EP.68 Patric Hruswicki

Welcome to the Rotor Revolution RC Podcast with Brian Birdsong. Alex Dean. Kenny Hutton. And Nick Wisdom.

How relaxed I sound right now, how not rushed I am.

So the road.

Revolution RC podcast, you hear how slowly I said that.

You snuck that buyer, I would have done an Alex on you.

I know, it's cause Alex isn't here.

Where is Alex?

Ha ha ha.

That was the sneakiest intro ever.

So we can take our time, we don't have to stress, don't have to rush. He's not lurking around the corner. Yeah, Alex is a little under the weather, but when we hit the main topic, you're gonna hear his voice, because we recorded our interview with Patrick yesterday. So Alex was with us for that, but he's gonna not be here for intros and whatnot and the news and stuff, but you'll hear him in just a little bit.

Oh good. You know s been some excitement over the last couple of weeks for me. I know I missed the last recording with you guys, but but I'm back up a little under the weather I was able to at least get a little insert of Some of my activities back then, but but been pretty busy over the last couple of weeks too, man. So excited to share that.

I mean there's rumors going around that you've been doing TikToks and other non F three C moves. Oh boy. There's like talk amongst the F three C guys of like sanctions. You've been caught flying a micro helicopter. Like I don't know what's going on.

Dude.

Talk branching out.

Cow, yeah. We'll talk about it. We'll talk about it.

Lots of good stuff to talk about. Who wants to go first today?

Well, I guess I'll go first to share my excitement.

Bright.

Let's hear it.

Okay. Well, you know, down here in the south east too guys over the last couple of weeks. I mean, it's been spotty weather, you know, rain off and on, off and on, off and on, so you just kinda Try to pick a day and it it could be just a time of day to try and get out and fly as best you can because you just never know when the sky falls on top of you, right? So it's just been a lot of rain. Holy cow what was that?

Crazy. Like I almost built a radio control arc the other day for the backyard.

Bye.

I'm telling you, man. I'm telling you. So it it's been rainy but we've been trying to make the best of it. Was able to go up to the field. Just just last weekend, Sean and I and Oh Steve our uh we got a good buddy Steve in our new lamb lambda chat.

Yeah.

Dude, we saw it coming and I'm like, oh my God. And we I I had every helicopter on the table, my electronics out, and it got soaked. I just had to snatch it all up real quick, just throw it in the back of the truck. I'm like, man, oh man. But what's so funny is so we all kind of really packed up quick and left. And you know, you get five minutes down the road and poof the sun comes out again. It's like, what?

Yeah.

So that was crazy. But but some other exciting things, so I you know, with the the Stratus two hundred, my I think I took one of the the the top dogs build was it Kenny Co's four six build or cow's four six build, something like that for rotor flight. Put it on the stratus and then, you know, just got the balls to update my systems to 4.6 release candidate too. Wow.

I know that.

Right.

What have you done with the

The real Brian Byrds song. You don't do release candidates, you don't do micros, you don't do TikToks. What's happening?

It it was crazy. And it was kinda nightmarish at at first because I haven't updated since like last July of twenty twenty five. And so, you know, some things have changed in between. I think there was a couple of minor releases in between, but you know, they hit this four dot six release candidate. And it it made some significant changes to the UI, to the way the governor works now.

Are you using like the internal script that's in the transmitter now or are you still using one of the SXC or what how how are you doing it?

Yeah, I was still the S X E so that was still fine because it didn't really affect any of their dashboards. I mean the the same telemetry items come through. I think some change and it'll automatically, you know, pull those in. But that was fine. But you know, you also had to update though the Lua scripts two four six.

Well

That wasn't well, it was an issue. I think I talked about that, but I uh got that straightened out. And then I was like, Well man, I'm still on like ELRS three five. Like You know the latest one is four O but then I saw the big warning like

World.

So I was like, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what I what I did I went to three six three, which they say is it's a great version, great release of of edge TX before they hit the major release. So I went three six three in my transmitter, my receivers, everything's

You have to turn the governor back on when you reflash the

Yeah. Yes. I had I had to learn that the hard way. There there's so many differences so many exceptions you get when you try to do, you know, your diff all back into a four six. It was like error, error, error, error, error. And I'm like, Oh my god. So I started off...

Like a flight controller error like it told me the name was wrong. So I just took my file and deleted the name part out in the beginning and then it works like just

Yeah. It wasn't that smart. I w I was I was kind of in panic mode, so I was like, you know what, I'm just gonna start over. So I started a fresh build with my Genesis again in four six.

You can just delete the top little portion there, the paragraph in the beginning.

I I know too, but I just

It's too late out there.

Right.

It is. But here's the cool thing, though. I mean, I I got I did pretty well for myself, just kinda getting it reset up, did my mixing and my servos, blah, blah, blah, make sure directions were correct, you know, you know, bench tested here. Powered up, noticed that my ESC was was way off with its input values, right? So I went to reset it and I did it with the transmitter, right? And then I'm like looking for my prog unit'cause I use a catronic calibre here to do all the other

Like a stick stick transmitter setup?

Yeah, exactly.

Those can be so frustrating when they don't want to work, right? You're sitting there Moving the stick up and down five times. Like is it doing what I I gotta start over.

Yeah.

I well I had to. I forgot the beep count on one of them.

Halfway through you're like, Oh, okay, gotta gotta unplug, replug, start this thing over.

Unplugged and I'm like, please don't brick this thing. So anyway, didn't brick it, but uh got through a couple of the stick setups on it. And now everything is kind of normal on the bitch. The motor fire is up, you know, servo directions are correct, gyro directions correct, but I'm at the base P I D.

Yeah.

But pick it up and it felt good. And I was like, Oh, well, it's not that bad at all. I mean, the base settings of Rotor flight works, you know, even with the big bird here. So I took it up, but I did notice some things. My elevator was my pitch was off a little bit. If I tried to do a roll, it would give some kind of elevator input. The tail wasn't holin' solid. Just a couple of little nitpicky things. Not enough to crash the bird, but I was like, Oh, I gotta go through this tuning again, so

What what is frequency tuning?

Well so the PID loop itself. I I guess the the the latency or or the the the quickness of it, how it responds to uh the loop happens through these frequencies and the speed of these the the the hertz, right? So I think by default

Dude, he like sees the matrix is is the best analogy I have. He can stare at a black box log and see things you're like I still don't understand what you see, but clearly it works'cause you can see it in the next path.

