouette, but actually because

I'm pulling so much collective that I'm slamming it into the ground and it's making me panic. Like I guess I try and understand what it is that's throwing me off and and why why it is that I'm I'm making that mistake in that section. I for me it for a long time it was rolling loop. with rolling loops as you come over the top, it's so hard to keep that momentum consistent and it feels like the helicopter just wants to sort

fall at the ground. And I learn it just using elevator. But actually you really need to use a lot of tail over the top. And when you use tail, it doesn't pull itself to the ground in the same way that it does when you use elevator. So it's like trying to understand

why the helicopter does what it does. I actually find the slow motion on the simulator really useful if you really can't figure out what's going on, because then you've got time to actually think about what you're doing. And if you can do it on the sim in slow motion, then you at least know that those inputs work. It's just trying to get your head around why you're not doing those at full speed. That's interesting. And I feel like momentum is a very difficult thing.

Yep. You know, I'm I'm nowhere near the point of being able to do a rolling circle, but at my few attempts at it, I always feel like I struggle to imagine how you keep it moving. It feels like one mistake and you've you've lost all the momentum in the maneuver. Yeah, a hundred percent. And I think that's something, you know, when when we talk about like taking something from the simulator to real life.

I feel like the sum maneuvers where, you know, I use Helix and I feel like my particularly with road flight now that I've gone to that, the transition from the sim to real life is almost perfect for some maneuvers. the feel is so similar, but momentum is something that I think is quite hard to to simulate and

I definitely would say yeah. Sometimes you can be like, Oh, I can do a rolling circle or as I was saying, like a rolling loop on the simulator, but in real life I just keep running out of momentum and yeah, I I hit the same thing, like I feel like I can do rolling circles, but at the same time, there are times that I initiate it and it just doesn't travel in the way that I expect it to. So if you go into it without momentum and you're trying to create it,

It's really hard. And you got wind. I mean in the UK we always have wind. So, you know, you turn that corner and you hit wind and it's like, Oh no, yeah, it's just stopped. I'm just sat rolling. So yeah, I mean it it i it is hard and there are ways around it, but it

Yeah. And it's so hard to explain what they are and it requires that's where it comes from, like, I can kinda do the maneuver or whatever. Like you you think that you have some control over it, but that's the difference between being able to do something a bit from some muscle memory and actually being able to like fly the maneuver and control the helicopter through the maneuver, which is I guess something that I really try and stress through the videos, is like I want people to learn

how to actually fly the helicopter and control the helicopter through the maneuver and not just learn some muscle memory for a particular maneuver which, you know, you can't repeat because you're just guessing at roughly what it should do and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Yeah. I feel like muscle memory

Like mimicry of muscle memory doesn't work for me. Like I can watch all the videos in the world of someone's stick movements, but if I try and parrot the stick movements, it doesn't work. I have to translate that into a learning process somehow in my head. Like, okay, now I understand how the stick's supposed to move, but why? And I have to I have to feel it out.

I don't know. Yeah. The interesting thing is is I feel like people often try and pyro flip based on the stick movement first, where they've just are parroting that move in their thumb and the stir and and I wonder how you translate that to feel. Yeah. I mean and yeah, that's such a difficult maneuver. Again, that's one that I just started you know, I made the video for the initial sort of pirouetting maneuver stuff and there's there's only so many ways you can explain it and

Yeah, you can't like you can't just stir the stick and expect it to work. Even though it might work, like one time, i you're not really understanding what you're doing. But the interesting thing about that is as you were saying, it's like you c also can't actually fully fly that maneuver. It's it's that's where there's this weird crossover because i it requires some muscle memory and timing and using like cues like the nose and tail to build up that timing for the maneuver.

But on the other hand, if you did it purely just on muscle memory and you weren't thinking in any way about flying the model, then you'll never be able to control it. But at the same time if I'm like I say that and I'm like, yeah, but when I do a pyriflip I don't think about it. So the I think it's just a maneuver that you have to put a lot of time into.

trying to think that you're flying it, but at some point when you're doing it consistently, it does become this sort of subconscious control. But your brain, without you thinking about it, is thinking about the orientation and the angle and making subtle corrections to that stir, but I think that goes beyond something that we can at least my brain, I can't consciously think about it. So although I can control it

I couldn't explain in the moment exactly what you're doing. And that's why I guess it's so hard to teach people those manoeuvres because the truth is it just takes a lot of hours to grinding it out. Um and I think having the right process helps, but There's there's no replacement for time when it comes to stuff that's as complicated as that. Yeah, you can't translate the brute force of just practice, practice, practice into Yeah.

