EP.66: Rob Bingham

Welcome to the Rotor Revolution RC Podcast. with Brian Birdsong. Alex. sixteen. Kenny Hutton. And Nick Wisdom. And I am your host, Nyx. Nix? Hey Nick. Next. And next you can get your kicks on episode sixty six. Hey. It is too. Did you just come up with that or were you planning it all day? Thank you. Well, I usually try and remember to title the episode so I can find the files later and I was like, Hey, it's episode sixty six, like route sixty six. Uh yeah. Just morphed into that.

Just morphed into that. What's going on fellas? How are ya? All right. What you just said was pathetic. Oh how are you guys doing? All right. Right. That's like what you say when you need someone to ask you what's wrong. Like what's wrong, Brian? Fake booking. Some right. Nothing. Ha ha ha ha. Well I tell you what, we got a bunch of listener mail this week, so I'm gonna kick us off with some of that. There's some easy ones in here. Right.

So Donnie eighty seven twenty one. I don't know if that's a human or a robot, but uh Yeah. Uh emailed to let us know he's stoked to be getting into the hobby. He's new to the hobby. And he found a great deal on a used four fifty. But he wanted our opinion on a helicopter or a system that would offer rescue and self-leveling that wasn't as complex as rotor flight.

That's right, Donnie's my brother from another mother. And asked what we would recommend. Like if you're literally a raw beginner and you're looking at an FBL and a radio, what do you buy? What do you what do you go for? We could do a whole episode on this, but let's do just a quick high level. Obviously rotor flight. Mm, maybe spirit or icons. If icons are still. Icons probably, yeah. Yeah. Icon has a lot of information along the side to the wizard where you can read up.

That's a good FBL, man. It's like a good old school. Very good beginner. I mean that UI is very intuitive. Yes. What what about a radio though, right? Let's say we want to steer'em towards an M two or a Goose Guy S two as the first heli,'cause those h helicopters feature self leveling right out of the gate as well as rescue. What uh what transmitter do you buy with those these days that can let you expand into an easy non-rotor flight system?

Doesn't the Free Sky Radio work really well with Spirit? It does. Is it easy? I have not personally done it, but I suspect so. There is a like forward programming section. It's not as easy as having the spirit wave radio at all, but Uh yeah, but you're not spending as much money. Well, not really. You can get a spirit wave for pretty a you can also find a really good deal on Mikado radios right now, like used. There's quite a few of them for sale.

I mean I'd be very if you can afford as a beginner to get into the Mikado Mikado ecosystem, it will take you years and you will be very, very happy. Possibly forever with that. Yeah. You could stick with Mikado, you could go with Spirit, you could buy an FR sky transmitter and set up an OMP or Goose Guy helicopter pretty simply. Yeah. That's what I was getting at. I was like if you did that then it's really easy to set stuff up.

All right, so maybe we'll cover that more in depth on a beginner heli episode. But we had another listener, Andy. last name unknown, commented via Podbean on our recent Main Rotor episode, and he said, Why do we care whether the follower arms are level at the center of swash trail travel? Why is that important? He seemed to think it didn't matter at all.

And then obviously getting your swash at center of travel and your servos at ninety and all that mattered, but the the position of the follow arms didn't matter. Why do we care about that? It would be totally different if you had an angle down.

Yeah, usually if it's in the middle, like the arms are level, you should be in the middle of your swash travel top to bottom. Right. Yeah. That's where my brain goes, is at that point where the follower arms are level, you are in the center of travel. And you don't have to have that perfect on a helicopter, but It is nice when everything's symmetrical and your, you know, follow arms are at ninety and you have the same, you know, up and down. And it makes me feel good to look at it.

Yeah. Yeah, I feel like some of the old helicopters, like them old raptors and stuff, those arms would be like way, you know, not level, like tilted up or down because the travel is so different on those. You know, in your heli instruction manual will probably tell you whether or not it's important to have that, you know, directly ninety degrees or whatever, so follow your guide. If the guy says do it, do it.

I think to some extent he's probably right. If they're slightly off, will it really affect any performance as long as everything else is pretty accurate? As long as you're zero pitch at your center of travel and you have equal up and down. Does the follow-arm position actually matter? I don't know. What do you guys think? I'm meeting our listeners. Let us know what you think about follow arms. Have any more insight to share on that? I personally do it'cause I like the way it looks more than any.

Yeah. Yeah. It's dead. L C D kicks in. C'est juste OCD, c'est tout. It it does make me happy when all those things are true. Everything's level and pretty. But like if it if it's angled down though, and let's just say you pull a full right and that sucker extends out and locks, then what? Yeah, obviously extreme cases are not good. And if you're gonna run a lot of pitch.

14 degrees or more, then I think you really want to be in the sat center of travel with level follower arms so that you're right. All those interactions don't happen at The extremes. Uh by the way, Andy also suggests an inexpensive torque wrench that he likes to use on spindle bolts. He recommended tightening to twenty newton meters or whatever the manufacturer specifies. Yeah, he says he likes to use a cheap uh torque wrench when he tightens a spindle bolt. Yeah.

Consistency is nice. I mean I've often said I wish that helicopter manufacturers would be like bicycle manufacturers where they give you all the torque specs for all the bolts would be cool. You could get super nerdy about it. Maybe not all, but spinobolts would be a place where the torque would be cool. Mine is my my spindle bolts is still when your veins are popping out of your neck and it's tight enough.

I say as tight as you can get it with a tiny bit of grease still on your hands that you weren't able to get off. That's my torque rating. But anyway, lots of good feedback, by the way, on that main radar episode. Thanks for everybody that messaged us about that or enjoyed the episode. We certainly appreciate that.

And with that let's let's dig into some updates. Who uh who wants to go first this week? Kenny, I feel like you were at Spring Fling. I feel like we need to push you first. Dude. I'll do something. Yes. I don't you know, the fun fly, I mean it was a lot of driving. I remember I remember eight hours each way. Yeah. The fun flies are a blur, but no, it was uh fun. The I made sure that I got there in time on Friday to still have six or eight hours of sunlight because

Saturday's w forecast wasn't quite as nice, you know, the and that happens there all the time. It's like one day or the other could be a little bad. It's usually three quarters of the time, you know, is good weather, so never stops me from going, so Saturday was only a partial, you know, you could fly and it was just cloudy, but Friday was all sun, all fun pretty much the whole time.

But mainly just flying a lot of electric the whole time and then I got finally it's I think it was Saturday I waited, I got my nitro out. And I wished I'd got my nitro out sooner'cause I I messed around with it. I was like, I'm finally gonna sit down here and go ahead and put the newest firmware on on the nitron, which I hadn't done. You know, I'd been flying on, you know, six months old firmware or something.

And it just flew so much better. I don't know what all was different in versus the old settings, but super smooth spool up now and and it was just like the n the governor was working awesome on it. So I was pretty happy with that. Like I just got three or four more flights right after I got the first one when I realized it was working that good.

And I was kinda worried about updating that, you know, with Rotor Flight, how they changed the nitro the governor page, you know, so we have like a nitro selection now. And I still use my same settings. Like you can, you know, if you upgrade, you don't really have to change a lot. You do have to go to the governor page and then go ahead and turn on

Just governor in general, because when you when you upgrade the firmware to that four point six, it's gonna be turned off. Like you you know, you don't want to spool your electric up because it would be instant throttle if you're using, you know, rotor flight govs. So make sure Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, make sure you go to the gov page as soon as you update and turn on whatever you need, either electric or nitro gov. And I just ran normal nitro gov because I was still running the same setup where I have like a normal mode on my first switch, you know, my idle one switch.

Mm-hmm. Um, I was running like transmitter throttle and then idle two and three were just whatever, you know, a steady, straight curve with like sixty or eighty percent or whatever you want to use. And that still works is under normal mode. You basically

using the same settings as before. The only time you're gonna use that graph chart thing that it shows is if you go into modes and you turn that on. So you can set that graph up to where you actually have a rotor flight, you know, parameter basically a a throttle curve, you know, for for spool up and then when you switch over at a certain percent that you set in there over fifteen percent, you can set it to whatever number it's uh stock setting and then it will kick into your Gov settings.

So I just left it alone and flew it how I had it set and the spill up was fine and everything worked really good, which I was really impressed with. But I might mess around with that rudder flight curve thing just to see how it works, you know? 'Cause then you can just basically use your when you turn that on, you're using your stick as the actual throttle, kinda like V Bar and some other ones use, you know, your stick movement is the curve basically, and you just set the curve in the software.

So shouldn't be too scary if you're switching from old nitro or even doing like a new nitro setup now. It's probably even easier. You still have to go to the motors tab and then do your high and low throttle settings mechanically and then you can go back to you know, the governor page and set your governor or your curve on there how you want.

Other than that, flying and I watched some of the competition. Uh how was it? Pretty cool. I mean I didn't I didn't stare at everything, but I was kinda going back and forth watching it and doing stuff and they were doing pretty good throwing down. There was uh I don't know what that kid's name is. There's a new kid that was flying that was doing really good too with an align uh TV. Ride RC posted about a thirty minute video with every flight on it.

Nice, nice. Yeah, I wanna go back and watch some of'em again.'Cause I was doing a lot of stuff, but no big crashes I saw the whole weekend either. I was a surprised. I mean, I didn't stay a lot for night flying, I only stayed a little while each night, but Didn't see anything insane happen. I heard there was a pretty good Carrie Brooks flight, I think it was, with I think it was Enzo, one of those guys. Yeah, they did a nice tandem. I didn't see that.

But yeah, I had fun tinkering with rotor flight again just'cause I felt like sitting down and that switch in that setting. You can't help yourself. Yeah. Did you uh did you check out any of the Stratos two hundreds that were there? I didn't even see him. I saw Diego and those guys there and everybody else that was there with stuff. Legos flying goose guy. Yeah, I see that. There was an unnamed pilot who crashed in XL Power Stratos two hundred. Oh no, who is it? I wanna know his name.

I d I don't know. Diego. Sorry. Definitely not. Ha ha. I know I know there was some new products there and I didn't even get to see'em. Yeah. There was a certain someone put a battery through the blades on the Stratos two hundred by not running a canopy seat. You gotta fly with canopy. No. Put the canopy. Oh man Then it was like they looked at it and everything was all well. They said, Okay, well let's take it back up. Take it up and put it back in the ground. Yeah. Double crack.

I will say early indications on the Stratos is that it crashes pretty damn well, it seems like. Um, Yeah. Yeah, need more information on that. But uh early crashes, I think. Or though. Damage. I'm happy with my micros, but Damn it. You end up getting one anyway. I know. There's a there's a lot of peer pressure in all the team chats about this helicopter. I mean not peer pressure, but you know, a lot of people excited about it and getting it. It it makes you feel FOMO. Yeah, it's kind of

But you're getting like the not the characteristics, but you're getting the experience of a full size helicopter and that you kind of build it a little bit and then you put your own FBL on it and set it up, you know. Does it count as building if you bolt the skids on and stick the boom in? Yes, it does. It does not. Yeah, I can't. Making cereal is cooking, and so yes, and you're adding two ingredients. It's cooking. Wow. I saw someone's photo and they were putting me on Yeah.

The Vantec unit on it. Did you guys see that? Oh that might be my favorite thing you've ever said on the podcast, Alex. That's amazing. Yeah. Sorry, K. Yeah. I said did you guys see there was a guy putting a Vantac unit on the Stratos and that looks pretty big for it, doesn't it? Like the... Yeah. It I mean you can fit a full size Nexus X XR on it, a Spirit W one which is pretty big. I've seen on it. I've seen Evos.

Yeah, but I fly the I fly the uh the Ventec also and it's wider than all of the other ones. So I would think on the s that stratus it's gonna look weird. I would think. It might look funny, but XL Power was smart. They didn't put any side frames on either side of the FBL plate. So the only thing that limits the width is the canopy, which is of course plenty wide, so Almost be tempted to like take one of my fly dragons or something, just strip the case off of it and put it on there like that.

Did on his was he took uh an original Nexus and decased it. So it was really small. Great idea. And light as well. I might do that with my Vintage. Just make like a little square three D printed base for it or something, you know, and double sided tape it down or something.

Yeah, it's not a bad idea. If you think about the weight of a metal case FPL, we love'em in bigger helies of course, but on a micro Significant I mean the board hangs out on like an M one and stuff anyway, so it's kind of similar, you know. Makano must be excited. It's the only place a plastic cased FBL is exciting. That's like overkill on this one. Yeah. Finally. Yeah. We found it.

Anything else cool at Sprinkling? Any other new helies or I heard was Kyle Stacy up there? I didn't e I saw him twice. It was like seeing a a silhouette, you know, I he was far off at a distance. I saw him twice and I somehow never ran into him. Like that place is not that big. Yeah. So yeah,'cause I think it's a good one. That sucks to make that drive and then not feel well. He flew other people's helicopters and never flew one of his own. How about that?

that I did s yeah, I saw him helping people and kind of flying a few, but I didn't really see him go out and do any main flight line flights or anything. Not feeling well and fly other people's helies? You trying to spread whatever you have by touching all the transmitters? What do you want to be called? What wasn't it uh there was like a heli? Heads episode where I think they called uh what's his name, Super Sprutter. Oh yeah, where they all gave each other COVID.

Yeah. That's why podcast hosts shouldn't make out, but you know, they do things differently over there. Nothing. Really? Nothing? Silence after that? I was like well I Never say never. That's it. Ha ha ha. Boy. Yeah. Well that's cool, Kenny. I'm glad one of us made it to Sprinkling. Sorry about that. Fly, there was a fun fly this weekend for us too. Oh yeah, don't worry, we'll ask you about it too. Okay, good.

Yeah. Did you say you had a venture adventure? My venture adventure. Yeah. So I I've been flying I got like five or six sets of venture blades. And this red pair that I had, and and they're probably one I've had for a while, you know, probably six months or eight months. And I've been flying them on an RS7, no issues. You know, they're perfectly quiet, smooth. And I stuck them on the M7R when I built it.

And I always had like this fluttery, you know, like cyclic wobble small amount and it was kind of fluttery sounding, like not loud, but it just sounded like they were just a touch out of track. You know what I mean? Like just that blurry noise. And I kept trying to track it down and trying to track it down. I was adjusting gains and all this other stuff. And then I finally switched to another pair of the same size ventures that I had. And suddenly it was butter smooth.

So I was like, huh, that's kinda odd. You know, they're flying on another helicopter, but not the M seven R right. I don't understand. So I started kind of switching things back and forth and I'm looking at the blades and they're perfectly straight. You know, the the weight is perfectly balanced. So it's I don't know what it is. Like I

I assume that maybe internally just the the balance is a little different in each blade or off just a slight amount. I haven't had this kind of issue in in probably years that you can even Something you can't see or or tell within the weight, you know. There's just some kind of a maybe like a leading and trailing edge balance issue because I can throw them back on my R seven, RS7 Ultra or the regular one, and it and they're perfectly smooth, but it doesn't like the M7R. And it's weird.