Well, I I felt like a little I said, you know what, I'm gonna be a third grader and I'm gonna ask you, Well, what does that mean? And he would tell me. I said, And why? And he would tell me, I said, and why again? And he'd tell me. You know, he was being real patient with me, but it it really helped me understand exactly what was going on with it. So I feel good. I feel like an intermediate, you know, r rotor flight tuner. from from kind of the beginning stages of doing this, but

Yeah, now that you've been through it a few times, you should be able to teach everybody at this point.

And

how to do this stuff too. Like when I go to the fun flies and folks are having issues, I wanna I wanna be able to help them understand and explain to them, you know, what's going on and what we can change to make your helicopter fly better, et cetera, et cetera. So That was another reason why I uh wanted to go and sit with him too. So it was a great experience. It was a really good experience sitting with them.

When you when you drove home, how much did your brain hurt?

What?

It actually here's the deal. My brain started hurting at about the fourth hour, right?

So yeah, it's hard to

Yeah. He was like, you know what? I got this, I got this quick four o'clock meeting because you know he was playing hooky from work too, but he had this four o'clock meeting that he had to take. And I said, Archie, it's like 345. We're at a good stopping point. He was like, Well, no, no, no, we got a couple more things to do. I said, tell you what, bro, let's call this part one.

Yeah.

Frequencies look good, the PIDs look good, but I would I would still, you know, probably come down on I, maybe one or two points on this one, or go up on P, one or two on that one. And I'm like, what?

What do you do this?

What did you see? Because it looks good to be on black box based on what you taught me, but he saw something else.

I'm wondering how close it is to your old numbers. Like if you open up your dump ball file from before, it's totally different.

Yes, totally different. Totally different. So my my PIDs are not as high as they were before.

based on

So all graphs and black box files aside, how does it fly after that work?

It it flies amazing. Rolls on a string now. There's no elevator play. It's still pretty quick and fast. I've been practicing this new schedule F. I told you guys I was you know, just horrified by and it flies it very well. The roll's great, the the loops are great, all the The even the hover, the hover's better now. So the hover was a problem before. I can I told you guys like my wraith is hovering much better than the Genesis. I can't keep the Genesis still.

Yeah.

But now it goes up and it just locks itself and I'm like

That's correct.

So cool, dude. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So Hubber's much better now. I'm just happy. I'm excited. I'm excited that I saw some changes based off of some of the things I learned and we did during the tuning process. So

Dude, you and me both. This rain's been terrible.

But the Genesis is flying good, so I'm I'm happy with that.

Still.

Loving this uh this Stratus two hundred man, you know. In in all fairness, you know, I never flew the S two or the M two, so I can't do any comparison. And and those those birds might fly amazing. I've I've I only know my knowledge based off of our episode where you guys did the comparison between them. But I'm having such a good time with that stratus. Like it's it it is a little bird that flies big.

Boop boop boop boop

I'm like, Oh my god, I'm doing TikToks

I love this.

I'm freaking out, dude. And, you know, there's like what's the other thing you call it? Oh rainbow rainbows are pretty cool. So I'm doing these little kind of just continuous rainbows just while I'm flipping back and forth, back and forth.

You just need some beater helies'cause the precision helicopters have been holding you back from three D.

You're right, man. I think you're absolutely right. Because I'm like, there's no way that Genesis is gonna do this. I it's probably gonna do it really slow, but not as quick as I was doing it. And it just I see why you really need to kinda jam the sticks'cause it's it's hard to just really hold a position for such a long time while you're trying to execute a maneuver. You wanna get through that thing quick. Be doing that, trying to learn backwards flying.

Look at me.

Man, I did some backwards loops and backwards rolls.

Rolls. I'm like, what?

Nice.

Dude, I'm so tickle. Having a blast with this thing. Oh. And and it and it may not even just be the Stratus two hundred, it could have been any micro. I think they're just so advanced now, they fly very well that it just gives me an opportunity to really have a good time with it. You know what I'm saying? So

Yeah. That's awesome, man. I'm glad you're enjoying that helicopter.

Whew.

Oh, one other thing too. So remember I think I told you guys a few episodes ago I purchased the the the Radio Master TX 16X Mark III. Yeah. Uh well they finally came in and I was like, Oh, it's here I got the little go anodized uh version of it. It looks really sharp and you know, I was like, Well I I wanna I wanna learn this thing too from the from the beginning. I think I told you guys that, but I followed

Nice.

You're like our honorary Alex for the week.

Uh

That's great man. I love that.

Yeah, brother. Yep, yep, yep. So, having fun. Having a lot of fun.

I guess I could go next.

Go ahead.

So like Brian, I'm kinda You know, you get that kind of like knock the dust off of it thing in the spring and it's kinda getting that way for me too, of finally, you know, being able to go out several weekends in a row, you know, and get more flying in and And I got out like a day each, you know, the past few weeks I've been able to go out at least one day or two days if you count, just flying some micros, you know, in the backyard after work and stuff. So it

Matter of fact, I just yeah, just through the transmitter, download the file, the firmware file, went to you know how you gotta hold the the buttons, turn it on, and go to a firmware flash and just go, yeah, through the transmitter.

So like that, it's super simple. And you can do that on the free sky. And I've never done it that way before. I've always just used the suite. You you turn on the program, you know, it detects the transmitter, shows you your version dates and everything for the module.

This sounds like an absolutely terrible way to spend the day.

It was no fun. You know what it ended up being? So if anybody has this with a Free Scout Radio, I went back to find the actual radio folder'cause it's gone, like to make it put it back in there. It acts like it's totally lost. I had to go back and do like an older version. Went back like three or four firmware versions and start to load that. And even if it locks up, it puts the folder back on the transmitter, so then you're good.

Yeah, I definitely translate.

So the M one after f many, many flights, I've probably I don't even know how many flights I've got on those, but I finally I've probably had ten or fifteen crashes in the grass, you know, nothing I don't fly over concrete or anything, but just like in three to five inch grass and It finally got me'cause I f I hit tail first from like twenty feet in the air and finally broke something, but it wasn't too bad to replace the the tail boom snapped off and tail fin.

Nice.

But it's been durable, like been fun to fly and it hasn't broken anything yet, other than just that one crash, like after many many impacts.

Yeah.

It's much more practice'cause you can do a lot of stuff like Brian said, you just don't even care, you know, and then if you hit the ground, just better to fly over something with some loose loose ground or grass on it so you don't tear it up. But can't do that with your large ones. Nope.

My M one has like a thousand lives. I've flown it indoors, in hotel rooms, all over the place, and I I can't believe it hasn't crashed yet badly.