And a one video. Um in a one moment in time, that's hard. Um it just takes work for sure.

Well, we don't often have a lot of UK pilots on the channel. And unfortunately, when we do, often we're disconnected. So, you know, Rob Bingham and Stu Smith we actively talk to all the time, we're always messaging each other. And it's great that they send us, you know, the videos from Motor Life, but we have yet to get the time difference to work to get them on the show, but we'll get there eventually. But

I'd love to hear just a little bit uh before we let you go about the UK Heli scene. You know, how many heli pilots is it common to see on a on a nice weekend day at the club? Yeah, it's uh it's it's hit and miss in terms of like the area that you live in uh and things like that. So the events are pretty good. I think that we have a really nice

close knit community of the sort of 3D competition scene, which as I say, I would love that more people would get involved in. But that is a group of I don't know, at the busiest sort of fun fly events, I suppose we maybe have like fifty to a hundred pilots. I'm probably not the best person to ask that'cause I don't organise the events, but you know, it's not

It's not crazy, but there at the same time there is a a lot of people there. At your local field, you know, from my personal experience, I have a few different fields around me. On a weekend day, you know, none of them are crazy busy, I I think compared to some country standards, you know, maybe we have

five, ten people. But then there are a few clubs in the UK that are sort of known for helicopter flying. So then you get probably a little bit more of a crowd there. So you have places like uh MK Heli Club is quite a well known one. to be honest, I can't remember the name of all of them, but th there are quite a few that do have quite a good crowd and there are

let's say like amongst this mix of, you know, younger people, older people, you may have like three or four like quite well known competition pilots that all fly at that one place. So there are these little micro groups of of culture, but I wish it was a lot bigger, to be honest. I feel like there's been times that events were bigger, there were more events in the UK. The fun flies

the the hardcore guys, we try our best to make it to as many as we can. So I feel like as I say there's that core group of people that's maybe twenty, thirty people, probably more if you're including sort of partners and so on that come along. Um, you know, those are pretty dedicated guys, but

It's weird because the hobby itself is way bigger than that. Like, if you actually look at the numbers that the shops sell in the UK and you see how many kits are going out there, there's so many people out there that I've clearly never seen. Um and you know, if they're happy out there flying on their own, then, you know, I'm happy for them. But it would be lovely if there were just a few more people

that all got together and and had fun together'cause I feel like that's really what makes the hobby what it is. For me personally, there's only so much flying I can do on my own before, you know, I really need someone to egg me on to crash.

Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent. And there's I don't know, that joy in in friends at the field is uh I don't know. I I want everyone to experience that for sure. But it's interesting you mentioned, you know, the number of kits shipping versus the number of people we see at events. I often wonder that. I'm like, uh, how is the health of the hobby? But then you look at how many new models we have every year now. I mean, manufacturers are continuing to redesign and re release, so

You know, the hobby must be healthy to some degree, but where are all these people? Um I wanna see them too. I want to see them at Urcha and and, you know, regional events and get them out there.

Yeah. And I I guess the international side of things, like, you know, that's been been great and we are actually seeing a lot more mixing of all around the world. Well, maybe not more, it's it's always happened but it's definitely coming back. There was definitely a period where the hobby really dropped in It was probably'cause I wasn't there, that must be the reason. But you know, in the time that I wasn't there, you know, it was there was a period where it really seemed like it

quieting down a lot. And in a way, as you say, it seems like all the new brands, all the new stuff coming out, that that things are getting better. But then when it comes to events, it doesn't feel like that, you know? Here in Europe we we lost global three D, which was sort of that kind of recognized as being the the world ranking competition for many years and yeah, it's sad to see that although it seems healthy from a from a sales and brand point of view, it doesn't

feel that healthy from uh going to events and seeing people at the field point of view. So I I don't know how that's happening and I don't know how we can change it.

Yeah, I don't know either. And you know, I think we need to At least consider redoing the way we do competitions. I think but the old structure of convincing a sponsor to give you fifteen thousand dollars to get their name on a banner to fund, you know, the Portagons and the food and everything else is is probably not valid anymore. I don't think manufacturers have that extra cash. Yeah.