Yeah,'cause I can put other blades on the M seven R and it's smooth, but just that one set on there is it's weird as heck. So I can't you know, the blades may be the blend, but What does it cause the M seven to do? Does it cause it to vibrate on the roll axis? Skids are shaking. Yeah, it's like left to right roll.

But it won't do it with the other blades. Like the helicopter's fine. Maybe the helicopter's more sensitive, just the tiniest little difference that's going on with those blades, I don't know. But I'm fine with all my other ventures. It's just this one set doesn't like that one helicopter. I don't know why. Have you tried another set you tried another set of ventures on? Yeah. Two other sets are fine on it. Like I thought you were saying other brands were fine. That is

The same brand, same just just a different color. I mean but there's something maybe internally balanced. I need to check like leading and trailing edge balance. Maybe there's one blade that's just a fine, you know, bit difference. It's making that throw that helicopter off just a little bit. Okay. That's the strangest thing.

It's weird. I just thought I'd say that'cause I mean you never you can't rule everything out'til you switch parts out, you know, stuff like that can drive you nuts. But switching parts sometimes is the first step if you're beyond the step of just adjusting some electronic gains or something, you know? Took me a while to figure that out though. You know, that stuff it's hard to narrow down as something that tiny. You can't see it. Yeah, you can chase your tail on that stuff for a while.

Yeah, I I think I did for like a week or two, just occasionally testing different gains up and down, different I and P settings and everything, and then never n nothing completely got rid of it. RPM, governor settings changed, you name it, and then then I find out it's just the blades. Yeah.

So yeah I bought something too. Oh wow, this is my favorite part. Just stopped him right there. I'm so excited. Yeah. I got I got an M one and I was able to take that to the How was it? I got to fly the M one there too a few times. It was pretty fun. I was surprised that that the M one Pro actually flies like the M two. I mean it flies like gets bigger counterparts. Mm two. No!

I mean if you like to fly closer,'cause it is smaller, you know, it's a small helicopter obviously, but it can do three D the same. I'd say it's got plenty of power like the M two does, but I mean it definitely flies a lot better than the older versions. Has a lighter feel and lots of collective power and everything. I have no complaints.

I ordered one ten days ago and it's been sitting at the UPS office since the twenty fourth. Oh, not cool. And I called them and and said, Can you just tell the office to send it to me? Like I was being nice, like not I know they have tons of packages there, whatever. And they go yeah, you'll have to call the shipper and tell'em to file a claim. I was like it's sitting 10 minutes. That's from my house. Yeah. Yeah. That's crappy.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to it, Kenny. I want one. Have you tried flying it inside? Uh I think it would be like a rocket ship through the walls. Yeah, is it that fast feeling? Okay. Yeah. So what I try to do in mine is I set up I just used transmitter throttle instead of the software throttle at first. Mm. And the only things that I've adjusted which I kinda had to is since I wanted to try like a lower throttle than kind of recommended, like maybe a fifty to sixty percent is my low.

and then seventy and eighty or something like that, I had to change the gains a little bit. So to get it, it was actually bobbling at the low RPMs because I was kind of below the recommended RPMs, I think. But at that RPM the tail did hold at a lower RPM, but I had to, I think, lower the head gains because it seemed to wobble once she got down to a certain Low point.

So you might have to tinker with the P gain or something just to fuzz off of stock settings. But I think if you just go with the throttle recommendations they do, I think it's pretty solid right away. Yeah, if you stick to the the recommended like sixty percent is your bottom end, it flies great.

Yeah, I was intentionally just going lower because I wanted to see what it would do at low RPM, so I had to turn the gains down actually just because it was too sensitive, it seemed like, for those RPMs.

I did the same thing'cause I was flying it in hotel rooms and like very tamely flying it. I'm I'm no Kyle Stacy or, you know, some of these guys. The the indoor videos coming out of some of these pilots, M C K et cetera, on the uh the M one is insane, but Yeah, it it wasn't great at fifty percent. I felt like sixty was the low end fly. Sounds quite right. Absolutely. The best whatever class that is. One hundred, one fifty. Absolutely. Hands down. Flies great.

Yeah, it has a lot of agility and feels like a bigger one, for sure. Yeah, does not care for the wind a whole lot though. Which makes sense. Yeah, it is kinda tiny.

That one's um too, I don't if you're using the Express LRS, I had to you have to go into the Bluetooth first, you know, and activate it on the board. You know, you gotta turn on the Express LRS in the um OMP hobby Bluetooth app. And then go ahead and power it on and uh you know, repower it or cycle it or just d leave it turned on and wait for a while until you see that Express LRS come up on your Wi-Fi or Bluetooth or whatever your your computer, you know, connecting to it.

So you can do your binding that way. Unless you're just gonna do like a bind button thing. But I do the bind phrase in like a model match. So I had to, you know, give it a second after turning on Express LRS and then it does pop up. It doesn't do the same like blue flashing fast light like you'll normally get. on larger flybarless units, you know, with Express LRS. So I don't think you can go by the lights. You just gotta wait for the signal to show up on your Wi Fi. Case anybody has issues.

Dude, I was I was so excited for mine to arrive. I already had the Spirit micro receiver. I just temporarily plugged it into my M two. I had it set up, bound, programmed, ready to go, like I literally like unpacked the UPS box, charged the battery, zip tied the receiver on there and was in the air in like two seconds flat. Nice. Yeah I used my M two model, so nothing was different. All I had to do is basically Yeah.

I did the same thing. I just copied that model and bound their new receiver and was good to go. Actually I got more info on that too because so if you're using the Free Sky Radio and you got the Rob Thompson's OMP, the OFS three dashboard and you're using that for telemetry on like the M two, make sure you update that.

script to the newest one because the newest one now you can swipe up on it or click on the Lewis settings basically by clicking on the screen and change the settings in the script and you can change that from a three cell for your M two down to the two cell for this M one. Oh really? That's for So you do get your telemetry correct call outs on the M one or M two. Yep. Huh. Okay. That just sparked my memory. So other cool piece of information. Those batteries are adorable.

The little ones I haven't seen'em. I mean I haven't held it in person. I'm looking, you know, one day when UPS decides my package can come. And they released a little three-battery. It's not even a parallel charging lead. It's a like series charging lead where I saw that. You plug a six S balance lead in and each pack you charge in takes up two of those cells. So you're not really charging in parallel. It's really cool. Nice.

All right, Alex, you had a fun fly too. Let's hear from you. Man, I had I had a great time. We had uh an event called the Golden Tri or it's at the Golden Triangle R C Club, which is a really great club, by the way. I crashed and then it was my birthday and I decided that I was gonna be ridiculous and and like the cowboy hat thing, like I enjoy this ridiculous thing. And so I was like, I'm gonna dress like a Florida tourist. And so I did my best to look like a Floridian tourist on my birthday.

You did well. This fun play. I feel like you need to describe your outfit though,'cause somebody clearly gave you a birthday sash. Oh yeah, that was my wife. I woke up that morning and she gave me a birthday princess sash. Yes. It said age to perfection. I love it. I looked like I was at a bachelorette party. Like you really I was like, Are you in Nashville? No, I had like a a fedora type thing on. It was just missing a feather coming out the top of it. Yeah.

Yeah, for those of you wondering, there's a photo on our Facebook page. Check it out. Well the guys I have to thank everyone that was there that I they made me feel very special. Which is a fun feeling for your birthday. Up it was really nice of everyone. So that was really cool. We had a great time, dude. We had a great turnout. There were almost forty pilots at this thing. Um it was awesome. There was

Chase was flying a couple of scale models and doing some stuff. He was like towing these cannons around with a scale model. So he had like things dangling from them. It was kind of fun. to see that. They had a couple of full scale I say a couple. There were two full scale helicopters that came in and landed during the event.

that the city, I guess, like helped arrange. The city's been super cool to this club and paid to repave the runway and do stuff for'em. Like wow. Super impressive stuff. Yeah.

Yeah, we had a great time. I don't know what else to say about the fun fly other than it was fantastic and I crashed. Well, tell us about the crash and then tell us about the weather. Was it as windy as it's been here in Texas? I'm actually in Dallas tonight as we record as well. Been here for a few days. So So Nick's like twenty minutes from my house, but both of us have been working and haven't really had time to I know. We had big ideas and then yeah, work and life have not been kind of.

Actually we were both gonna take off tomorrow and it's supposed to storm all day tomorrow. No. Saturday Friday and Saturday were amazing. Friday was like eighty miles an hour and five to ten wind. And then Saturday was a little hotter. But what? Why why you laugh? It's funny. laughing'cause you said Friday was eighty miles per hour. I think you mean degrees. Oh eighty degrees. Yeah. Yeah. And Saturday it got busy toward I mean windy toward the end of the day, but most of the day wasn't.

Dude, every time I've gotten outside early in the week when I can't fly in here in Dallas, it's been like twenty mile an hour, steady winds and eighty plus degrees. It's like I've been interviewing him. That's what I mean. I've been flying in that wind. I got no new respect for you all. Blowing hard. That's pretty much all of April. It just does that. Try competing in that too. No thank you.

That's hard. Actually, while I was there a guy had a Genesis that was on V bar that he was just pile like flying around and he said, Do you wanna fly this thing? I said, I do, but I wanna set it up And so on V Bar I set expo on Cyclic at fifty percent and gave it fifty rates, which I think was still too high. agility fifty. And then I turned the tailway down and kind of did the same thing and did the first part of the F three C maneuvers, which is the diamond thing. Um...

And I was very proud of how I was doing and then Jeremy Strickland is standing next to me and he goes, Did you notice you're drifting away from yourself? And I was like, No, I thought I I was proud until you said that just now. Did you say trial? Sparrowers. He did really good. Yeah, right. No, there was no overspeed contest. Oh that's too bad.

But n dude, so we flew for like eight minutes and the there's still half a pack left because I'm flying at like thirteen hundred head speed. And I just kinda gave the radio back to him, like, I'm done, dude. This was exhausting. My brain hurts. It is so hard. It is Doing you know, thinking about that maneuver is so trivial in your mind, but when you have to keep it on top of that line, when you have to fly a nice precise altitude, a nice forty-five degree angle up to the next spot over the cone.

Well it's not And and then rotate sitting over that cone, you know, 180 degrees and come back over. It's hard. It's hard. And that is like the sportsman maneuver. That's a sportsman maneuver. But it's you know, you practice, practice, practice on it. I mean this this it makes you really sharp, man, it really does. No dude, I was I kept like

I c I did it over and over and over again. And and every time I could never get the rotation to stop at the point where you're supposed to stop. Instead, I'd finish the rotation and then drag it off. Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. I've always got a chance to do that. what what are you talking about Um well first of all I have my machine with the new Eon servos in it and it's like flying perfect.

And I'm just out enjoying flying finally'cause I've been kind of tuning and doing stuff. And d at the fun fly it starts shaking on the roll axis. Hey, wait a minute. Wait and you know what? I had this same thing with my Aeons too. Mm. Well, mine ended up being that the the thrust bearings were bad.

And so I fixed the thrust bearings at the event, and this is my first flight with the fixed thrust bearings. I don't like wrenching at an event, but regardless, we did. And so I was feeling very confident. And I went up super high and I've been doing these rolling autos where I roll one time. So I start with it inverted, I go to upright, I go to inverted, and I bring it all the way down inverted and then flip over at the end.

And I was like, I can roll the whole way down. And I thought I was gonna do this constant roll. Basically. And at about a hundred feet, the blades just stopped spinning almost completely. Yeah. And I had it in the middle switch position, you know, where it should bail out. Yeah. Except I went the wrong way. Oh Oh no, it's

And I realize I went the wrong way at like seventy yeah, full seventy five feet and it's inverted, kind of tumbling ish. And so I'm trying to like work the collective in the right direction to where the blades would speed back up. And I hit motor back on thinking I have seventy five feet maybe and it just Yeah. Yeah. It broke the frame. Yeah, it fell it fell very fast. Yeah. Yeah. The blade stopped spinning, it was just tumbling down.

In the BMX world that was called like a dead sailor where you just don't do anything and just watch it and do no trick, do nothing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean if it's inverted you still have to flip the switch the same way. It doesn't it doesn't go opposite. Oh, thank you for that. You know what's funny is after the fact, I wish I'd have said it. I wish I'd have gone, I don't got it. I don't got it. I don't got it. Yeah. What was the damage like?

It it I mean it fell from far, dude. So it broke the lower frames, not the uppers. You know, the boom snapped in half, the blades were toast. The spindle and the main shaft are not bad. So I right now it's hanging uh in the skids skids, that's right, not the struts. The skids did not break and it's just hanging on my wall with the belt still attached to the boom like it's hanging down whole. Oh no. Old. I thought you put your crash tallies in the corner. It you earned a spot on the wall still.

This one's a spot on the I well I've sold a bunch of stuff so I don't have I have for him. I was gonna sell that spare M7 kit at that I bought at the event and I texted the guy and I said, Will you be mad at me if I decide not to sell? Some This helicopter now, so I'm keeping it. And I have stripped the electronics out of the crashed one already, and I'm just gonna take it apart and keep the parts that are still good. So oh well. But it's a bummer.

Yeah. I've got my ESC testing done. I don't know if I said I got the Y GE two oh five to work correctly on the the van tech. I needed to update it. It worked perfectly. So I've got that testing done. And then Brian, thank you for sending me that Contronic ESC. I called Brian after I got done testing and I was like, dude, this brings back so many memories because I used to fly. This was like what I bought first because when I got into flying, everyone was having the castle burnout.

And I was like, I just spent this much money on this machine. I'm gonna buy something nice. And I bought the Contronic that I had for like 10 years at ESC. Yeah. I mean they last forever. Yeah. And so I really enjoyed being able to solder the motor wires up. Like I still had my connectors that you screw on to the ESC. So I was able to solder my motor wire wires directly to it. That was nice.

And that noise that it makes when it spools up is unique. And I remembered all that and it brought back so many memories. I was like Like I'm enjoying this a lot. It we found out pretty quickly the one seventy's not gonna handle. Like my my test flight, which included me landing and making adjustments for like three minutes, the ESC was at a hundred and sixty degrees in Fahrenheit in no time.

And I was like, this is not gonna I'm not gonna shut it down and crash another machine'cause this was after the fun fly. Yeah. So But telemetry just said, Where's Brian? Yeah. Yeah. I thoroughly rewind. Like ninety amps on that thing, dude. For the way I fly. Yeah. I I don't do you remember what I said I I hit I hit like Almost two hundred amps like that. Almost two hundred, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. But no, it was a good test. It was expected. I mean, you definitely need a two hundred plus for the type of flying that you do. So Well, I have my favorite ESC ironed out now. I'm not gonna talk about it yet. We'll talk about that in hopefully I think the next episode's gonna be the ESC reviews, if you guys are cool with that. I'm excited to just talk about all that and hear what you've been up to.