It's a miracle. I still keep my main blades tight on them too, because I on the other ones I would have sometimes if they were loose the blades would swing around and hit the boom and I haven't had that on this M1. I don't know if it's just geometry or what, but it's been lucky and hasn't cut the boom off or anything or s dented it or anything. I guess the carbon holds up a bit better too, so

Yeah.

Been good. I don't know.

But that's it, working and practicing and when I can.

Cool. Well, that's good to hear about the boom. I actually ordered a white boom for my M one when those came out and I've been dreading swapping it for that same reason. So maybe I'll check that out and see if it's easy to get the wires through. I've been sort of hoping I'd crash it and that's when I'd swap booms, but we'll see.

Yeah, I took the bottom bolt out by accident too. There's a one point three millimeter on the underneath of the frame down there you'll see on the boom and it's that's just a centering. It's one of those slotted the boom slotted, so that's just the bolt to slide through there. It doesn't actually have to come out. There's not like a drilled hole.

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So you can leave that in there. The receiver stack if you want to pull the wire. Pretty simple.

Well, uh I tell ya, I have been tired. Not to complain, but I have just been tired. I realized the other day I counted it up. I have been on the road away from home almost a hundred days this year, like just shy by a few days. I'm finally home for two weeks, which is great. I'm kind of almost at the end of the first week now. But this first week has been solo parenting. So in Atlanta we finished schools last Friday. So I got home Friday. School ended Friday. And then my wife left Friday night.

That is so cool. I I applaud the spirit team for for doing that. You know, I'm jumping on this thing and having you guys download and test it out, make adjustments, put it back out there. It feels almost open source ish, right? I mean it's It's really cool. Good to cool to see you guys for that. Absolutely.

And I I think the fact that Mikado is doing that too just goes to show like, hey, here's a helicopter that might lure a bunch of beginners in and if we could show'em how easy it is to install a preset that we create. Yep. And get in the air simply. Like it's gonna bring people into the ecosystems and create customers for life. So I think it makes a lot of sense to do that.

No, I was gonna say, you know, the stratus kinda threw a curveball to all the manufacturers, right? It was like bring your own FBL and everybody's like, Whoa, that's different, you know, and so Of course Road of Light kinda jumped on at the beginning because they already had a a tune very similar and close to it. So it was like boom really quick.

publicly download the spirit tune in a very solid and stable state right now. It's just that the tail has room to improve from the public version right now, which is where a lot of the work's gone. I think a lot of people Who don't know, and certainly not the developers, but don't understand the complexity of tuning a motorized tail.

Yeah. It's pretty cool.

So psyched about that. I almost feel like As much as I'm dying to fly the bigger birds, I could spend a day happily at the field right now with a pile of carbon blades, three micro helies, a ton of batteries, and just compare and geek out and be a micro heli nerd all day. Yeah. And I could be very happy. It was that that's kinda it for me, man. It's just been micro heli, micro heli, micro heli, helping some folks get started on spirit on the side as well, which is fun. And

Yep.

You know, one one question I had though, flying the micros, I mean they're they're just like super popular right now. What is it doing to the birds in between, like micro and and and seven hundred size? I don't hear a lot of folk. Talking about, you know, the the the five, six hundred size, even the four hundred size birds now, just due to the popularity now of the micros and just seven hundred size. I think herself.

No, I don't think so. I think micros are very popular and they're getting more popular as there's more and more buzz of everyone going, it really does fly bigger. Like we're not just lying. We're not saying this five years ago, we're saying this, you know, now. But I think, you know, when you see the SAB five ninety land in a month or so, I think there's gonna be a ton of buzz around that. I think you'll see a lot of people picking those up.

Yeah.

I think we're just, I don't know, in a space where we haven't had a five fifty or six hundred launch for a little while. But I mean it's it's a great size. It's still that single pack helicopter that gives you a big helly feel. I think, you know, micros are never gonna beat that.

And I wonder if it's too that, you know, it it's been wintertime and so y you see folks in the garage or just in the backyard flying the micros. You know, to not have to drive in forty degree, thirty degree weather to a field to fly bigger birds. So I wonder if if weather had uh an impact on that as well.

Yeah, yeah. Quite pi quite possibly. It's good stuff, man. Good updates. It's it's all microhelys all the time around here these days. It's good fun.

And now, with all the

News from inside the RC helicopter hot.

We bring it.

you the Rota Report.

Okay, NASA is planning on sending more helicopters to Mars. The uncomp unc upcoming Skyfall mission to Mars is expected to send three helicopters to the red planet in twenty twenty eight. NASA plans to increase the head speed to up to 3750. This is like Augie or something now in charge of this.

Yeah.

Allow additional payloads and maybe even some pure TikToks and Yeah, it is actually true. So they're apparently putting three more helicopters on.

Yeah. Wow. And they've been working on increasing the head speed to almost the tip speed is something like close to Mach 1 right now.

Gee. I guess that other one died and it's just sitting on the planet now. It's crazy.

Yeah.

Bye, Cole.

So got some Steam news. I saw this from Paul of uh New England RC. So Steam has released a rotor flight nitro engine temp sensor. It's a compact telemetry sensor module designed for rotor flight compatible gyro and flight controller setup. And so this works with the fly rotor telemetry protocol. So you select fly rotor like for your ESC, how they've designed this.

If your temperature sensor says it's minus thirty C, it's time to pack up and go home.

It's kinda cool. A couple of different things.

That's cool.

You're truly addicted if you see.

औरहें

I just thought about like I wonder if you could put this thermister up to your motor somewhere and actually get some temps on it, like down near the coils or the lower part to just keep an idea of how hot it's running, you know, like roughly.'Cause we do have, you know, ESC temps, but we don't have motor temps.

Yeah. The Project One motor. So yeah, it it it will give you some uh metrics on the temperature. So it's pretty cool.

Yeah, I'm assuming it's mounted like dead in the center somewhere, you know, where there's you wouldn't really it wouldn't help too much if it's far out on the area where it's spinning, where it's getting cooler. It's probably way hotter on the coils themselves.

Yeah. Well, if you're about to if you're about to email us and tell us that you shouldn't tune your nitro motor based on a temperature sensor

Yeah, I think

Kenny at Rotorevolution.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's all just an idea. You know, you can only on a nitro you could put it on there and just have it alert you when it gets over two thirty or forty, just a certain temp. You know, you're gonna be running somewhere up in there anyway sometimes. So it's just an idea of all of a sudden you're running too lean or something might give you a warning, I guess. Yeah. If you can't hear it that well, it's maybe a helpful thing, I guess.