More grassroots efforts, I think. You know, in the States they've been doing this Urcha Cup, which is like a smaller regional version of an organized competition with a a very friendly competition format that's more open and welcoming to those versus a very strict structured setup. So

I hope we'll see more of that around. And actually speaking of that, is it common in the UK to sort of hop over the channel to other events in Europe or are folks mainly sort of staying within their own country as far as events go? Oh yeah.

You know, it's got better and better, like I say, in in recent years we definitely like there's the international part of the Heli Fest competition and, you know, even from the States as well, you know, we get Nick Maxwell coming over quite a few times and you know, a lot of the the sort of top European guys have come over in in recent years. So

Yeah, we are definitely seeing that. You know, last year myself and Adam Turner went out to a competition called three D H C in Italy as well, so that was cool. We got to eat nice Italian food and and do heli flying. But then like again, this year that's not going ahead. So yeah, I feel like when they're on, then people do it. But it's not it's not the lack of people wanting to attend. It's as you say, it's making it viable for the people who organise it is is definitely the challenge.

Yeah, for sure. Uh well Ben, before I let you go, is there anything you want to say to the hobby in general while you've got a microphone in front of you? You know what, I feel like I I I kinda said it. My my main thing is that A, like, I wanna help people, so if I can I'm always I'm always there to to try and answer. I've had quite a few of fun phone calls of people trying to trying to solve issues, but uh

Yeah. The same with the three D flying. If anyone has something specific that they want to learn, like always message me and I'll I'll try and see if there's a way that I can I can give a different take to that and help out. But otherwise I just hope that we see more people. I hope to see people around at events. And I'll see you on my channel.

All right. Well again the channel is Ben Flies R C. Ben, lovely to chat with you sort of in person in a way versus just messaging back and forth. Congrats on all the work you're doing on your channel. It's great to see. Uh congrats on the new baby. Enjoy that and the grenade it is about to throw into your life. I speak from experience, but it's the best grenade you'll ever throw. And thanks for coming on the show. We appreciate it. Thanks, Nick.

All right, thanks again, Ben. Uh I really appreciate uh you sitting down and doing it. I'm sorry that uh we all couldn't be there, but I think Sorry I wasn't able to be there for that either, dude. Yeah, no, it's all good. I mean we we pick weird times based on when w you know, at least one of us can be there and then we just hope for whatever happens. So

But uh it was a great chat. I was uh Ben and I have messaged each other a bunch over content creation and just other topics and so it was nice to get a chance to talk to him for the first time. So you know, not quite face to face, but close enough. Nice. Alright, with that, anybody got any thoughts before we uh wrap things up this week? I don't think so. With that one. One more thing. Yeah. Just a thought in in this with is if you're not flying then you're not. That's it.

I thought you were just gonna announce that your mouse works now. I feel like that ties in with your snow statement earlier. I tell you, you'll see it's a little bit more than you believe it. Believe it when you see it. Believe me I will say this and if you like me in the beginning of the show started the drinking game every time you heard the word spirit come out of Nick's mouth. you should be ten shots in. You imagine'em spirit for spirit. drinking some For spirit.

How long have I endured hearing about rotorflight, rotor flight, rotor flight, rotor flight, rotor flight? Trying to match that. Why are you mumbling spirit in your sleep? So many jokes. I'm gonna keep my mouth shut and behave myself. All right. It's fun, fun. It is fun, fun, and it's fun to be excited about something, man. I love being excited. So the hey the on the spirit stuff on the transmitter it says now that it's AGO twos, right? Coming in the newest one? Yes. Yes, yeah.

Yeah, I think that's a good thing. Including the six hundred and fifty dollar one. I mean they were always moving to A G O twos, but I'm gonna mute Alex's mic right now. Boom. He's off. You go. Uh Oh good. I love you fuckers. All right. On that note. Let's wrap it up. And uh You know what to do. The swag store is online. You can find the link at Rotorevolution.live. Uh, you can also find our emails, contact, all that through the website, rotorrevolution.live.

And message us on Facebook, shoot us an email, all those things. And uh we love hearing from you all. So thanks for listening. Bye bye. This concludes this episode of the Rotor Revolution RC Podcast. To learn more, stay in touch with the team and to join the Revolution check out our Facebook. At facebook.com/slash Rotarevolution RC podcast, or find us on the web at Rotarevolution. 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. Thanks for listening.