I mean, you've shared little bits and pieces, but uh you put in a lot of work, man. It's cool. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it was it was uh called Playing with Toys and Writing It Down and so it became science. Yeah. But yeah, that's cool.

All right. Well I bought I bought something too, but it's not here yet and it's been ten days and I I bought it from BK Hobbies and and I actually call I talked to Bert today and he was like, Do you want me to just send you another one? Like he was being really nice, you know? And I was like, No, I should go up there and get it. So

I just need to go up to the UPS. Like there's a distribution center not far from my house and I've gone over there before and picked stuff up when it's just stuck and I'll go over there and do it. It's not like I buy that. Tumbling in the conveyor belt. I don't know. It's gotta be like behind a box or something, you know? What's in the box? Okay. And uh Yeah. Yeah, it's in the corner somewhere on the floor.

Yeah. Some guy that flies hell he's there, took it out of the box, he's already been breaking. Oh VK hobbies, I'm keeping that, yeah. I like mints. Ha ha ha. Yeah. Like the BK mints a lot. Cool. Well cool man. It's good stuff. Sorry about the crash, but Good thing too, man. I was I was pretty bummed out. I was flying really hard before the crash, and then after the crash, I was like, I'm not I'm not willing to risk it as much now.

Hold on, Brian, you wanna go first? Really short. So so one thing I did do, right? So I think the last time we talked about, you know You know, making the Genesis light, blah, blah, blah. And then we determined, well, we're just gonna stick with the fifty three hundred milliamp pack to kinda help balance out the C G and that worked. That worked perfect for it. So uh I was able to shave I guess about nine hundred grams.

Which is still some some weight loss. And it flies great. It flies it's just so fast. And I only fly like at seventeen fifty upstairs. And it is so f it's faster than the Wraith. The Wraith I have crunk up to about eighteen fifty. And it's not as fast as this Genesis flying across the sky, you know, forward flight. So a lot of fun. Again, it's it's it it threw my timing off because it's so quick. And because I'm so used to the subtleness of the the Wraith, so I'm I'm still getting used to

timing my maneuvers perfectly and getting them more precise and things like that. So it's a work in progress for me practicing, getting ready for Nats and uh the next competition and all, but but I'm really enjoying this this Genesis. It's a lot of fun to fly. What are you gonna what's your plan on that? Like are you gonna try and slow down the Genesis so it flies like the wraith so that's similar stick movements, or do you just pick one of the two models and focus on it?

Um N I I tell you what, I'd I like the speed of it. It's not like it's double the speed, but it's it's, you know, just a little bit fast, maybe, maybe fifteen, twenty percent faster. And it's it's noticeable. It just looks really good to the way it glides through the air. So I wanna I wanna learn how to fly. Right. If I feel like, you know, after another say twenty rounds I I still hadn't gotten it yet, then that maybe I will just pull back on the elevator a bit and slow it down.

purposefully and and just, you know, deal with it. But but no, it's it's fine, man. It's it's I'm I'm really digging it. But I thought

Between one feels that much more slippy slippery at eighteen hundred than the other. Yeah, I I guess it's just the the aerodynamics of the fuselage, right? Versus just pod and boom. And and then again too, you think about the blades, I mean And and I haven't tried swapping the blades out yet to see if there's a difference between the SAB seven thirty sevens and the Venture seven thirty nine. Oh, I guarantee you there is, dude. Guarantee you.

Yeah. We wanna try that and see if that is where that speed is coming from. Because again, the Genesis blades are five millimeters longer than those venture blades. So that could be That's my wife. I was gonna say how does that transmission feel too that new transmission on it versus the old Genesis transmission? Feels great. It it feels absolutely great. It's quieter and it definitely gives me more energy from auto rotation. It's much more efficient and smooth.

Oh yeah, dude. It really is. It's really nice. They did a good job on this thing. They really did. I just uh only thing I hate and you guys know it. That battery. Just leave the same battery in there forever. Just run some balance plugs inside of it. Yeah. Exactly on the side of but yeah, no, it's it's it's it's fun. It's really fun and and I you know, commend SAB for doing a good job on it, so

But yeah, so I got the fly that weekend with Nick. Nick and I both flew. And yeah, I'm sure he'll give his update. But Nick is looking good out there, guys. I gotta see Nick throw down. Picking up, dude. Every time I watch you, Nick, you do something new. And I'm like, this guy is, dude, you're like months away from just really pop. You know what I'm saying? about that. A great job, bro. You really He's not really working. For disappointment at the next fun fly. Yeah. In in June? Uh. Oh god.

Yeah. That is my next one. Me too. But it it's no, Nick, it's fun to watch you fly. You know, I you know, I watch a lot of the the the smack guys and and I c again I respect how hard they smack but in it's it's something about a nice subtle, you know, very finesse light three D flight that really is like, holy shit, I like that'cause you can see all the moves, the maneuvers. I can I can like think about the stick movements in my head of what you're doing.

Which is really cool. So I can appreciate just just out of flying. I really do. Well that's very kind of you. I gotta say, I it it's mutual'cause I really enjoy watching your flights. I loved watching the new Genesis in the air, which that thing, that color shows up really well. Um agree. Yeah. That bird looks good. But it was fun. I love watching Brian work on things. I also enjoy listening to Brian talk to himself while he's practicing. Um... I want it.

And what he says to himself and it's cool. It's fun to watch. I don't know. I appreciate it. I'm like where are you gonna go on? Where you going? Where are you going? Sit still. Yeah, dude. It does. Ha ha ha. Like try to pull it back with you with the radio, like Dude, I I hold the radio off to my right side for some strange reason. Centered like on my stomach or whatever. But no, it's off to the right side.

And it's weird. I I catch myself like damn, why am I holding it right here? And I bring it back to the center and next thing you know, it's right back onto the right side. Well, you're not as bad as our we have this one planker at our field who still flies seventy two megahertz. And he flies with this antenna sticking out like a divining rod with with like full body English and he's terrible. So Mike. The radio and the antenna are all over the place and it's hilarious.

So Brian you're holding that transmitter like Kyle Stacy just had it and he was sick. Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. That was a good game. Amen.

Well that was that was my uh my update. The last weekend I believe it it rained a bit so which which we're I'm I'm thankful for the rain because my yard definitely needed it was so dusty and Oh it's so dry. Yeah. It's so bad. So we got a little rain, so that kinda kept me in. But but while I was in, I thought to myself, you know what? I think I need to buy something and so I bought Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Did you get another Genesis? Oh no I didn't get a gen.

I j I jumped on the bandwagon, man. I jumped on the bandwagon. Everyone's gonna be a big one. Stratus two hundred. Dude. Bro, my first micro I'm excited for that. Oh wow. I'm excited too. I'm gonna have to get one. I don't want one at all. I'm gonna get one. You don't have to, but the FOMO's real. The fum on real dude. And it comes really Carbon blades from Azure. I know. I tried to see if I could find those in stock anywhere yet.

They're not out yet. I'm thinking they won't be in stock till soon for Missouri, it sounds like

I'll have to say, hey Nick, did you get to fly your M one outside too?'Cause like as far as micros go, I just remembered like it was breezy when I flew it the second day, you know, and the wind. I mean it handles it, but you do get a lot of up and down, you know, just so it floats around because that helicopter is so light. I flew in. You're probably better with an M two or something or the strata, something big.

Oh, a hundred percent. I flew mine in like ten mile an hour winds, but it was going left to right down the runway, so it wasn't scary. But if you presented the disc to the wind, it was like see ya halfway down the runway. Yeah. That's how this works. And if you don't... Like traveling. It was just gone. You're like full collective trying to get back through the wind. I was like, come on, buddy, come on.

But it was fun. I mean the the nice thing about it is it it flies so well that you're not scared in that kind of wind. It doesn't it's hard to do things nicely in the wind, but you're not like out of control. You can still drive it.

All right, I'll jump into my update here. So long story short, the universe smiled on me and presented me with an excellent situation. So without going into much detail, I had to sort of chaperone this trip for my son with his school, kind of, but I was really only responsible for my own kid.

And only at night. And it was like an hour and a half east of Atlanta, which is really convenient because the flying field that Brian and I fly at is forty minutes, forty five minutes ish for me east of Atlanta. So I'm doing the m I'm looking at a map and I'm like, wait a minute.

I have to go out there to get him out there in the morning, but then I have all day to myself and I could drive forty minutes, fly all day, and then drive back, pick him up at night, hang out with him at the hotel, and then do the same thing the next day. And I was like, Oh yes. And my wife is like, You can hang out and get work done in the hotel and I'm like, Yeah, work. Yeah, that's what I'll do. Can she see where you are on your phone?

Yes. And she can also see me fill the car with helicopters since I'm packing. Yeah. So she knows what's up. So it was fantastic. I flew two days in a row last week and the weather could not have been more perfect. I mean, yeah, the wind was up to ten miles an hour one day, but so what? No big deal. But the temperature was like Sixty to eighty degrees.

It would be calm in the morning, so you'd the place would be lousy with plankers initially and then they would all leave and you'd have like the place to yourself in the afternoon as the wind picked up. And I brought the Il Goblin Pro, the M seven R and the RS seven Ultra with me in the car and I just flew the crap out of'em. So I flew from nine to four every day, so two huge days of four. Amazing. holy moly dude Oh so good. So good. It really like

rebuilt some of my confidence after traveling so much for work. I haven't been able to fly as much as I want to. So it was nice to like get repetition in and just I didn't even really work on a lot of new stuff. I just got comfortable again flying. In a big way. Like really comfortable. Like it's it's fast to get a little comfortable, but like to really get back to like Flying properly. I don't know, it's hard to explain, but you know what I mean. Uh I do know what you mean. Yeah.

And I brought my twenty-four volt, hundred amp hour battery to power my charger and actually managed to completely drain it in a day. So I charged Wow, I've never done that. Yeah, it took me twelve twelve S charges, five twenty three hundred milliamp packs, and some packs for the M one to get it down to twenty percent capacity. Yeah. You can do that's amazing. You can easily get twelve twelve S packs out of it, which is fantastic.

Plus a bunch of other packs and random stuff. And honestly, if you I actually read the specs from the manufacturer, they tell you you can take it all the way down to zero, like maybe one to three times a year without a lot of trouble. Like it's not gonna like destroy you. So if you have one big day on that battery, like you'll be fine. Just don't do it every week or you will reduce its capacity. Hey, what are you using to charge that battery?

I bought a battery from the manufacturer that will fast charge it. So it'll charge from twenty percent back to full in about four hours. And then it puts it on trickle maintenance charge after that. Okay. It was not an inexpensive charger. It was about a hundred, hundred and fifty bucks, something like that.

Did I tell you about my uh charger debacle? Have I talked about that on here? I've decided not to talk about it. Okay. Do you want to tell us about it? I I blew up two forty five twelves. Um Oh no. using my battery. So I would fly all day off my battery and then I was using my charge case to charge my battery. Kenny, don't don't I have the same battery you do? Yeah. Oh, you were charging it with your forty five twelve. A twenty five twenty nine volt output charger.

Yeah, well, you could just set it for life whatever, lifey and just charge it. I I was charging like eight amps. Regardless, I have a forty five twelve and from progressive, you know, one of those nice cases. That does AC and DC input and I would fly off the DC input and go home, plug it into AC power, plug it into the charge port, and I go to plug it into the charge port and it there's just smoke coming out. I'm like, well, I've had this charge case for three years. I fly a lot.

I don't know what happened. I'll send it back to progressive, but in the meantime, I'm kinda in an emergency feeling situation because I have twelve S packs only because I've converted all my stuff to have a twelve S twelve S balance lead. I need a charger now. I order another one from Progressive RC. Same thing happens very quickly after I got it.

And I call progressive and I was like, dude, what's going on? Like the case is designed to do this. And they're like, what battery do you have? And they're Basically like there must be some sort of protection in that thing where it switches and when it switches your charger freaks out. and kills it. And so Well the other battery management system might be doing something. Yeah. So I need to get another one. Or I just need to get a charger that I can use to charge that battery and it'll be fine.

Didn't you did you get the one that I recommended in the beginning, just those little regular one? Yeah, and it k you know what, my battery I didn't know that, but I was like, This thing's cheap. It must have just died. It stopped working and that's when I started using my case. And obviously the battery killed that thing too and I should have kind of been aware. Yeah, mine just charges fine. I just plug it in and let it go. So I wonder if there's just something wrong with my battery.

Yeah, I don't know. I'd hate to I mean, I could send you a link to the charger I use that will kick over to trickle charge that works really well, but I don't know if you'll just have the same issue. I already fixed my situation by spending even more money in the hobby'cause that's what I love to do, and bought uh one of those Bluetti things that has the AC and DC out. And so I'm just using the AC power and not worrying about it. Yeah.

But that thing was Are how much were these batteries? Like three or four hundred dollars maybe? Like two hundred eighty seven, something like that. Yeah. It was cheap. This blue eddy thing was like a thousand dollars. Like Whoa. Yeah, it was really expensive. And I justified it by, well, if the power goes out of the house I can just use it to powers. Yeah.

I would just try another one of those cheap chargers'cause they're so cheap, they're not really a big deal. If they were only twenty seven bucks, I think. Yeah. Well you just gotta turn the battery to that you have to make sure it's on the charge setting before it'll kick on but I'm sorry, what? Charge setting. Y yeah, on the big battery on your Bluetooth app, you have to turn it on so you can charge it. How were you charging it before? Just plugging the thing in.

Yeah, they don't work like it doesn't charge unless you go into the app and then go It just uh evidently blows your charger. Well there's actually there's two switches there. Maybe you need to turn the discharge off. There's an you can you can kill the output and only let it do input. So maybe I always do that on purpose. See what happens when you read the We failed our communication levels. I know, right?

See I paid more for my battery, but the charger just does all this by itself. It doesn't blow it. anything up. Yeah, the battery has you can turn the posts off on the battery completely. Like one thing turns the disc the exit, you know, the output on and off, and the other turns the input on and off Cool. Good for you. I'm not Uh That's funny. Speaking of batteries and chargers, I bought something. Um.

What for these big twenty four volt one hundred amp hour batteries. And I also use the same logic of well, what if there's a power outage at my house? I bought a two thousand watt inverter. Oh cool. So I can make a hundred and ten volt power. You can spend as much or as little as you want, depending on how nice a one you get. I spent about All right. I think it was three hundred bucks around there. Oh a lot of nice maps. Okay. Like. Kind of in the range anyway.

So and I did it I justified it for this episode because for the main topic this week, I have to do this it's a long story, this crazy situation. But I basically will record the main topic this week from my car, tethered to my phone, powering my laptop off the twenty four volt battery. No way. My son's soccer game because I ha it's like a really important game and it's right after we finish the main topic recording. Early on Saturday morning.