Yeah. Just set it for hundred and fifty C and set a little voice to Texas says, If you can hear this, your motor has stopped.

Yeah, when it's melting down, it's time to stop.

Alright Brian, what do you got?

All right, SAB. So SAB's been releasing a few more specifics about the Ogoblin five ninety on their Facebook page. So the model will feature a larger oversized one way bearing. That's situated on the main shaft. My detailed drive train photo shows the two stage drive drivetrain featuring a belt driven secondary shack. Okay. And SAB says the model is expected to ship sometime in late June or early July. So keep your eyes and ears open for that.

That's awesome. I'm super stoked for that model, and I'm planning to do a full build video on the Helly Direct YouTube channel for that once I get the kit in my hand. I'm stoked about. All right, Mikado, as promised, released the new micro receiver and pre configured tunes for micro helicopters. Uh the S two Ultra, I believe, the the V three pro for sure.

And some weight.

SPL. Yeah, in some way. So we'll see. I'm curious to see how they'll do on the 200 V twos versus uh whatever. But definitely check out that micro receiver, super flexible.

All right, more SAB news. So SAB has announced two new helicopters in the pipeline and are also scheduled for June releases. We got the Ild Goblin Competizione in both electric and nitro forms. Essentially SAB took a long, hard look at the Ogoblin Pro and the Puma platforms and did everything possible to optimize them.

All right.

But the updates to this thing, right? It so so here's some updates for. So it's lighter with an airframe weight of less than two kilograms now, which is really cool. So that that mainframe of course is lightened and strengthened a little bit. Better than what we currently have. There's a nineteen millimeter motor belt, which is lar larger than the previous version. High efficiency approved tail belt tensioner.

I feel like they've been flirting with close to that, but haven't quite gone all the way until now.

So this is this is their now one-to-one main rotor geometry. So they got this rigid dampening, which they make sound really fancy by calling it this high modulus technopolymer dampeners. Pretty technical, pretty techie techy stuff. So cool. You got a twelve millimeter main shaft supported by three bearings now. Zero play swatch plate arms for increased precision.

No, not the other one. Yeah, they've done it. It's was available as an upgrade on the Ogoblin Pro as well.

Yeah, yeah.

I wanna know what the zero play swashplate arm is. They had play in'em before?

Apparently, I know. It's like when you release that and then it makes you feel bad about your previous generation.

I wonder if it's just like if if it's not multiple pieces that makes it up and maybe it's just one piece. I don't know.

Well seriously.

Um

Yeah.

Alright, so also double pan tail slider. I thought I was double PN already. We'll see. No.

No, the the S X C edition was double pin, but the standard O'Goblin Pro wasn't. I'm not sure about the Puma.

Carbon boom with internal aluminum reinforcements. Okay. And these birds are meant to fly with both 6S and 12s power systems. Okay, so also, while SAB hasn't said anything yet, a well known SAB photographer in Blankton Rivera posted a photo of the El Goblin Competicione Nitro helicopter on his page as well. So presumably it include all of the above features I just read and perhaps some nitro optimizations as well.

I know the boom thing, like having the aluminum inserts probably pretty good because I think on the original one it would pinch, you know, if you had a carbon boom or something and kind of slide a little bit sometimes.

Yep, yep, yep, yep, exactly.

Definitely improved home.

But now we know what you might be thinking, right? So so didn't SAB just release the Puma Electric and Nitro? The answer is yes, they did. And Doesn't this lighter optimized version of the Ilgaban Competizione seem to replace those models? Maybe, maybe not. We're not really sure though, what SAB's plans are. you know, we're sure that they will continue to support

Parts four.

For all of their birds. But one has to wonder, if you're looking for a lightweight nitro or electric, you know, would you still consider the Puma, right? Or would you just go straight to the competizione edition?

I feel like what we're missing from SAB right now is A a spokesperson,'cause since Kyle left, I don't think we've seen someone step forward that's creating a lot of video content that explains new models in the way that Kyle did really well. But I feel like we're we're missing this video that says, hey, we wanna just bring some clarity to the Puma Electric, the Puma Nitro, the ill goblin competizione electric and nitro as to where their place is in the market and how they differ from each other.

Yeah, maybe a comparison.

I mean it feels like the Puma Electric and Nitro were the lightened optimized version of the LGoblin Pro, and now we've released a new new updated version of the Il Goblin Pro in a nitro and an electric that's meant for 6S in 12S and all the same boxes that were ticked on the Puma editions, but with updated geometry and a few more improvements.

I think uh same thing, yeah. I'm kinda like there's they seem too close, you know. the releases even to what they are, so we need to like see the actual visual parts comparisons and why they did what they did maybe, like an explanation of how it's better. Yeah.

And will there be a difference in price? Right. I mean, is this one gonna be twenty five percent more in price versus the normal Puma?

For any improvements or upgrades.

Right.

Then why not just release upgrade parts? But maybe they're not similar enough. Maybe they went, you know, significantly enough in one direction they needed a new model.

That's what I was wondering. If you just bought one of the other ones, are you gonna be able to swap anything out and uh, you know, add those parts to the old frame or you need new the new airframes basically side frames and everything?

Yeah, I mean certainly with changing some of the sizes of belts and some shafts and things, you'll have to replace some pieces, but n in a way that's not easy, but we'll see. Yeah. Yeah.

All right, so we talked about absolute CNC products not going anywhere on our last episode, I believe, and when we announced that they had sold off the rights to produce the Vortex pipe. This week they've announced a new product, a precision cut annealed copper exhaust gasket. And head gaskets for the popular OS and YS Nitro engines. You can find the gaskets for the OS 61, the 70, the 91, the 105, and the YS91 SRX and the 96 SRX. And the one hundred twenty five.

For

More information to be found on the website at www.apsolute cncproducts dot com. So these gaskets, if they're annealed, I guess they they're I don't think they were brass. I kind of saw the photos of that and I'm assuming that they've made them soft enough now to say they may actually work pretty well if you squish them down, they're not gonna leak or anything very easily. So we'll see how that goes. I mean it'd be pretty cool cool product.

Yeah, I bet they work really well. I mean, Gregor is, you know, another of the US based kings of Nitro, certainly knows what he's doing. So if he says it's good, I believe him one hundred percent. All right, next up, Scott Graham, uh U.S. pilot, has announced a new website dedicated to RC Heli Events called www.rcellievents.com. So this website is aimed to host information on upcoming Heli only events as well as allow for registrations to be hosted there.

Yeah.

So I I opened this site up yesterday and it there's kind of I didn't look at the map section thing or I didn't really go through all the tabs but It does show some listings like for events already on there, but I'm not I mean, it looks like it's gonna be a pretty easy way to look at everything'cause it's all listed top to bottom, you know, like in order. So it's chronologically kind of listed. It's pretty cool. Think it'll be pretty pretty helpful.

He was he was asking folks to go ahead and start posting stuff, just kind of a test run to make sure everything was working properly, his form submission and things like that. So I wonder if he's still kind of in beta mode right now to getting it to work, but

I don't know, but I mean there used to be a website that would do that and would let you host registrations there as well, like pre registra

RC events or something it was called. There was a couple of them like that, yeah.

Yeah, and they went under, so it would be great to see someone succeed at it.

And

Absolutely.

be able to have a one stop shop for that. I love the idea of a map too. That's great.

And I'd say too, you know. C D of events, or contest directors or or just folks who host the events, you know, if you post your event through this platform share some news. I mean it's it's gonna be there, but that means you gotta go there. At least every two weeks we'll get to share whatever you posted up there as to support your event. So it doesn't really take away the fact that we're gonna stop doing that, but it just gives us a better organized way of promoting your event. So

Yeah, I think that'd be check it out. Yeah. If you're a CD or event organizer, send your information their way. All right, next up it's time for and we haven't had this in a little while.

Loader replay.

The Rotor Replay.

I'm not gonna say that in like Italian.

It's gotta be.

Hey, the rotary play, huh?

Das ist nicht even possible.

Italians can send your hate mail to Brian Birdsong at Rotorevolution dot live.

It wasn't me. I'm not sounding like Mario.

What do you think it's gotta be?

I it's gotta be Patrick's video, bro. I mean he put on a flight at uh torches. Good lord. Underneath the uh the pit area there with the the stro what was it uh uh M two and just M2?

M one yeah in the small little area, like three or four foot area.

a gorgeous little flight. It was so damn skilled and technical and he kept it in one spot and he had

I'm sorry.

Was just surrounding the tables watching him. And he stayed right there in the middle of the floor. It was so cool. Yeah. Such a cool flight. Yeah.

Yeah. So safety police listeners to the podcast, please take both of your hands and cover your ears for the next two and a half minutes. Okay? Set a timer, two and a half minutes, hands over your ears. Don't send me hate mail. Okay, here we go. So Torches held an informal sort of local weekend uh one day event at their club and Patrick, who's wiki, one of our guests this week in the main topic, uh showed up. He's he's not too far away from the Torches Club.

Yeah.

And all of the club members.

Who

Who, at least the ones I saw in the video, are all very experienced pilots, are as relaxed as can be, have incredible faith in Patrick's flying abilities. No one takes a step back. No one looks tense, no one looks worried, they're all super relaxed, but just watching him throw down in a shoebox, basically. And it's incredible to watch. So We gotta stop talking about it now because our safety inclined folks are about to take their hands over their ears and we now resume our normal programming.

Alright, welcome back safety folks.

Yes. So hopefully guys we run into some of you at our George at Hilly Gathering event. by the time we uh release this episode, it'll be the week of. So that weekend of June fifth through the seventh. We hope to see you guys out there, but we do have One other event that has come in since then, the Dragonfly event in East Bend, North Carolina has announced their dates. So the event will take place June twenty-fifth through the twenty-eighth. CD John Titus.

Yeah, I'm gonna try to get to that one. It's usually a pretty good time.

Yeah.

I love that event. I'm I'm not gonna be able to make it this year, which bums me out, but it's just it's one of those events that attracts a lot of top tier pilots. Just people from all skill levels, to be honest, because it's so laid back. It's like if you want to learn something or get support with something or help with a move, it's one of the best events in the United States to get that.

Very cool.

And with that, I think that's all we got for the news this.

Hello everyone, this is Joki.

and you're listening to

Workload evolution

All right, next up is our main topic. We have OMP Hobby and BK Hobby's team pilot Patrick Huswicki. Which, if you have been living under a rock in the United States. Patrick been in the hobby a long time, but has recently just been absolutely throwing down at a variety of fun flies across the United States. Recent winter. Of the I'm not sure the name of the class, master's class, I think it's called, or expert, which is the one. Do you know what class?

Expert. Expert thing was expert.

Yep. Recent winner of the expert class at the Urcha Cup at the last Urcha. Definitely caught the competition bug. Fantastically helpful, friendly guy in the hobby. And we had a great time chatting with Patrick last night. So check out our interview with Patrick Cruzwickie from OMP Hobby and BK Hobbies. Here it is.

What's up, Patrick?

the road of revolution. How are you, man?

Doing great. Happy to be here. How's it going guys?

Yeah, dude, thanks for coming.

What's going on, Patrick? Yep.

Happy to be here.

So Patrick, we always start sort of by trying to get a little bit of background on anyone that comes on the show because we all kind of come into the hobby through different paths, some of us as kids, some of us as adults. So let's start there. How did you get involved with the RC helicopter hobby? How long have you been doing it?

Yeah, this could be a really long s story or I could make it short and sweet.

Yeah, you've been doing it a long time, right?

I'll give you the good parts, only the best.

I don't know.

Yeah, I've been doing it for a long time. So ultimately my dad got me into the hobby. My dad himself got into the hobby the year I was born. So he was into R C helicopters, of course, the early, you know, nitros

Oh nice.

really liked the F three C scene early on. And so he was a big fan, big Curtis Youngblood fan, you know.

Yeah.

We'd go to all the F three C events at Muncie, you know, had twin J.R. Vigor helicopters painted just like the Curtis Youngblood, you know, scheme back in the day.

Uh

That's cool.

Um so I grew up around that and of course, you know, I was at the field in the you know, in the carrier.

Yeah.

while my dad was out there, you know, crashing his helicopters and ultimately, yeah, Santa brought me a Horobo llama one year. The first

All night.

you know, helicopters. So that was uh ultimately my like first start with, you know, holding a transmitter in my hand. I remember my dad had a Windows ninety five what was it, compact. Cresario computer with Flight deluxe on it.

Wow.

Oh.

So man, I was version one of Real Flight. That's how early I I entered the game. So

Dude, I'm impressed that you as a kid were interested in the sim. Like'cause most kids are not they want to fly, but they're not

You know. Yeah. Well, you know, I wasn't growing up I wasn't a huge video gamer. My video game was the sin.

What's early?

Like

So early on, early on being two thousand and seven. Two thousand seven, two thousand eight, I met Mike McConville of Horizon Hobby and John Redmond. Those are really big names for me. And so they enticed me into the IMAC scene. And so I got into precision aerobatics with the gas, you know, giant scale aerobatic airplane.