Recordings early Saturday morning, which is 7 A.m. for me, I just realized. Yeah, eight AM for me and my son's got a like a nine o'clockish soccer game, so I need to be like ready to go, like walk out of the car as soon as we're done. And uh Uh

Cool catches game. So anyway. The two thousand one inverter, did you is that for your one hundred amp hour battery then? It is, yeah. Yeah. So you got a twenty four volt yeah inverter. And that should run like you could run your house stuff even like a few things like refrigerator and Exactly. So if if we lose power I'll just drag the battery inside and can power stuff, which happens a fair amount in my neighborhood. We have pretty old power grid.

That's the only thing you have to pay attention to when I got my inverter too is you gotta make sure you get a twenty four volt for those bigger batteries if it's not, you know,'cause the twelve volts won't work on that voltage. That high. They can only do like sixteen to eighteen and then they're that's it. Yeah, then they go, No. What else? So I flew a lot. That was great. But after flying three amazing helicopters, the Ogoblin Pro, the M seven R, the Goose Guy Ultra.

I decided to sell something and it sold in like five minutes because I like to give good deals on things'cause I get good prices on things and I like to pass that on. But I sold my Ilgoblin Pro S XC edition, which I love that scheme. Wow. Wow, I'm surprised. Just don't need two of them by going. I I look at my wall of helicopters and I feel so fortunate and

I have like the top of the line helicopter from most brands and I just don't need two of anything. So it was time to let it go. So I'm glad I was able to pass that on to someone else who is very much enjoying it. Um I still need to sell my Nitron ninety. I just need to like be home long enough to take good pictures and

I was thinking about this the other day. I'm like, I need to talk Nick into going and doing another nitro flight, so maybe he'll second guess his nitro departure. No, I'm actually excited to depart Nitro. But I gotta sell the airframe before I let everything else go. I had so much fun with mine, I'm like, Man, Nick needs to fly one more time and just see if it's fun or not. Nitro is fun. It is a blast. But I feel like to keep a nitro running well you should fly it regularly, which I don't do.

And it just it just takes more time and time is the thing I'm learning. I need to fi prioritize things in the hobby that take less time. And Nitro was a more time thing. Rotor flight was a more time thing. And as I'm removing those things from my life, I'm enjoying the hobby more. And I'm not judging nitro, I'm not saying you should or shouldn't do it, but for me and my situation

It's improving the quality of my limited hobby time when I make these decisions. And I'm learning all these lessons the hard way and I'm having a lot of fun doing it, but it's just something I'm figuring out for me. Makes sense. Yeah. Think about this. If you didn't take the charger and the batteries, you'd have all that time to fuel up your nitro while you're charging.

Um you think about yeah, it is more work, but like if you didn't have to like charge batteries and stuff, you actually do have a lot of time, but you'd have to only be doing nitro. You know what I mean? Yeah. Because nitro itself you have plenty of time. But when you're trying to run electrics, it's not you know, it's time consuming.

I mean Nitro is awesome, but the truth is, whether it's a lawnmower, a mini bike that my kids have, I suck at engines. I suck at combustion engines. It is not my thing. It's not my jam. When they stop working, it makes me really mad. Like I can barely keep my electric weed whacker going, it feels like sometimes. So I just it's not for me.

So I'm here in Dallas, as I mentioned. Alex and I were hoping to fly tomorrow with a bunch of the Dallas folks, but the weather is abysmally bad tomorrow. So raining tomorrow. Tomorrow all day. I have my M seven R here in a golf case. I've never taken it out of the case. I didn't even bother assembling it. So I've been looking at the weather all week. It's okay. It was one of those things that was worth trying and'cause it had worked out it would have been great.

But it's fine. So now I'm just gonna fly home sooner tomorrow, which is fine. But some of the Dallas folks who hit me up, sorry I don't get to fly with you tomorrow, and then we have crappy weather, but it'll happen again. I'll be back here in July, I think, so we'll figure it out. Speaking of the M seven R, I have a I have a quandary about the M seven R and I feel like I I can talk about it here.

And it's that it flies really damn frickin' well. And I've been talking to various OMP team pilots about this and friends, and I'm really sad. I'm sad that there aren't More OMP helicopters in the United States.

that dealers don't have as much inventory as but I feel like we could blow up a Wimpy hobby in the United States i if we could get more of them here. Whoever the distributor is, whatever the situation is, whether Heledirect carries them or not, although I would love to see Heledirect get that brand back.

It is a damn fine helicopter. I am really enjoying the M seven R. But the truth is,'cause my primary sponsor doesn't carry it, I'll probably sell it at some point. But I am enjoying the heck out of flying it right now. At low head speed it is An absolute delight. I mean, I'm getting like almost eight minutes at fourteen hundred RPM and it is amazing how capable it is at fourteen hundred RPM. Like Yeah, that had... anything I ask about.

Smooth and flips and rolls really good without much effort at all. So good, so good with the Azure Pros on that helicopter, it is like huge ear to ear grin on my face every time I fly. I'm really enjoying my time with that helicopter. But So yeah, anyone from OMP Hobby, if you're listening, w we would love to see more of them in the United States. I'd love to see them at Heli Direct again.

Let's bring it. Bring'em in. Give everybody more. More to BK, more to A-Mane, more to HelliDirect, more to anybody. Let's let's just do it. So. I don't know if I didn't say too much there. This post. Love the helicopter. Very well done Jonas. Very much enjoying it. And that's all I got this.

Alright, with that, I think we're ready to uh do some of the newsy news. And now With all the news from inside the RC helicopter hobby, we bring you The road. report.

Alright, Venture Blades has announced carbon 195mm blades for micro helicopters. So now you can choose between the Azure Pros, Ventures, and First RC carbon blades for your micro helicopter. All of these seem to be hovering around the$40-ish dollar price range. And how do you guys feel about spending that much on the carbon blades for a micro?

I'm torn, right? I I haven't tried'em yet, so I but I definitely want to try some and see if it's worth it. But it's hard to argue against twelve dollar blades you can have like five sets of and switch out real quick. Bye. Thanks. Yeah. I heard the Vulcans once, and I just ended up taking them back off and going back to the stock M2 blades. But I haven't tried these other brands, so maybe I'll give them a shot. I mean the M two and the Goose Guy Blades are pretty damn good.

If you fly over grass and you crash, I mean how often does the blades get hurt or That's kinda what I'm thinking. I'm I'm yet to replace my M two V three blades. Like I would think carbons would just last a long time. Right. I also think when you don't fly very well, it's important your helicopter look excellent and carbon blades make a big difference there. Ha ha ha. Yeah get that feeling. Yeah. That's funny.

I mean those the stock ones are pretty flexible, so they may give a little bit more, but you might find some better, you know, stiff flight characteristics out of those uh low carbon ones too. I wonder if it's gonna affect the tune. Like if you take the stock tune and start messing with stiffer blades whether you're gonna have to do that.

I did on my M two those they felt totally different. Like you can fly it, but it's just in you gotta adjust things a little bit'cause they were more snappy kind of like on rolls and stuff. But I think it depends on those blades. They're all gonna be slightly different balance, so you might have to try all of them to see what what works the best for you.

I wonder with all these carbon blades coming out and Jonas being so deep into microhelicopters if Why can I not remember the name of the plates that he helps develop? L little tiny rudder tech ultimate. Rotortex, thank you. If Rotortech will release a blade for one ninety five.

So XL Power has been releasing short clips on their Facebook page that show the overviews of how to set up their microhelicopters, the Stratos two hundred on V bar and rotor flight. I saw some of these actually looked fairly simple really just a few clicks. Yep. So if you're interested in how to properly set up the model, just check those out on their Facebook page and hope you get started off on the right foot. The motorized tail for the helicopters does require some different approaches.

Then your standard helicopter with the parameters like the lightness and the tally for the tail settings and others come into play. These are timed well with the Stratos two hundred, so Those should be Shipping very soon. Oh yeah, did you we were gonna say did you guys order any, but we know Brian's got one? Did anybody else? I I did order one as well. It's already dead. He's ordering during the episode right now. That's why he went to get so that they'll go to the bathroom, yeah.

He's got bird. He's like, Can you send me a stratus and maybe another M one? We'll see if they arrive. actually messaged me while we were recording, he was like, Alright to sent you a new MY That's a good one. That's very good of it.

All right, guys. So the recent spring flame fun fly was a big success with over 90 pilots in attendant. They also held the Urcha Cup competition at the event, attracting some of the top U.S. pilots. This year, Tanner Tanner Ingram on the OMP hobby team took third place. We had uh Arlen Dunn on the Tron team that took second. And Raphael, I'm gonna say Carrasculan. I probably said that wrong. I'm sorry, Raphael. Well, the XL Power team that took first place, congratulations.

Congrats, guys. Um congrats. Yeah, congrats to all the pilots who competed. Um it's always good to see this trend of the Urcha Cup. continuing and we hope to see more of it and and a lot more of you f pilots out there enter the competition and try this a bit more relaxed competition format. So Kudos to you guys. Yeah, right on. Congrats, fellas. Is that cut of scale? Convincing. That was nice. That's nice, Kenny. Can you say that like again?

My R's like that. Yeah, they look at that. That's good. I married a Hispanic woman but I can't say it as good as you can to me. Congratulations. No, right? Ha ha. I took Spanish for no reason but I still can't speak it. Oh gosh. I've been married to one for thirty years in Kansas Beach. Uh That's it. Yeah.

Whew. SAB has announced their own high rigidity dampers. Part number is H two five eight four S. For those that are a fan of more rigid damping and more direct feel, these are for the Ilkgoblin Pro and Raw models. I don't know if they're gonna do this for the Puma yet, available at the end of May. It's funny because I saw this come out and I was like, huh. I kinda wanna get another algophyt.

And then I started thinking about my goals for the year and I was like no this is not aligned with my goals for the year. Memorial Government Pros. I wonder whether their pre-existing one, you know, we've seen several folks develop rigid dampening, whether it's Rob Bingham putting some together or Augie obviously has a set as well. They look very similar to all of those.

Yep. All right, Mikado has finally announced the replacement to their previous micro receiver that's been out of stock for quite some time. So the VLink S Bus telemetry receiver should be available within the next month or so. 85 Bucks US gets you a 4.2 gram receiver that will allow you to control OMP, Goose Guy, and other microhelicopters that'll work with S Bus signals.

and have compatible telemetry capabilities. So for now, OMP is the only brand I'm aware of where the telemetry will work, but it's likely ver more will follow very soon. Makado USA used the following verbiage to describe it, quote,

Indoor receiver for use on small models like microhelys, park flyers, typically not a full range receiver. So don't go slapping this on anything bigger that uh you're not gonna keep fairly close by is what I take away from that description, but you could certainly use it outdoors as well.

All right, Goose Guy has announced their own rotor flight FBL called the F seven oh one ELRS. This full featured uh FBL features a built-in ELRS antenna and features the STM thirty two F722. Main processor and the ICM four two six eight eight P High precision IMU for the gyro. It features plenty of ports for all the inputs and outputs you would ever need and also compatible with the external receivers running S bus, DSMX, and F Bus protocols.

It can handle up to sixteen volts of BEC power and is available in either a purple or the blue metal case. Which is probably better than the V Bart cases, as usual. Always. Ouch. They should be available sometime in May. Free orders are open for eighty five dollars US. Pilots like uh Goose Guys Diego Arce and few others I think have already proven their capabilities and we're showing it off at the spring flame. Eighty five dollars for a metal cased FBL with rescue and pro features? No way.

That was a little Barry White action there. I like that. Between Kenny speaking Spanish, Brian busting out the berry. I'm getting excited here.

Well I got some news here. So the Heli Storm scale The helicopter community has announced that in partnership with Urcha, they will be hosting a scale. Helicopter gathering and competition during Urta this year. So it's a whole new competition format designed to attract a wide variety of skilled levels of scale helicopter builders and pilots. Um you can visit their website at w dot hellystorm dot org for more information. But definitely check it out. If you plan to attend the Urcha

comp uh or event rather, the scale helicopters are often a highlight for many of us to attend. So Yeah, and and I don't know if they're gonna be at the far west side of They are. They are, yeah. They'll be at the west end. It's a giant tent that they normally uh erect there and put all the scale helicopters, but but check out the website to see, you know, details on what this competition is all about. So go scale. We're gonna have some scale guys.

I know, we really do. We need to find the right fit for that, but we we definitely knew. So if you got ideas for the right scale palettes for us to have on the show, hit us up. I was excited about this because I was like, oh, it's like it's because it sounds like from looking at their website there's some formats that kind of

Similar to the AMA sort of in you know, entry classes to scale. Let you fly maybe a semi scale bird and focus on the flying abilities versus the, you know, scale details kind of thing. So And I went and looked up the dates for Urcha and I was like, Man, I got a work trip that week, so I'm bumming'cause that sounded like a lot of fun to me. So be cool. Well I had a feeling it would be either Goose Guy or LMP. Hobby. All capital.

M P all capital letters. MCK All Capital Letters also recently announced that he has decided to join the OMP hobby team and has been posting a bunch of videos of him flying the M7R and other helicopters in the OMP line. And what I mean by flying that is he has been beating the absolute You know what?

You know what out of this machine, dude, just good grief. Jowan Bao was in China this week and he recorded some videos of him too that are if you haven't seen Jaoan's page, like just beating it, dude. He is that's I said that. Uh and according to a recent interview with M C K Uh he basically chose the brand because of how well the frames are holding up to his flying and he's not having to replace any parts at all. Everything's been holding up well. Well

He said he can focus on flying and less on maintenance, and he also announced he's flying OMP's house brand of motors, Sunny Sky. A recent photos show that it's an all white motor with an interesting shape at the top. And also design on the side. Is that motor out? Like is that a thing already? I don't think it's out yet, but it's of certainly a unique look. Um Yeah. It's weird looking. Congrats to MCK. Congrats to OMP. Uh be I'm excited to see what the future holds with.

The way the hobby is going and the way the machines hold up to abuse is just ridiculous. It I mean, watching the videos come out from MCK, it it's been unreal. Just unreal. Your mind can't catch up to what the helicopter's doing. It's so good. Uh I actually I've been talking to him a little bit and he basically has the rates as high as the blades will handle. If if the blades could do more without stalling, he would have it higher. He's crazy, dude. I believe it.

It's also been fun to watch top pilots like Kyle Stacy and MCK following this trend of just beating the crap out of the helicopters. Tiny helicopters like the M one or the Stratus 200 indoors. Uh. And I I kinda ordered an M one'cause I want to see if I can do this. I don't think I can, but I'm gonna put a hole in my wall if I have to. Yeah, lesser pilots should not fly this at home try this at home. But I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna fly this at home. Let's see. Let's see. It's fun to watch.

I want to know. I feel like the more pilots are gonna give it a shot. I've seen a few more videos from folks. It's cool. I mean I know I can't fly a two hundred inside. I just hovering a two hundred at high head speed is freaking terrifying inside to me. Yeah. It is. Yeah, it's loud. Dude, I used to do stall turns with my my little blade uh nano stall turn in the in the living room. You know what I'm saying? Yes, bro. No way. Dead serious.

I want to see OMP release like a blade S three nano equivalent, like something super light that's not gonna do a lot of damage. The M one not that size, I'm expecting the M one to be that size. Bigger and heavier than like a nano S three. Yeah. Dang, I was thinking that.

I have flown mine M one V three in a couple of hotel rooms. I have not done any I haven't taken an inverted or done anything crazy. I've just been like hovering and pirouetting around or whatever, but Makes me appreciate how good these guys are. They're very good. Yeah.

All right. Time to raise your glasses, gentlemen. It's time for Spirit News. Spirit has announced a new version of their software, Spirit 4.0.3, which now features. But there's no more ice in it. Yeah. Uh New Spirit Software four dot oh dot three features fixed support for Android devices to interface with the FBL. So that's now available on the Google Play Store.

And Spirit also announced an update to their Spirit Air onboard uh flight simulator on the Spirit Wade radios. So version one dot one is now available for those transmitters. Uh it includes Performance optimations to raise the frame rate to eighty frames per second, simulated mechanics movement, big physics update, a new bottle, a new model available, which is the Eelgoblin Pro seven hundred, and a new airfield choice. So you can find this on the Spirit App Store.

Uh, I personally haven't had a chance to try it yet. I need to get on Wi Fi at home so I can download it. That's the problem with hotel Wi Fi. It's always got like a splash page where you gotta type your room number and stuff in and you can't do that on the radio. Anyway, looking forward to that and also on the spirit front, at least in the United States, you should see and worldwide a ton of their products back in stock elsewhere.

There were some chip supply issues that every manufacturer's been fighting with that have been resolved, so expect to see a lot of those products back on the shelf everywhere else.

All right. I also, just in random, I saw this on social media, couldn't help but highlight a recent post I saw on a Rotorflight Facebook group from a new actually it was a Radio Master Facebook group, sorry. This was from a new radio master pilot who posted a photo of a TX thirteen S MK three and six Nexus XR rotor flight FBL boxes. His own caption for the photo quick. I've entered the world of Radio Master products with great intensity, but I know nothing about it.

Uh Dude, why would you do this? I don't know. But I just wanna say, best of luck to you, brother. Boy do you have a mountain to climb. It's very rewarding when you get to the top of the mountain, but but good luck. ¡Wow! I saw that. I saw that. I feel like do you think we could pick for a rotor replay one of these MCK flights? There's so many good ones. I don't know how we pick one. Um I mean the one on Jao and Bao's page, his recording is so good. The pink one.

I feel like we need to find we'll pick one for rotor replay because if you all haven't seen any of these MCK flights, you absolutely have to. So congrats as you said, OMP Hobby and MCK. Uh Alex, I think you got one s one more thing.

I have one little more bit of news. I know that the Aeon servos, they're Eons actually, by the way, I've been saying Aeon. I don't know if I'm ever gonna change that. Has some low profile servos on the way. And also batch number two should be here a couple of weeks. Just more news on that front. Interesting that he's continuing to release more products. All right.

We're gonna cover just some quick date announcements, reminders for fun flies coming up in May and June. We'll dig into the later events a little bit. John Titus, if you're listening, hit me up with dragonfly dates. I haven't seen those yet, because I know that's coming soon as well. All right. Alex, why don't you uh kick us off?

Austin Radio Control, that's in Texas, by the way. Austin, Texas Radio Control Association event will take place May twenty second and twenty-third. And for more information, contact event coordinator, Richard Spiegel. Kenny, it's your turn.

So we got the Cincy SmackDown taking place on June fourth through seventh. Uh you got the Club Crash Heli Spectacle in the province of Quebec in Canada will take place June 5th, 6th, and 7th. More info on the Facebook page of Club Crash.

Formerly known as the Georgia Heli Gathering, is now called the Peach State Heli Classic. Wait a minute, wait a minute. They changed the name already on an inaugural event? Yes, I know, I know. It's married idea. State Heli classic? Yeah. I I d I don't know where it came from, but it we changed it and it's it's plastered all over poster boards and and They should use they should use Mario's peach princess. There's that Planker photo I posted everywhere of that dude's peach.

Oh dude, you did. That was gross. But no Georgia's the peach state, so that's where it's cut. All right. Go ahead. Taking place june fifth through the seventh still at Sarah Farms or Brian. I don't like the name. Georgia. Brian. Brian I don't say it again. I don't like the name. Yeah, that would work. Uh Marshall you hear that? They don't like the Ha ha ha. They don't want to. I'm putting it back on Marsh. Um

This is our first one, so we're we're testing the waters, trying to figure out, you know, typical things about fun flies and such and so. Yeah, the name is was all over the place. So we'll we'll we'll solidify if we're gonna be able to do what's the name? It is now called the Peach State Heli Classic. Bye-bye. I don't like that. How do we know if it's classic if we haven't been yet? Yeah. Oh I don't know.

Yeah. Love you, Marshall. And Brian And myself and Alex are all gonna be there, so you should come. Yeah. But when you walk in the door and you find Marshall Tolm it's a terrible name. Terrible name. Terrible name. Well you named this. Cool, man.

But let me tell you what's gonna be there real quick,'cause there's gonna be The thing is chock full of stuff. I mean and Marshall keeps adding so much. I'm like, dude, slow down, breathe. Okay, slow down and breathe. But listen, so we're gonna have this precision flying competition there. They have three C competitions, sportsmen, AMA classes, expert classes and such.

We're gonna have two to three 3D stations set up. We also found the section we can set up like two micro stations. So we're gonna have a couple of stations there for micro helicopters. specifically for those to fly. And they're just lots of fun activities. So of course there's this auto rotation contest that's taking place as well. And even the clinic, we're having like an a a precision flying clinic that Friday as well. So

Lots of things to do. It's gonna be a lot of fun. We got a big barbecue food truck coming out too to feed everyone on Saturday. And we're just looking forward, definitely looking for good feedback too from a uh, you know, first event perspective and You know, we already got one thing from Alex on the name, so we'll we'll put that in the hat and But I go on and on and on about it. I'm sorry, but support us guys. Support us. This is gonna be fun.

Yes, it is gonna be fun and I'm biased, but the Georgia Heli crew is a fantastic group of people. So come say hi. Come say come hang out. Come support this new event. And come see three out of the four of us. Not that that's a draw, but come say hi. Yeah. And the weather's gonna be amazing in June. It'll be warm and lovely. And it'll be classic. I would say something, but if you don't have something nice to say, you know. Do you get a peach when you register? Kenny save a stuff.

Toss and that's the next event. The Ash Creek RC Hollywood and Flies in Anderson, California. Will take place on June 5th through 7th. Ash Creek. Ah that's great. It is it's Ash Creek. The Ash Creek. Yeah. Yeah. What a great name. It is. Just rolls off the tongue. Why did I get this one? Okay, here we go. Nick. I trimmed all the weird stuff out. Very unique name. So the Heli Funfly. is june twelfth through the fourteenth in Norway. I want to go there. RC model fly club in Perkins, Minnesota.

That's fantastic. Yeah. And if any of you from the Helly Fun Fly want to send us a recording of how you actually say that, by all means we'll put it on the show. The Heli Fun Fly is a good name too, just as long as there isn't any other Heli Fun Flies. Name des So there's a there's this event coming up in on June eleventh through the fourteenth in Saint Charles, Missouri. And I've I've always wanted to go there'cause of the name. What a great name, the Whirly Birds Classic Event.

What a great name. The Warly Birds Classic. It's classic. I could just Classes. Classic. Find out more at stlstoolwirybirds.com Oh, all right, the last one of the night here for events. So the CCRC, hell a smackdown event in Farmington, Connecticut, has announced date. Their two day event will take place june twenty seventh and twenty eighth, northeast of the United States. Let's go.

All right, that wraps up our list of May and June events. Be sure and support your local events and check'em out. And if we're missing any, you know where to find us. Hit us up. And that's all we got for the news this week. The classic news. The Peach Classic News. This is Daryl. And you're listening to the Roto Revolution.

This week we have a very special main topic that I think we're all looking forward to that we're gonna record in a few days from today. But Rob Bingham is certainly no stranger to the show. You've heard him on all of the rotor live episodes that he's helped bring us. He's been a longtime friend of the show, constantly messaging us all, is equally as passionate about the hobby as we are.

Also is a very talented tinkerer manufacturer of metal things via CNC, releases a number of products, including starter shafts, dampeners for some helicopters, all kinds of fun stuff. He is a member of the Midland Helicopters team in the UK, as well as Scorpion Motor and ESCs, as well as the OMP hobby team as well. Very much looking forward to having Rob on the show. So with that, here's our chat with Rob.

All right, Rob, welcome to the show. This has been a long time in coming to get this put together to get us all here. Kenny unfortunately is not with us today, but we got the rest of the crew with you. Good afternoon to you. Good morning to us. Uh welcome to the show, Rob. Good afternoon or good morning wherever you are and thanks very much for inviting me. Yeah. How you doing, Alex?

So Rob, we always like to start, despite the fact that we've all known each other for a while, our listeners may not be as familiar with you. So let's get a little bit of background here before we dig in. So tell us a bit about your history in the hobby. How did you how did you come to start flying helicopters? Oh my goodness. Uh is this do you want the condensed version or a slightly longer version or Whichever one's good. Uh huh.

Ranger control modeling I've been doing for a long time. I'm I'm fifty-eight years of age now and I start I built my first Balsa and Dope model aeroplanes with my dad when I was about six. He bought me my first nitro engine when I was eight, so that's fifty years ago. Last month actually in April, so I've been doing nitro engines for fifty years.

And then did radio controlled cars all through my teenage years. I did control line aeroplanes. Didn't do a lot of radio controlled airplanes, more control line with nitro and cars was my main thing. And then through the eighties, nineteen eighties, I raced one eighth circuit, uh so on road racing then, and one eighth off road. Got to doing all the British championships and the European championships for both series. So that was fun.

Picked up some sponsorships along the way with Rex engines, which is like Novarossi. It's a subdivision of Novarossi engines. and local sponsorship in the UK for tyres and things like that, which was obviously handy.

And then I stopped racing in nineteen eighty nine and bought my first Region Charlot helicopter. But basically racing was getting it was too much, you know. I was I was like every evening I was stripping and rebuilding cars. Every weekend we were out and it was it was just getting crazy and I've kind of had a a burnt out basically on on RC cars.

So I bought my first Regidor helicopter because again it's nuts and bolts, it's mechanical and it's what I love doing, which was a MFA five hundred, which is aluminium and plywood. With a that was incredible. Yeah. Um within twelve or thirteen tanks I was hovering that without the the assistance of the bulls and bamboo

uh rods with balls on the end of them to stop the thing tipping over. And that was just in the field next to my house. I was fortunate to be born and brought up in the country and with a nice big field next to where I lived and next to a farm J I had free space basic key to fly whenever I wanted. So I did that, then progressed onto Horobo Shuttle. I had a couple of three different iterations of the Horobo Shuttle.

And that was right up to the point then when my wife and I bought our house and then money had to be used on different things then, like new windows and carpets and kitchens and stuff like that. So I actually I had to pull out the hobby then for a a few years. actually got into motorbike racing then I I did some motocross when I was younger and then I got back into doing enjoyed the this need for speed came back for a bit. So I did some motorbike racing until uh maybe two thousand

Two thousand five, I'm gonna guess. Two thousand six. Yeah, two thousand six probably. It's the last race I did.

And then unfortunately I had a quite nasty illness. I I nearly lost my life was to sepsemia. Um and that changed a lot of things for me and completely cut my motorbikes out altogether. I had major surgery. I was off work for nine months, have all my colon removed and um And while I was

ill and recovering from that, I kind of my wife bought me in a model helicopter international, I think it was, magazine, because I just need this is kind of almost the early days of the internet, so there wasn't a lot around like the forums and stuff. Well th guess there was, but

I wasn't in that scene really. And I just started picking it up from from there again and bought in a line four fifty, which suddenly then I bought a line five hundred. Then the the Apsia Me is in a line seven hundred LE, the Nitro.

th the Jason Krauss designed a line, which is still to this day one of the best nitros I think has ever been designed. What a a solid machine that was. And that was it then, headlong into it and I've been into it ever since. So but really, sir, my first Helly was nineteen eighty nine. had a break and then back into it from about two thousand five, two thousand six.

Okay. And now you're deep into it, right? Organizing events in the UK Heli scene, um sponsored which speaking of which Yeah, and I was just saying full pitch fun fly was was my baby. Which was uh so I used to s I started running a fun fly at a club that I was a member of. Then we unfortunately lost that club and lost the field because it was being converted into a a camping site with mains electricity and water and hookups and everything for RVs, et cetera. So we lost that big field.

So I did a couple of fun flies, notably one that Doug Derby came to, uh, the White Horse fun fly and Carl Dahl came over too. And then when we lost that field, I thought, right, I've found somewhere more local home and um I've carried on with with full patch then ever since. It's fantastic. It explains certainly why you're so good with nitrous. Yeah, and Doug's always telling me that he has eighty nine years of experience. I thought he was older than So Ha ha ha.

I no Doug Doug does can't add up too well. Yeah. That's that's my nickname he's given me. Yeah. Cảm ơn các bạn đã theo dõi và hẹn gặp lại. Tell us a little bit about your sponsors, Rob. Who are you with right now? Okay, so my very first sponsor was OptiFuel and OptiPower in I think that was about two thousand and thirteen, two thousand and fourteen.

And I was with them for a long time. I knew Andy really well. Andy knew I knew about nitro of fuel. So it was more with the opti fuel side than it was with the battery side, obviously. And I was with them for about twelve years, really good at the time. And then

I m Trevor from Midland Helicopters messaged me out of the blue one day which was in I said, Rob but you know, we'd like you to join the team and I thought, Yeah, that'd be fantastic'cause I've The thing is I've because I run my own b I've got my own company, I've got my own business and family, so I I don't have a huge amount of time to fly. So my flying level has never really progressed beyond i I should be much better for the time I've been flying, but

I've never really put the effort, if I'm honest, into it. Like the the hours that are needed on the SIM to get a lot better. So I never expected to pick up any sponsorship or anything because I never felt that I was worthy of sponsorship or good enough. And so that was a real surprise when Midlands asked me to join them. And that's turned out to be absolutely phenomenal. I mean, within a year.