Flying.

Yeah, I'm just curious if that's

Where were you guys living at this time?

Yeah, so home is Chicago. I grew up in Chicago and uh it was only until I moved out to college in twenty fifteen that I moved away from Chicago. But all of that, you know, history revolves around the Midwest. So yeah, planes Plans is what I liked at the start, and then a crazy story, I started a YouTube channel in two thousand nine and Wow I uh Jeez uploaded some videos of me flying at the local golf dome in the winters.

That's cool. That's awesome.

Yeah. Yeah.

It was nice of them to let you do that.

Oh yeah. Definitely. So that was really good memories from those times. Ultimately, you know, tried to record a bunch of videos just to kind of look back on and track my progress. And through those YouTube videos made a friend, just a local kid that wanted to get into the RC hobby, but with helicopters. and, you know, I kinda took him under my wing. Uh we became really good friends, but I kind of shepherded him getting into helicopters. And so he did helicopters, I did planes.

Is he still flying?

He still has one. Yeah.

Do you want to say who it is?

That's Jordan Hollitz. Yeah, yeah. See him at Urcha every year. So yeah, we go way back.

But with that.

you know, he kinda got me into helicopters'cause, you know, I was always around him watching him get into, you know, his early beginnings with three D and I said, Why not? You know, it's challenging. I like a challenge. I'm generally a pretty competitive person. And that was kind of my start. You know, of course I did start helicopters really early, uh, with my dad getting me into that, but transition into airplanes very early.

Yeah.

than I am, maybe two, three years older. But we had a lot of mutual friends, which is kinda why we clicked and, you know, he lived in a suburb of Chicago, so we we flew together quite often. And so yeah, with that, that's kind of what kicked off my my R C Heli career is getting into Heli's about two thousand eleven, I'd say. And it was at the iHobby Expo, 2011 I believe, that the Blade MCPX was released.

Notably.

All right on.

And I remember I remember a gentleman named Doug from Kv D D.

Oh, that's funny.

Yeah, got me into into the KBDD team with, you know, that MCPX kind of starter pack because I was at the time flying a T-Rex two fifty and doing pretty good. And to help them test their main rotor blades. They were, you know, injection molding these rotor blades for the MCPX and it was such a new product. They just needed kind of more beta testers.

I was good.

So many hours on that helicopter and it was from really that MCPX that the micro helis, you know, I took a great liking to. And then the MC the sorry, the one thirty X came out, the one eighty C

Did you like that thing?

I was I was really big into the micros and yeah, the one thirty X was

Dude, I had a one thirty and I don't think I ever flew it because

Mine too.

Yeah. So funny story actually. Yeah, early yeah, in those one thirty X days, I

Yeah.

Started selling metal tail gears for that helicopter. Um so like made a little, you know, side business out of that.

I kinda remember that upgrade.

So I sold a bunch of those through Heli Freak in the early days. That was like a popular upgrade. But it was a lot of fun. Yeah, I worked at a hobby shop, local hobby shop, strictly R C in Chicago. And so I I was the guy wrenching on all the micro helis that people brought in'cause I I'm the kid behind the counter, so

That's cool.

But yeah, the micros. The micros accelerated kind of me down that path. And then ultimately I decided to well, I was still flying planes at the time and I wanted to compete in the indoor 3D cup that was hosted by Empire Hobby at the iHobby Expo. In this was gett this was the last iHobby expo of their whole run in Toledo, Ohio. And I went there. I traveled there specifically to compete in their, you know, fixed wing the foamy club.

Ha ha.

Yeah, just for fun. I placed fourth in the in the airplane.

Oh nice. Okay.

But in the Hellies? One first place in the micro class. Second place in the mini class, the four fifty.

Wow.

One spot behind Nick Matzwell.

Nice.

Very cool.

So yeah, that was Great memory. That was what tw twenty eleven, twenty twelve maybe? Okay. And it was that year that I was like, man, okay, I won some big contests with these helicopters. It's time to get into, you know, something bigger. w you know, what are my you know, what are my friends flying in terms of a seven hundred? You know, and yeah. That's where I met J C, Andy P, you know, Jack Glindside from Empire Hobby, of course Mitch Morozis, awesome pilot also from Chicago.

'Cause you flew for

So yeah, Empire Hobby was uh the US's uh Gowie distributor. Oh and so Gowie Hellies are what I got into really early on. So that that big win for me came with a Gowie USA team shirt. and got me into flying a Gowie X seven that early.

That was around their biggest time there, like twenty eleven to fourteen range kinda.

And I am so glad I was a part of it because to me those were still the golden days of, you know, the heli hobby is that huge wave that we saw. Twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen urcha.

I think that's the one that I had like I'd only I've only been to Urta twice and I think twenty fifteen was.

So yeah, that's where we set like a record for p you know, registered pilot count, twelve hundred registered pilots. It was insane. D we have the fireworks, you know, we have the

The cool car.

Yeah, I remember the Avant girls being they went out there the one time and then like Bert and them laying on the Lamborghinis and doing stuff with them.

So So yeah.

Oh well I'll let you finish, I guess. You can get into today's I have a question about micros, but go ahead.

Yeah, I'm getting sentimental now, but that's you know, that's kind of the early story of me flying Hellies is kinda once I caught the bug and, you know, was wearing a colorful team shirt, was part of a you know, a family that we'd, you know, meet each other at at events around the country. I mean that

Yeah, that's funny.

But helys were so much easier to still fly at the largest class. while being, you know, a college student living in a dorm room, you can, you know, hang a seven hundred off your bunk bed and go out to the field and still fly and, you know, rip a competitive flight. So coming down to college you know, helped kinda further solidify, you know, my heli hobby. And yeah, you know, the last ten years flew by. So

Yeah.

What what did you end up doing professionally at this point?

Yeah, so finished my aerospace engineering degree at Embry Riddle here in Daytona Beach. throughout my time here at Ambry Riddle, and this is a kind of a cool story, actually kinda segues into what I'm doing now. If y'all remember a Paul Andreoli flying

I do.

Yeah.

He was a test pilot for a research facility here at the school. And he was a part of a really cool project. But as I came into the school, he was graduating. So he actually referred me to his to take his place on that project, and so that's how I got involved with this research facility flying a really cool drone project. That was actually a very large flying wing with two helicopter rotors on top of it, like propelling.

Yeah.

So yeah, that was a really cool venture to be a part of. And I spent my time kind of uh outside of classes at that research facility helping, you know, build it, tune it, fly it, test it, crash it, fix it. Ultimately, after graduation, that is where I ended up working full time, accepting an offer from that research facility to act as the engineering project manager.