Trevor Surprised we we arranged new team clothing and he'd say, Rob, I'm just gonna get his new jacket or whatever, I'll have it printed, I'll send one to you to sample if you like the look of it and everybody's happy with it, then we'll get them for all the team. I said, Yeah, great. My jacket turned up and embroidered across the front of it, Rubbingham, team manager. And that was the first I heard of it. They dropped it on me as a surprise. That's one way to find out. That's great.

Yeah, literally just opening the package and there's this Robingham team manager written across the front. I'm like, Oh my god I d and I sort of messaged him and he's got a big smiling face. I said, Congratulations, you're our new team manager. So yeah, that was that was a nice surprise. And then I've worked hard to try and build uh the build the team up. We got a really good synergy between all the team members.

We've got a a chat group which uh I started as soon more or less as soon as I joined I I built a chat group because there wasn't Really anything to join everybody together. We would only really see each other at events. And that's I mean, we're on there every single day of the week. Like everybody's commenting and chatting. It doesn't have to be about helicopters, it's about anything, you know. There's no rules.

It's yeah, it's great. It's a great community we've built and i we've got a really good uh almost brotherhood, shall we say, between all the between the flight team and I've got some amazing guys on my flight team, which I'm super happy with.

Yeah. And then I joined I left Opti Power and the and the only reason why I left Optifuel and Opti I'm not I still care on using Optifuel, in my opinion is the best fuel I've ever used in all in all these fifty years of nitro use. But I wanted the freedom to be able to choose other lipos and and you know, better bigger range, et cetera, that was available.

And within twelve hours of me announcing that I was gonna leave OptiPower, I was contacted by Mania Rex and said, We really want you on the team. Oh, okay, that's very good of you and I thought, well Why not? So I joined Opti uh so I jo joined Maniax in Twenty twenty three, I think maybe twenty twenty four. I've been really enjoying the the H V sales that I'm running with with uh Menurex as well. So so that's my three main sponsors is obviously Midlands. Manurex and of course, OMP Hoppy.

And you have a motor and ESC sponsor as well, right? Scorpion. Scorpion power systems, yeah, which is really cool. And I've been using Scorpion for Oh, well over ten years. It's gotta be. I was at the time I've been using Contronic Cosmic ESEs because they were just the gold standard. Uh they just they were just bulletproof. But I was always using Scorpion electric motors. And then uh we're gonna say it's probably twenty two, twenty three, called our

had a chat with me at Rota Live over in Germany. He said, Rob, we'd really like you to join a team and um I said, Yeah, that'd be that'd be absolutely amazing. I was quite shocked that again that he asked me to join. I was so lovely to it's really lovely to be invited to join a team. rather than you know, you often hear a lot of people sort of pushing to just be sponsored and, you know, asking it uh and and it's almost I don't know if that's a

you know, sort of something to boast about or whatever that oh yeah, I'm this member of this team or a member of that team. But I thought it was really cool to actually be invited to join a team rather than me pushing, trying to join a team if you're not a being No, it is. So Scorpion's been absolutely fantastic and obviously I've known Carl a long time. Carl Dolas is we go back quite a long way. I did some work with him behind the scenes with the Glogo before that was even announced.

And then obviously he came over to my Funfly in two thousand eighteen and two thousand nineteen. And so he made the trip to the UK, which was fantastic. And that helped build full pitch fanflight to what he's having some of his status of coal dole there. It was amazing. And then obviously I joined OMP Hobby last year, which has been absolutely amazing. I'd be really excited to be part of this group and um it's yeah, that's fantastic. Be a factory pilot for them.

I gotta ask about the OMP hobby. You're one of the sort of And this is another title bestowed on you by others and not yourself, speaking of being invited to things. You're one of the kings of nitro in the hobby, you know, well known as an expert with a lot of experience. How did you end up on a team that doesn't sell a nitro heller?

It started because OMP in the in the early days when the M four first came out, I was asked by Midland helicopters through the importers they said look we've got this we've got this model that's that's bigger than the m1n2 um and We've got a review kit for four Midland helicopters. Would you like to build it and review it for us? Because a a lot of the team were already on deals with either SAB or Align or Tron or whoever they were with. And I wasn't affiliated to a a brand of such.

And I said, Yeah, I'd love to, that'd be that'd be great. So I built the M four and then obviously the M four Max came out and while this was going on I was really enjoying flying these models but I was also still able to fly Nitro. because I was still under the Midland banner, then should we say, rather than a team banner? So then when the opportunity came along to join well, initially what happened was is I was at Rotalife and Jeff Wren, who's the boss man or one of the owners of OMP.

he ha wanted to have a meeting with me, have a chat with me. And basically they wanted me to head up a UK O M P hobby flight team for me f m for me to be the team manager. And which is obviously that was really exciting to do and I said, But there's a caveat to here, I fly nitro, as well as electric. And is there gonna be a problem'cause I've I've got my Tron Nitron ninety and I've got my Glogo, etcetera. I've got quite a few Nitro Heli.

Am I still gonna be o s okay to fly other brands as well as OMP side by side? And they went, Yep, not a problem at all. So there was no issue with that with me still. So I can still go out to a UK fun fly, still fly my Nitron ninety or whatever, you know, I still got my Synergy five five six, etcetera. So they had no problem with me flying other brand models.

And so that's the other deal. If they said no, you can't fly any other brand, only OMP, then I would have had to have thought twice about joining the team. Yeah. Because because nitro is so important to me. Absolutely. Well the M seven nitro's coming out when now? Well, I mean we're always working on new and wonderful things. Um you know, exciting projects. And I'll see why I can't tell you exactly what we're working on, you can rest assured that we're always working on something new. Thank you.

Nick Jonas is smiling ear to ear right now. Well Yeah. I knew as soon as they as soon as Gregor joined the team too, I was like, Oh Well then the work ain't there. That's cool.

Hey Rob, quick question though. So And and we've been trying to get used to this new name. So, you know, we used to say just O and P but we've been slapped on the hand a few times and we can't call it that anymore. It's O and P hobby. We have to remember to say O and P hobby. So what happened? What why can't we just say O and P So OMP, if you if you just go straight on Google now and and type in OMP. OMP is a a a major race where they are involved, like for instance in Formula One.

the safety car, the doctor car, etcetera. They all got oh it the the race suit Oh yeah. The like the fireproof suits, the crash helmets, safety belts, all of that stuff is called ONP. It's a it's a UK brand. But it's it but they're part of, you know, the FIA world championships and stuff like that of various different levels.

Uh so OMP i uh the original like that name, if you just say OMP, then that will take you to a motorsport website and not OMP hobby website. So on the Reach out to you guys and say, Hey, you have to stop calling yourself O M P. No, I don't no, because because we're technically not OMP, we're OMP hobby.

Obviously OMP came from Ohio Model Products. That was the where the where the name came from. And then they've obviously put hobby on it because it's hobby related, whether it's RC aeroplanes or RC helicopters and obviously in the world. It's not a hobby and it's a lifestyle. That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. Don't forget it's all in capital's mind, it's very important.

Yeah. Yeah, but that's the reason it's to differentiate it from the the OMP, which are a big brand in, you know, world level like Formula One. As opposed to us with our with our little region control models. So yeah, it's that's why and obviously when you're naming, when you're using nomenclature, you've got to try and use the correct stuff.

so that people know what they're googling or looking up to to find a model. That's that's why you know, representation of the product is quite important to us. Yeah, I uh absolutely appreciate that. That's good.

So so Rob, so we obviously love all the work you've done at the Road Alive events and all the interviews that you give us from some of the UK events, you know. So what made you reach out to us? What made you decide to reach out to us? You know, had you really enjoyed doing this for us? I mean I've so I've been a massive podcast fan right from day one. Th literally before almost almost the beginning of time a podcaster's uh because it unlike radio where

y you can just listen to the subject matter you want to listen to. Um and then I don't know how I guess It was probably chatting with you, Nick, wouldn't it? Or we probably sort of and something suddenly came up in conversations like, Well, I don't mind doing some interviews and and uh stuff to I was actually thinking about it,'cause you Nick originally asked me if I wanted to be one of the presenters like of this podcast.

right in the early days and I'm like, I don't know if it's gonna work. At A the time scale. Yeah, I think.'Cause of my run my own company and seven or eight months of the year I am flat out. I'm a gas engineer by trade, which basically in the UK most houses are heated by gas boilers, gas heating.

And so that's my trade and I've run my own company with that. And so during the winter, basically September to March, I'm flat out with work. So I would no way could I commit to doing something weekly or fortnightly at two in the morning. um to to be with you guys uh to be as uh to act you know as a presenter. So I think s we probably chatted about time so well I can try and do something on the European

side of the hobby for you as a as a presenter and I ge I guess probably it's something like that, Nick, I think, from memory. We probably chatted along those lines of where it started. Yeah, that sounds right. I and you know, I I think we've always wanted to get

More voices than just the American voices um in the hobby on the show. So it's been great that we've been able to connect with s some of the European audience. Well, this is true. Uh I like to think of myself as full English with a piece of paper that lets me not get deported. So yeah, so pog po say with the podcast really, it all just started with that. I've always enjoyed listening to all of the the hobby podcasts.

I've learnt a lot from it as well from people and yeah, it's been I think I think it's such a fantastic platform and it brings everybody together as well. It's another another medium to bring everybody together. Yeah. Uh when you're over at Rotor Live doing interviews, are folks pretty receptive to it into doing it?

Yeah, absolutely. Because I mean, luckily, you know, most of these guys that I chat to already know me and know me quite well, so I can just go up to Kenny or I can, you know, go up to who whoever, Carl or or anybody and

Joachim at Tron, et cetera, and saying I I need to can I do an interview with you? And they're like, Yeah, sure. Sure. So I'll just go through with them briefly what I'm gonna question them on or what I'm gonna outline or what you know something they've they know uh they're already ahead of time of what I'm gonna ask, like like Jonas, do you actually speak any German? Yeah. Uh so basically then I just give'em a have a quick heads up with them.

it's very difficult to get interviews on Saturday because i the place is so busy, so many people in there. Whereas on a a f a Sunday early in the morning or later in the afternoon things are quieting down a bit. So you can grab people then, which obviously then I've got to be careful to try and time it right. A, I don't wanna miss the the flying when it with the competition flying.

And then also I've got to try and make sure I nail people before they start packing up their stand and and they're busy themselves. So yeah, it's it's it's all right. I just I uh literally when I see'em on a Friday I said, I need to interview this weekend they're Yeah, it's fine. So really good. So it's really cool actually being able to go over to Germany and meet up with all of the European guys and people from all around the world and chat with them. World.

We're all there for a common language at the end of the day, aren't we? For sure. So every everybody's always been very r I've n well, I've never had anybody say no yet. So it's been really good. Have you been to any of the US events yet, Rob?

Yes, once. I came this is actually quite a nice story. I went to the Orlando Spring Fling in two thousand nineteen. So basically my wife and I, it was for my fiftieth birthday, we booked a holiday f when my girls were the sort of the right age to do the Disney Orlando. Ja, das ist ja. Yeah. So then so we booked that and then I f while I was in the travel agents, I phoned

Frank Mardos. And said, Frankie, what's what's the best weather to come to Florida? What what's the best time of year? Because I know that they have either stupidly hot or it could be really wet or it could be fantastic. And he said, Mate, you wanna come really like April or whatever the time was in the in the autumn?

So I said, Sure, so we're literally um in the travel agents ringing in and uh I said, Right, we can go April times So then they they looked up then when the school what for us would be our Easter holidays was what what weeks they were. And we booked two weeks in Orlando. So I messaged Frankie back as, Hey mate, we're coming on we were actually flying out on April the first.

And landing on April the second, which was actually the day of my what would then be my fifty first birthday,'cause we booked it ahead of time so that the kids could get excited and learn about what different rides so we had a bit of a programme of what we were gonna do.

And I messaged him and he went, Oh, that'd be really cool. I'll drive up, come and meet you, that'd be fantastic And then suddenly out of the blue, uh literally that evening I think it was, I had a message from the a lovely gator. And he said, Hey Rob, I hear you're gonna be coming to Florida and I said, Yeah And he said, So Frankie's just said it's these days so I said, Correct.

Right, he said, So then we've got our fun fly with the spring fling on He said, But that's the weekend that you're flying into the country, which means you'll miss it. I went, Oh no He said, Don't worry, he said, I'm moving the date. He said I'm moving it on one week. So that you could be my guest as honor. That's cool. No way. Thank you. How cool was that? So yeah, so Gator blesses lovely socks. He he uh he changed the date of the spring fling so that

to coincide for my middle weekend of being in Florida. Frankie drove up and Doug drove for like two days or whatever it is, you know Yeah, it's so far away from us here in Texas. Yeah. Yeah. So Doug drove down in in his RV and we had such an amazing weekend. Basically I left the girls at the hotel. They were happy just to have a day off and in the swimmer pool and whatever. So I I had a rental car and so I drove over to to the fun fly.

And it was quite cool then that evening'cause I drove Frankie and Doug and Nadine to a restaurant so we all went net together and I was the one driving, which was the which was strange thing. I don't even drive on the Yeah. This is this is where Frankie taught me about Waze, the uh the app for um where police cars are. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which obviously we've got in this country as well. So yeah, we ha it was it so yeah, so my only US event has been the Springfling. Brilliant to meet up with

But and I but I met Bert number of times as well at Road to Life. Uh I love Bert. He's a great guy. Kyle Stacey, but again I'd already met Kyle. at a Venlo obviously for three D uh Global Three D when it was at Venlo obviously very sad that that event's not taking place at the moment. So a lot of these guys that I already met, already knew because I was going out to Global Three D each year in Europe.

And Bert's been to the UK as well. Carl s yes, Carl Stacy has for zone competition. So Nick, I'd Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Jamie Robinson, Ben Storic, all these guys have been out to the UK for zone. So I'd already met a lot of these guys anyway. But yeah, that was special to meet Gator for the first time. I met him again at Remtalive not last year, the year before, wasn't it, two years ago, yeah. So obviously so sad that we've lost him. What a gentleman he was.

Yeah. Um but also amazing that he changed the whole date of the event to coincide for me to be a guest of honour at the event, which was incredible. That's how it is. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if he met Nick Shaw uh was um Oh Steve. Steve. Steve Shaw. Yeah. Sorry, Steve. Sorry about that. That's not the best example of America, but you know.

Well all right, so I've not had the opportunity to go to an event overseas and I I want to sometime. R I really want to go to Helifest or something. But Helifest is the ones come to in the UK without. I want I w I want to do that. But my question really is, all right, so you've been doing a that was a probably a really good event in the US that was probably a good representation of what events are like here.

Is it pretty similar over there, like the funfly kind of the same atmosphere, or is it different in overseas? Yeah, exactly. What I what I saw at uh Spring Fling was pretty much identical to what happens in the UK. Just lots of people just chit chatting, doing their own thing, going out flying, just generally a really good laugh. Everybody's having a good time, very relaxed.