Reds.

Holy crap dude. Wow. That's terrifying.

As part of a big big project that we were doing to try to help the FAA understand how these flying taxis are going to behave in the in the realm of certification when one rotor fails. You know, just like fixed wing aircraft, multi multi engine aircraft have to demonstrate stable flight after the failure of one engine, so do their operators. We thought the same thing has to happen for these VTOLs that, you know, have um created this whole new industry of electric flight.

This is why when I saw you at Torches like three years ago you had all these spare goblin parts.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

So remnants from an old school project. But but yeah, that was that was a crazy project. In the end we did prove flight beyond a rotor failure. We created completely new control laws. that can fly an aircraft like that. We can do some really cool things with it. You know, this is an aircraft that could, you know, a fifteen foot diagonal span quadcopter that has the yacht authority of a five inch

That's super cool.

And today, as of last October, actually as of last Heli X, because I was making these negotiations while at the uh Heli event, I took on a new job working for a company called MacWare. And we make aerial mapping camera system.

That's awesome, man. It's amazing how many three D helicopter pilots are in the aerospace industry in some fashion, whether it's pilots or folks working in drone programs or other engineering around aerospace, it's cool.

There's a there's a certain level of FOMO I can take, man. I mean, you see Bobby Watts, you know, doing doing his thing and that's a huge inspiration, you know.

Most of us are just in the reverse engineering line of work where we just destroy'em and tear'em back apart.

Yeah.

That's right. That's a big part of it.

Alex, I wanna let you get back to your micro helicopter question, but I've certainly got more after that. Patrick finish are you are you kinda?

I mean that's a nutshell. You know, there's a lot in between, but you know, here we are today in Daytona Beach, Florida, you know, doing what we like and you know, just uh staying busy with hobbies.

So you mentioned

Yeah, that's a great question. The fear of crashing is something that keeps us all from, you know, pushing our limits. Mm-hmm. I think those micros do a great job at getting us more comfortable with you know, kind of expanding that envelope, maybe too comfortable sometimes. But with micro helicopters everything happens so much faster. you can fit so much more into a flight. You know, the pace of flight is is so much faster. And so when you then, you know, get on the sticks of a larger helicopter

So

I think, you know, it translates very positively.

So you would recommend fly your micro more than you fly yourself.

There's probably a limit to that, you know.

Ha ha ha.

Yeah, it's a good balance. I think it's easy to get burnt out of doing one thing too much. Um you know, with micros there's always the constant tinkering with of course the the tiny hardware that you have to deal with. the micros of today make it so much easier, you know, consolidating parts count and all that. So we, you know, we're in such an awesome time now where, you know, that technology has advanced.

Yeah.

So the last ten years of this micro heli industry have I mean, it's unrecognizable, you know. I was It crazy to admit, I was a hater of the tail rotor motor, you know, style of doing that, you know, with these micros until I bought my first

It feels like the new one the new tale is probably better than that was, right?

Yeah, they're so much better.

Well,

It's not just the tail to thank for that. You know, we're now using the main motor to help

You have the tally tail correction, yeah.

You know, a crazy epiphany that we came up on and it's it's awesome to see. I mean, who would have thought, but yeah, it it makes sense. You're using the main motors acceleration, deceleration to to help your tail performance. Yeah. It's huge.

I'm like looking up the one eighty, I forgot that it exists. It's funny. We have a Horizon team pilot here in the Atlanta area who live and died by that mechanical tail on the one eighty and he's currently loving the XL Power Stratos two hundred and I think it's converting him to to tail motors at this point.

Yeah.

And he was he was the first person to tell you tail motors are garbage for a very long time, but uh it's amazing how far they've come.

Yeah.

Speaking of progression, Patrick, for you know, for those that don't know, Patrick is an amazingly talented pilot who can throw down very entertaining to watch for sure. Yep.

Yeah, that's a great question. I Think about that all the time. I think my flying has hit a plateau at one point and you know part of that is the motivation to go out and fly. If you don't have a group to go out and fly with, that makes it so difficult.

Yeah.

Push yourself to get to the field and just sit there and practice something. Here in Daytona Beach, man, I'm the only heli pilot. Uh, you know, the local field it's a beautiful field, beautiful field. But I'm the only heli guy. You know. So for a long time, man, I just, you know, went out and flew kind of what I know how to fly and wasn't wasn't really too enticed to, you know, up it up and uh, you know, go to the next level. But um

It it's just mind blowing to me that there can be someone like you at a local club that can fly at that level and there's not other people that are like, I wanna do that and join it. And I've tried you're not the only club that's like that. Yeah. It's just crazy to me that that doesn't that's not more infectious, you know.

Sure. No. I I stand with that. I made that realization. I was like, no, I need to fly with other heli heli guys. And that was my big like impetus for, you know, reaching out to the Torches Club in in Orlando, Florida, and joining their club and just being

Away, isn't it?

It's like an hour flat, you know, if there's not crazy traffic. And so now I'm making that call it a commute, but it's, you know, a nice cruise over there. Yeah. You know, every weekend, every other weekend. So I'm out there often and just being with the guys is, you know, enough for me to charge those batteries and go out and rip, you know.

Yeah, that makes it a lot better. I've been doing like when between my flights on my regular sized helicopters, I still grab like the M one or the M two out and fly between flights too,'cause that kind of keeps it fresh too, because you have that smaller, fast reacting helicopter, so it it's helpful too.

Yeah, most definitely. Yeah. And then the competitive

The guys at the I'm sorry. Were none of the guys at the Daytona Club like did none of them buy a helicopter and at least try to get you to teach them anything?

No. Yeah. It was just me.

I don't understand. I don't understand.

But Alex, you got to think about it. I mean... the the level of three D flying that you guys do to a a planker is scary as hell. So

Like they're out of control ever, though.

Well no no no not even out of control but it's it's it's so much. It takes A ton of of of hand eye coordination and thought process to do what you're do

No. I can never do that.

Oh, but but on the flip side though, like for me at my feel, I'm an F three C flyer, sport flyer, right? It it looks like a plane. I fly almost 2D-ish, right, just to do my maneuvers. And they ooh and ah about that. They oh wow. And there's a couple of plankers that have bought helicopters because of my influence towards them. So I guess it just depends on the crowd.

You're doing something that seems achievable to them, maybe.

Absolutely.

F three C no offense to you looks easy. I know that it's not.

No, no, I get it. I totally get it.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Absolutely. Yeah. The primary demographic at this field is those folks that go home when the clock strikes ten AM.