And that's the ethos I've tried to push into full pitch is because it was traditionally and the when I dated Full Pitch was straight after Global Three D at Venlo. So people that are flying at Venlo where there's high pressure and you're you know, you've got to do your best'cause it's competition could then come and literally, as we say, let your hair down. come and camp over for a weekend, etcetera and just

ha have fun in the field and we have fire pit and everything. Everybody sat out till one or two o'clock in the morning around a fire pit and just chatting shit and just having a great time really. Yeah, so it's it's really good camaraderie and everything. It and it it just helps build everybody, uh helps keep the hobby flowing, keeps everybody's spirits and energy up. I think that's really, really vital.

Do you okay, so uh you're a normal fun flyer? Is there normally a competition, like a three D competition? So we have golden hour, which is that's been epic actually. So th which is literally just as we we do that at like eight o'clock at night as it's just starting to get dusky at nine o'clock. So which is obviously perfect nitro time. So we just have the one competition wi on the Saturday night, which is judged by the crowd.

purely on entertainment value. Yeah, that could be six year old child going out and just hovering and enjoying themselves or it could be the most crazy smack flight you've ever seen. uh with uh to off to the left of the field where we fly, there's a pair of big oak trees with a hollow between them. And Connor Sloan, the one time the year, when he won it, he did a travelling ailer on TikTok and went s through between the trees and come back up round the back of them. Still TikToking.

How the hell he did that,'cause it was miles away. And you can't see it anymore. Everybody was yeah, everybody was just like gods. But that's why I'm not sure. Literally was travelling about oh maybe twelve, fifteen foot above the ground on uh doing a elevator tick tock all the way across uh is elevator either on tick I can't remember but anyway, he basically tick tocked, kept it dead level and pushed it out straight between these trees and back up round the back side of it.

अबले माफाइब So we just do well we do golden hour just for a bit of fun. And then some of the other fun flies in the UK they'll do auto competition like spot spot lining, etc. Or bottle locking. You know, just those sort of fun stuff like that. So use a bit of a mixture really, bit of everything.

Okay. I feel like we're just starting to see competition kinda come back around in the US with the the Urcha Cup thing going around from competition or from fun fly to fun fly. And I think that's so cool. Yeah. Yeah, that's really good. And that's actually something as an outsider looking in is that as American mo uh hobby seems much more uh at the fun fly with not very many competition pilots.

some of the world's best competition pilots. Jamie Robinson, I regards probably one of the best inventors of new moves and his music his musicality in in Flight to Music is quite phenomenal. Incredible pilot, Jamie Robertson. And obviously Carl Dole, Ben Storic, Nick McCoy. Nick Maxwell is still out there doing it. Exactly. So that you've you've had some really top level pilots, but then below that you not really see any you know, you've not really seen competition pilots as such.

Whereas in the UK we've done quite a lot of co the there seems to be less competitions now than there was'cause we used to have three D champs in the UK and various stuff. There's less comps now. Obviously the hobby went through the as we know through the from what, two thousand and twelve to twenty twenty, I guess there was a bit of a lull in hobby because of the People started doing drones and stuff like that.

But it seems to be picking back up again now. But it's the organising of it, you know, you've got to if you're organising a comp you've got to organise bit judges and criteria to fly it to and there's quite a lot and that that takes a lot of time is all the organising side of it.

Speaking of that, you're working on the full pitch fun fly, right? Are you one of the organizers of that event, which I wanna say is in July? You wanna take a moment to tell us about it? Yeah, sure. So that was that was my baby originally from a said from I was doing

uh the fun fly for white horse fun fly for the last couple of years before that closed down. And then I had a lot of people message me and say, Well, you know, can you still do put a fun fly on or something?'Cause we they didn't want to miss having a a big event like that.

All right, so had a bit of technical difficulties there. We've switched microphones with Rob now, so let's jump right back in. So Rob, you were starting to tell us about the full pitch fun fly that you're organizing. So let's just jump right back in there.

off the back of doing white horse uh the white horse fun flies, I had a lot of people reach out to me and ask me if I'd carry on running a w a fun fly and I said I needed to find a field closer to me. My the the Whitehorse fun fly was like seventy miles away from my house, so It was kind of travel there, do the whole event, travel back. It's it was too far, it was you know, was that was hard.

So I was fortunate that in the village I was born and brought up in and I brought up next to farms, the one of the farmer's sons was a really good friend of mine, a school age and everything. So I went round to go and see him and I said, Rob, are you got his name's Rob as well?

Have you got a a field that I can run this event at? And I showed him some pictures of what we had done in the past and I showed him a video of the flying. He said, Yeah, sure, come have a look at this field. And it was literally just round a corner from the farm. So he was happy for me to put it on and so that was two thousand nineteen. I think. I think eighteen was the last one at Whitehorse.

So we did that and then we did one yeah, so when we went to do it that was it. So we did twenty nineteen, but it was quite close to some other people's houses and I th had a little bit of noise complaints about it. So the following year he says, Don't worry, so I've got a different field you can use. So he says it's like a bit further away from houses and stuff.

So that's been our new field ever since, which is a little bit smaller than we would like, but it is what it is. It's the field we got. Yeah, it's cool. Yeah. With the smaller's cu kind of nice sometimes'cause you're kind of forced to all be together instead of be spread out. Do you know the shape of the field actually means that the camping area is in a bit of a triangle, the flight line is along like shall we say, like the hypotenuse of a triangle, and everybody is then in behind it.

So it uh it keeps everybody very close. It's not spread out down a huge, great long distance. You're kind of all in this triangle. It's still big, you know, but you're not like sat on top of each other. Yeah. It keeps everybody together and it's really good. It's really

And this really makes me want to go to the UK. Right. Yeah. Well, I mean, obviously, I'd love you to come over to Fullpatch, but for the ultimate, it's going to be heavy fast because we've got... I know some of the pilots that are already coming for this year's full pitch that's not public yet, so I can't say who they are. That's good. they're world level uh literally world level pilots are coming to the UK this year and Helifest is part of a much bigger event.

which is called Western Park Model Air Show. And in previous years when it's been like we've had really good weather, they've had ten thousand visitors per day to two day event. Yes. Why? So think of Joe Null and and um Nick Maxwell. That's amazing. He's been out. Think of Joe Knolls for the aeroplane side and then think of a like a Zor Joe Knoll and Urcher mixed together. It's it's in a national like a a country park.

with with lots of space, thousands of people there in their motorhomes and camping and stuff like that. So obviously I would say eighty percent of there for for the model aeroplane side, but they also are flying full size aeroplanes, full size aerobatics, things like pit specials and stuff come in and land and take off on the strip that the models are flying on. massive turbine jets and all sorts they're flying there. And then Helifest is

parallel to it but the other side of the of the field. Got it. Oh that's fine. Are you telling me that the helicopters get the small part? Is that what you're Yeah. that's what I mean. Unfortunately. Yeah. Always. I know. But also big big fireworks display on the Saturday night and everything and That's cool. foods or stalls and everything. So for A full on UK experience, I would recommend you come to Heli Fest, which is the middle week of June. Father's Day in June.

Okay. Yeah. That would that would be epic and obviously yeah, there's the the class of flying is incredible because we have we have Sapro obviously there's a competition there and a full fly, so you can fly there as well yourself.

Um and also the intermixed with that's competition. And we've now got the international competition as well. So last year I think there were seven or eight international pilots. I think this year it's gonna be bigger than that. So you've got the UK's intermediate and top class pilots flying in a competition and then you've got the international level pilots flying in the competition.

We've said the word competition a few times now and speaking of which, you know, from an FAI level, have you ever competed maybe F three N or F three C? Um so I've done four or five competitions only back probably ten or twelve years ago at lower level, sort of grass loots like sports first class level. Yeah. I have a a to commit to do something like that because I've because I'm running my own business. Yeah. It then becomes a big commitment to get to the field, practice.

Mm-hmm. Which I quite I can't commit to because sometimes I'm getting in because I do a lot of breakdown emergency call out stuff, so sometimes I'm getting out from work seven, eight, nine o'clock at night. So then it becomes very difficult to commit to You're always up at midnight, huh? That's why that's why I talked to you so late. Okay. I'm rarely in bed before one AM. Man, that's crazy.

Yeah. I was doing something with my CAD or my cam and stuff I'm always on the computer that's Until my eyes started to drop, I think okay, it's time to go to bed now.

Yeah, I know you're a creator. Like I know that you've developed some sorts of different stuff in the hobby. You have a dino for nitro too, right? Yeah. One day I'll get it finished, which is a standing joke with Doug.'Cause he said to me, Whi which Christmas? I said, I'll be finished by Christmas and he said, What? twenty twenty three, twenty four, twenty five, twenty six? Ha ha ha ha. Yeah, so but this goes back

quite a long way. I did a lot of work investigating because this is just actually with my my nitro stuff. And this is before I bought my CNC minimachine. And so I because I've always been involved with petal work. I've had laser milling machines since I was working on them from the age of twelve or thirteen years of age with my dad. And I started to do as much research as I can on designing a dyno for our helicopter engines. There's ones available for red control cars.

But I need you to scan it up and make it bigger. Yeah. What those noisy things now. So I started looking into getting getting involved with with designing oh to Wisdom. with the dino and I found the most information in the Regentron boat fraternity. And I got to chat with a guy who who sadly passed away a few years ago, who was American national champion at these various different speed records for boats on water, obviously on water. with using using your gasser engines.

But these things were crazy. They were turning at like sixteen thousand RPM on full length tuned pipes on the same heli same engine as we're using in the helicopters like the the Sonoa base motors. This guy also hand built nitro engines ninety one size that would be turning twenty f yeah, turning twenty five plus thousand RPM. with an uh so he invited me to a invite only en uh model engine builders forum, which I'm still a member of.

And I gained a lot of information from this r relatively small select group of people with who have developed a lot of engines and most of it as I said was was regional control boats or pylon racing. Stuff that basically had to run flat out. But of course that's not what you need for a helicopter. But it it taught me a lot. So I I gained quite a lot of information on

what size weight I needed to spin with an inertia dino because it's a direct drive. I'm not doing a gear reduction one like Harry's. Yeah. And there's gotta be fused links in there because if they spin spinning at like seventeen thousand RPM and suddenly the engine ceases, well, this wheel won't stop spinning quickly. So it'll just rip the engine to a million pieces. So there's a lot of stuff Scotty designed into it.

I've also desi got going on a a uh an eddy current in a brake system so you can actually load it. It doesn't just spin up, but you can preload the motor as well, like you're loading ahead. So there's quite a bit into it. I've got all the drawings and everything are done. I just gotta finish machining it. But I keep on finding other things to machine first. That's fine. But yeah, I wanna be able to modify engines and actually measure ri results of port timing.

Lots of other stuff though, like dampers and all sorts of stuff, right? Yeah, so the dampers started with the Glogo actually, because the Glogo if If you're a super smooth precision pilot like Cordole then it was working perfectly. If you're banging the sticks into the corners at a million mile an hour with too much pitch, obviously people were suddenly finding it were boom strike.

And when you think that the Glogo was based on the original logo six hundred that was then stretched with six ninety, the head basically there was just too much movement in the axle and the head. So I came up with some Delrin dampers which I sent over to uh I think Robin Lipke actually was the first person to fly a set. Dude, I love his flying style. Yeah.

He's such a great dude as well. He's well nice he's such a nice and he's at Heli Fest every year. He's such a nice guy and his brother Pascal. Lovely people. Nice. So I sent Robin some out and I also sent Santa Carl Dahl to test and they were like, oh my god, these are like this is mad. The difference is phenomenal. So before we knew it, well basically all of the Mikado team pilots, even on the logo seven hundreds, are all flying by dampers. So it's um. Did you work on the new seven hundred too?

Yeah, all all of their test models are being flown by dampers. So That's cool Ralph w emailed me and asked me to make a batch and then he'd sent me the size he want them made to and I I make them however many they needed and that's what they'd been flying and all the test models. That's super. Yes, which is it's really nice to be involved in the mo in the in the hobby like a little bit deeper like that. That's really cool.

No, I mean as a true tinkerer, dude, that's amazing to be involved with, right? Like that's what you want to do. Yeah, absolutely. And then the there's things like the Sullivan starter shafts. I've made a batch a hundred of those which are pretty much all sold out now. And that was because Sullivan obviously stopped manufacturing the starters.

And there was particularly in the UK I know there was a lot of guys that were desperate trying to find shafts. So I built a one off one for for my starter and it just worked perfectly and then I made it my message with Adam Plummeridge. I spoke to him and I said, Well no I'll make you one if you wanna test it and try it and he's done literally thousands of stars with this with the same way. He's flying nitro every single weekend.

I know I started getting messages people asking me to make these shots so yeah sure.

Dude, how much is nitro there? Is it more than it is here? I I would need to look it up actually because obviously I'm fortunate that I get a scout, so I don't know but I would imagine it's probably about forty ish pound, UK G V pound for So we have a bigger bottle than you do,'cause we have five litres. and US gallon is le is more like four litres, I think. So it's forty pounds for five liters? I think so. Forty to forty-five pound for five litres. That's so expensive. It is expensive.

A hundred dollars a gallon or something or more, isn't it? Good law. I'm doing the conversion right now. I'm letting AI do it for me. Well it'd be times three or three and a half ish. So it's about forty one dollars. If forty pounds gets you five liters, a gallon would cost forty one dollars. So that's a little More. In line with Okay, never mind. That's that's similar to your prices, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's not it's not super far off.

But I don't drink and I don't smoke, so I I buy nitro instead. Man, you're missing out. What on the drink or the smoke? Just kidding.

So obviously you're still working on the Dino getting that machine, but any other projects in terms of manufacturing parts and odds and ends you're working on? No, I've had I'd so I'd make quite a lot of parts for local engineering companies with you know, sort of which has been really handy, obviously pays for the mill.

So I have a lot of lot of stuff I make that's not hobby related. And then I make my own sort of parts I need. I'm building a custom I'm doing an O M P M seven that's a eight hundred.

which I'm currently working on. Oh um to doing an M seven stretch. So that's so I'm machining parts to be able to machine parts. So like for making the making the um boom for instance. I've machined um blocks that I can Exactly turn it at ninety degrees, you know, for drilling the holes through the tail for the tail pumps or put the slot in. Nice. Where it slots into the boom. uh machine the aluminium core that goes inside where the where the crush area is for the boom clumps.

Well if you Just make three and send one to Alex, one to Yeah. Hold on, hold on. If we if you would do if we decided that if you wanted to make something like this, it would be nice in my opinion to have a head that's a little bit taller so you don't worry about moonstrike or something with big blades flying it hard. Could you machine a longer strip? Could you make a bigger shaft? A bigger main shaft? Well, it's got potential.

All right. Uh main shafts are always fun because it's the material. I mean the best the best thing for main shafts is Which is uh uh what's it called? Broad. But basically it's a hollow tube but it's seamless hollow tube. Okay. I don't But then it's gotta be heat treated right as well. So it's quite difficult making main shafts. Yeah. Yeah. So uh yeah, long long main shafts can be very difficult. Um drawn, D O M. Drawn over man drawn is called D O M. It's a chicken type of steel.

Do you ever think your time with Nitro will end and you'll and you'll stick more to electrics, or do you think you'll be flying both for a long time? Both I can't not have nitros. Yeah. At least for unlike Europe where we've got this st they've got this stupid s r rule on sixteen percent, which is nitro, which is crazy. With in th in the UK mind, we're limited to twenty five percent.

unless you've got a license. But the license is so easy to get. So you can still buy thirty percent, no problem at all. But to be honest with you, the the OptiFuel twenty five percent SLV that I use unless it's like a an R fifty five's class motor on a ninety or a one oh five, you cannot tell difference. You must be pretty excited about the new rotor flight software coming out then to make it easier to get your nitro going. What r what's retail flight?

Oh right, sorry, the cheap copy of uh V Bot. Sorry, yeah I You still haven't got it. You still. I said it right. Ha ha. You still have not made five dollars. Oh, no. Yeah. V bros, isn't it? Hang on, let me look at the text. Let me just look at the text he sent me. Ha ha ha. So Doug sent me a message letting me know to keep tally of how many times that Rob said V Bar Rocks because he was gonna pay him. And so far he hasn't gotten paid. Okay. Ha ha ha.

I j joking apart, I've been flying V bar since two thousand and eight, I think it is, after literally after my last fly barred model was was right back then. So I tried some others. I had a B-Stex in probably about two thousand and nine, I think I tried. And I had Vutaba CGY seven fifty when that first came out. I've had the Spartan

Can't remember the name of it. Ver V T verto uh what was it called? Vortex. Spark Vortex. Yeah. Vortex, that's it. So I've tried different ones. I had a rotor flight put in my OMP Hobby M six. I did three or four flights with it, took it straight back out and put V Bar Evo back in. Much better. That's two. He got two. That's ten bucks, dog. Ten bucks, yeah. But no, it just it just fits me. I don't ha I generally don't have time to learn a new system and as good as There's a lot to learn about.

And I know people enjoy it. But there is still Which is what Nick has been saying as well. It's still this constant updating of stuff and and changing of stuff and it flowing so quickly. I'm sure in a couple of years' time things will settle down and it'll have proper templates in place and beginners can just pick it up like a pick up a spectrum transmitter now and just use it. But it's still in its infancy. What is it? It's not even barely two years old.

Uh I think it's older than that. It's just n it's just the popularity wasn't there until the past two you know Yeah. I mean there's no doubt it it's a great it's a great You like tinkering and yeah. I don't if I'm tinkering it on the milling machine or on the lathe. It's not on a Yeah, it's not hardware. I mean software. I'm not a software person at all. I left school before c computers were only just coming into schools when I left school. I'm I'm I'm too old for it.

Speaking of tinkering, I'm sad Kenny couldn't be here, but on the plus side, if the two of you got talking about tinkering, I don't think any of us would have gotten a word in for about two hours. I think Kelly and I are very similar. We're um I you know, I whenever I'm building a kit I'm already looking at things I can change to make it a little bit better. You know, even if it's just better in even if it's better in my head, it might not

somebody else's head, but I'm I look at every single part and thinking, Well, can I do better than that? And so Always finding stuff that Jonas missed. Or I send them a message. I say, on the next one, can you incorporate this please? Yeah. But yeah. It's what's really cool actually is I get to build an awful lot of models, obviously not just mine, because I build all the studeless models I have done for about the last fifteen years probably. Um Stu Smith doesn't build his own models.

No, he's another princess like Alex. Bye.

Um have you gotten to fly the new dampers that SAB came out with for the old goblin yet? Wait, I gotta I gotta hear more about this. So if stew crashes, who fixes it? No way. I at least fix my own stuff. What what kind of payment system? I mean you don't drink so that's not it's not pints. What wha what is it what is he paying in here? Yeah. We just really we're just really good mates, obviously as as you probably already wear, people think we're father and son. We're actually not.

I actually thought y'all were for a while. I didn't know. I thought you were. But age age difference we could be. I mean it's uh yeah, it's quite funny. I started flying helicopters before he was even born. He's self employed also, isn't he? runs he runs his own runs a company with his with a friend of his, he's an electrician. Um so they they're doing really well. They've got four or five guys now on the team and um Cool. Okay. There's all the electrical work you ever need for free for forever.

Well, absolutely. Yeah. You swap trades, don't you? Yeah. Yeah, s Stu's a incredible pilot. He was um r flying it for the uh what was the X F C over in America. He and his brother went out and they were like what do you call them, tandem flying or doubles champion they won over there at X F C. Oh, I don't know. So he he was back in the very early days of Cold Dahl and Nick flying and all those students out there flying with him then. So there was a contest format that was tandem? Yeah.

Oh that's excellent. I didn't know that. I thought that was just something people did for fun at Funflies. That's great. You too. No no it's uh Stuan A. were X FC champions of that. Oh I'd love to see that. sort of probably on youtube somewhere i'm almost certain if you look up steve smith I'm definitely going to look that up.

Yeah. So then he when A D stopped flying, I think A D used to build a lot of studio models and then when uh A D had family and stopped flying or whatever It wasn't that Stu kind of asked me to start building his head as I started putting right what he had built'cause it was shit. And making bottles of his last so he could get through the competition and hopefully win the co he well he's he's won a lot of stuff.

And then so it it built from there really and then he was like, I'm getting this new kit where it's right, just send it straight to me, mate, I'll build it.

He's like, You sure? I went, Yeah, it's fine. So it's just built from there. But no, he he can actually build. He's he's but he's got a lot better. Sure, I'm sure. But it's quite cool because he comes over to my house and we just have we have build night sessions. I'm fortunate I've got a nice big kitchen with a big eye. We got three metre long island through the middle of the kitchen. So we just convert that into a big bill table and and luckily my wife doesn't mind.

That's great. We enjoy doing that here in Atlanta too, getting a bunch of guys together to build. So it's good fun. Yeah it is. Well we've got this new little Thursday night build club now with me Stu and and Chris Chris Brain. And so uh thou that might end up like less last week. We just went to the Indian restaurant and I've figured

There was nothing so we didn't build anything. We just went out uh out and had food and meal together. But other nights we've got a whole load of kits on the table or we're we're doing something. So that's that's become a bit of a tradition now. They all come to my house on a Thursday night. Oh that's great. I love that. Yes, it's brilliant. It's really good. Even we might just be on the sim, just like messing around on the sim for a few hours. Thank you.

So as we start to wrap things up here, you got the the dyno build forever in progress. You're working on the M seven R eight hundred stretch. Uh anything else in the future for you? Obviously the fun fly as well, which although that sounds like a lot, so maybe asking what else you got going is is uh

Ha. Oh gosh, I can't remember that. There's there's always there's always something on the go. I never stop, basically. I'm always working on uh doing CAD and cam late at night for stuff. The thing is I've learnt with with the C and C is it's

eighty five percent computer, fifteen percent on the ma on the machine. Mm-hmm. So it's but that's the reason why I did it, because I I actually get to sit down and relax for a little bit then rather than being flat out on the go all the time like I'm current in my business. I'm starting to slow the business well not slow the business down, but I'm changing my work role a little bit now so I'm doing less hard work'cause I'm getting an old bugger.

So um I just need to have a bit more me time. Well well family time on me time, shall we say. Продолжение следует... Yeah, I think all four of us here on the show are business owners in some way and I think we can all relate to wanting to get to that point. That's true, we all are, aren't we? That's interesting.

Yeah, yeah, it's quite important to you know, it can be so consuming w and my wife basically runs the office for our business and so it's like it is a like full family business from that sense of view. Um basically she tells me where to go and I say yes.

Oh she's brilliant because she's she supports me all the way through the hobby. She there she doesn't really say no to anything really. She's she well you know She's she's really good at supporting me in whatever I wanna do and whether it was racing motorbikes, which she hated'cause she didn't want me to get hurt. And or whether I'm flying my models, which I sold her was a much safer option than than uh flying than racing motorbikes at hundred and eighty mile an hour round a bend.

Yeah, she's been she's been brilliant and obviously we run the business together and it's good. It's very good.

That's awesome. Anyone else got anything for Rob before I wrap it up? Um no, just a pleasure talking to you, Rob. I mean Yeah, it'd good catch up with you, Brian. Yeah, absolutely, man. I I I only hear you through the interview that you you do for it and we really do appreciate that so Uh that's a lot of fun. It's it's really good to to talk with all you know, all the people over at Rota Live. I I really enjoy that and obviously Stu joined in with us this year doing that as well.

And'cause we we kinda travel together everywhere, which is really good. So we've got a really good sort of rapport at everything we do, which is which is great. Yeah. Yeah. Uh so I've r no I've been really I really enjoyed having the opportunity to do that with you guys and you know, I said right at the beginning of the podcast, the uh podcast for me had been really important. I mean, I I remember listening to Dan

when he was a guest with I don't know if any of you guys have heard this guy's name, Dicey. The very first broadcast on the on the R C helicopter scene was a guy called Dicey and well as first that I'm aware of was this was the first person. And I s then started chatting with Dan using Skype many, many, many years ago. That's cool. And so then all the way through the RC Heli Nation period. Yeah, I've I've really enjoyed the the the

format a podcast and then obviously my first time actually being on one, which was really cool. Thank you for inviting me. Thanks for coming on, man. And thank you for all the work you do at Rotor Live. It it makes such a difference in those episodes, I think, to get that like trade show floor interview stuff. And I know you've got your choice of podcasts who would happily air that. So thanks for bringing that to us. We really appreciate it.

Yeah, more than welcome. I b you know, it's it's it's fun to do. I'm amazed how you can edit out the sound in the background because Garth of Well the one I did this year with Jocky and Tron, the the there must have been a demo going on in the indoor flying net thing, you know, with the the two hundred class and one hundred class models. and the bass coming through the floor to where I was. It was like I could barely hear Joachim where in the event of I'm like, this is

You know, it's going over in my mind thinking, This is gonna sound terrible on the podcast. Right. But it came out so clean, it's like that was incredible. Well, it helps that professionally I have access to very good AI based tools that will clean all that up for us, so Yeah, but but it obviously works very well. Well it's good fun. I'm glad uh I'm glad we're able to put all that together.

So uh thanks. So thanks for you know, giving us a perspective on the UK scene, bringing us the action from Rotor Live, all of that. Keep up the great work. I'll send you my address for the eight hundred stretch kit and uh Uh I've I actually Nick, I've still got that here, Synergy five one six with your name on. We must get that sorted sometime.

Oh, I've long given up on that. I've been trying to buy this five sixteen. I always wanted a Synergy five sixteen from way back early in my time in the hobby and I've completely Well, I I just need to pull my finger out of my you know what and uh put it in a box and weigh it and we'll get it sorted for ya. It's literally sat there collecting dust for you. It might be too late now. I went and built the five fifty as my old school beater. Anyway. Well there might be a lot of things. Um might be.

Well, thanks again for coming on, Rob. We uh we truly appreciate it. Yeah, no worries, well thanks for the invite. It's been it's been cool. It's been really good to catch up with you all. I'm sorry to get you all up first thing in the morning. Uh happy to do it. It's either that or it's two AM for me, which again isn't I can be normal sometimes. Well happy days. Lovely stuff. Yeah. Thanks very much, Boz, appreciate it. Yeah, thank you, man.

All right, with that, thanks Rob Bingham for coming on. I'm thrilled we were able to work this out. It was really important to Rob that as many of us as possible make it to the recording. So we actually recorded that at eight o'clock in the morning for some of us, seven o'clock for others.

in order to make it happen across the time zone. So thank Rob for being patient and letting us get that worked out. We always love hearing from voices from overseas. So thanks for coming on, Rob. All right. With that, that's it for episode sixty six. We hope you got your kick. and enjoyed the episode. And you can find all the links, swag store, email, contact, Facebook group, all that stuff.

at www. dot rotor revolution dot live. Thanks for all the messages. Keep'em coming. Thanks for all the feedback. We love to hear from you all. And have a great week. Enjoy summer. Get some flying in. 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 Rotar Revolution RC Podcast or find us on the web at Rotor Rep. evolution.

Help us spread the word and leave us a podcast platform. For listener questions, advertising inquiries, or to reach out to the entire team, Mm-hmm. Email us at questions at rotorrevolution. Thanks for listening. Can I have three minutes? No to run and go to the Oh, me too. I would love that. Let's do it. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Uh I had muted myself because I was coughing and I forgot to unmute and I was just like joining our conversation and talking and I was like, damn, nobody's even responding to me. And I looked out, I was like, Holy shit, I'm muted. Oh my gosh. And now y'all muted. Everybody but to take a piss and I'm up talking to myself. Ha ha Oh man. I love it. That was the funniest shit I've ever heard. Ha ha

I'm literally peeing and I about pee over the wall and everywhere just laughing because you're like now that everybody can hear me. Oh Bye-bye. That was funny. Oh my God. Awesome. All three of us are like peeing on the wall on the floor right now, laughing. I'm talking and no one's hearing me. All right, Brian. And just like Kenny, I like try to aim while I'm laughing hysterically at your monologue. Ha ha ha. That was great. Oh, that was funny.

Yeah. I had tears in my eyes and then Kenny busted and I literally just exploded in laughter. I'm serious. I was like, Nick, which invert did you get? And you just kept going. I said, Okay, well don't answer me then Yeah, yeah. ご視聴ありがとうございました Alex has gone out of range. We're all like coming out of his speakers right now. Peeing down a long hallway side of the mic on. His whole house is listening to us. We should be careful what we say. Alex, Alex. Alex. Older guy.

Don't forget to wash your hands, Alex. Alex, this is your broken M7R on the wall. Please fix me, me. Alex, it's your ExoPower Spectre. Do you remember us? Will you fly us again? Where is that echo? Am I coming in clear? It's Alex. His headphones probably went out of range, so we're coming out of speakers. He had to pee so bad he threw him down. I may not have beer. I'm sad now. Also, I wrote this news in like 30 seconds flat, so who knows what mistakes are hidden in here.

I'm gonna read like Ron Burgundy. Do it. I need to do more of that writing random things in the news. You're welcome. You're welcome. Thank you. Compolo. Were you listening to everyone while you were in there? No, I didn't hear everything. I heard Brian say he had himself muted and was talking to himself. Brian had like an entire monologue while we were all in the bathroom. It was hilarious. I didn't hear it. Yeah. And you you know I'm putting that at the end of the episode. Hello? Hello?

All right. Let's knock this news out. I'm opening the news or opening the whiteboard. How crazy. What's with the heavy breathing? Oh ran. Jeez, there's a ton of news. Are you serious? There's not a ton, it'll go fast. Alright.