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

It's a private field for the rest of the day, so

Yeah, I guess.

Yeah, that's the other half.

It's so funny'cause when those guys are out there and you get there, you're like, Man, I'm never gonna get any flying in and like you said, at like ten A. M. they all go home and you're like.

Oh yeah.

That's that's'cause the wind goes over at three and a half miles an hour. The whole time.

Yeah. No, that's for sure.

Yeah, I wish you weren't there'cause I might have won if you weren't there.

Don't worry, that that path is clear for you this year.

Yeah, I know, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But uh but truly that's uh when I heard about the Urcha Cup that's that's kind of what relit my spark and I took I took practice seriously. So, you know, I hit the sim uh a lot and really tried to pay attention to my flying. And you know, it's important to read the rules because I knew what I was going to be graded on. And as a good student myself, understanding the assignment is is, you know, the name of the game.

So

understanding what you're gonna be graded on is exactly what I wanted to do. So when I saw, you know, symmetry and kind of the level of complexity that was gonna be evaluated, that's what I that's where I was like strategic in what I what I started practicing. And it was from

Um

really, you know, a year ago, just about, that I yeah, so we all have our preferred rudder direction. You know, we're all stuck with that left rudder. We love left rudder. But the very few elite that use right rudder

Yeah.

That's that's kind of where I wanted to drive myself is I need to learn right rudder. I need to do things both ways. And especially to satisfy that point, you know, in the Urcha Cup is hit some left rudder Pyro flips and I just need to learn how to do one single right rudder Pyro flip just to like, you know, take that box. And yeah, I nailed it and from that point on, really from last urcha

Yeah, I think.

everywhere I can, just completely rethinking what flying is, what three D is and it's refreshing. That has really kind of relit that spark is learning new maneuvers but learning how to do stuff the other way. You know, it's I get that feeling just like when I was new in Hellies again, like doing a flip was exciting. I get that same feeling now, you know, learning the same maneuvers I knew how to do left rudder but right rudder.

It's really crazy too because I've been trying to learn this also. And you've There's a lot of maneuvers that we do that you've just been doing for a long time that kind of feel easy now, that maybe really aren't easy maneuvers. Right. And when you start trying to do it the other way, it's almost like you have that you have that Epiphany or that memory of holy crap, I forgot how hard this was.

Yep.

Crazy hard.

And then you go to Urcha, you know, and you see some of the, you know, pilots from overseas doing things that Like you can't even name some of the maneuvers in a ten seconds, you know, capture of their flight and and then it's like, man, like I don't even know what to call that. I don't even know what they did.

to compete in the in the master's class this year?

So I believe winning the expert cup earns me that right. With the master's class, however, it's an invite-only deal.

So

I'm waiting on that letter.

Yeah.

I'm sure you will be invited to do so, dude.

Fingers crossed. Yeah, I'm I'm already starting to plan a routine here.

I mean you've earned you've earned it in my opinion, you know.

Thank you.

Definitely.

Definitely trying to put something together for that. I know you know, I know my competition now, but I'll be I'll be happy to be the last one in the highest class.

Ha ha ha.

I would all I would I would be right there with you, you know, just honored to be a part of it, you know. Right, right.

Yeah. You know, everybody was like, Oh dude, no, sign up for the master's class right away and I was like, No, no, you know, if I if I really deserve it, I'll earn it, you know. Yeah. We'll start from the bottom and

I don't think you would get last, by the way. I don't think you'd be bottom of the

We'll see.

I guess there's always someone that has to be there.

There's a lot of variables at play here, you know, nerves, wind. I mean, the flight to music aspect is incredibly challenging. You know, you think you can throw

It's totally different than what we did.

You add music into the mix and then all of a sudden you can't hear you can't hear the beat you practice so hard to hit, you know?

Yeah, the nerves is the biggest distraction.

Amen.

Yeah. Were you nervous last year when we did the cup the Richard Cup?

You didn't see my legs shaking?

No, for real.

Yeah.

He didn't seem nervous at all?

But uh I was nervous and I will say, yeah, not hearing the music as clearly as I did during my practice flights was my biggest challenge. And um that's why my competition flight didn't feel as good as my practice flight. That morning I did ten flights to music back to back. Back to back to back. And felt super confident from my tenth flight. I was like, That's it. No flying until the competition. I'm locked in.

Patrick, I think if you choose to look at it that way. I I tell my I I tell people who are like going to speak in front of public th and they don't really don't like public speaking or something. I'm like, Well just think about it as instead of you're nervous, you're excited, you know, like it's a different it's the same feeling.

Yeah, great point.

So so so during this progression though and learning new tricks and maneuvers, you know, uh do you crash? I'm gonna knock on wood and say you don't, but uh if you do, how often do you crash? Trying something new.

Yeah, that's a that's a great question. Everybody would love to know that. Um the micros don't count, do they? Those go in off. I will say I've had a lot of anomalies. Mechanical, radio, you know, issues. Um, those are probably my my biggest ones I can I can quote here. I

Yeah.

And you end up getting getting bit later on, like I've had failures of the ball link itself. There's, you know, a certain type of ball that you, you know, put on the servo arm where that you dry the screw all the way through and it's not like a built in thread with the uni ball. It's like a screw through it. Screws are generally like M twos, M two point like very thin screws. And I'll end up th I've fatigued those screws and broken that screw holding a ball on to it multiple times. You know?

Holy cow.

So unlike medical.

I've never heard of anyone doing that before. That's crazy. Right?

Yeah, I mean it you know, it happens and happens to me, you know, so I end up, you know, kinda outflying my parts a lot. You know, I should and on that note I I respect those that hold a logbook. You know, it's very difficult to hold yourself to that.

Most of us are too lazy to actually keep track.

Yeah, yeah.

I guess it's good too that some of these uh you know, radio systems are tracking it for you now. I mean it's new, it's fresh telemetry now. You know, you get the flight count on a particular model. So that's true. You know, hopefully that's starting to help out. Yeah, are you are

Are you using that Patrick the flight counter now?

Just just recently I got my new radio in the mail, the new T X sixteen Mark three. Okay and got um the rotor flight widget model set up, you know, per Bert's video and you know, he actually helped me get that get that working fully at the field recently and yeah. So now I've got, you know, the latest and greatest and and and counting'em.

Ha ha ha.

So have you switched to rotorflight? I thought you were on the V control side of things. Uh is this a recent change?

Yeah, that's that's actually a story in itself. I never owned a V control. I always wanted a V control. I flew many V bars before the rotor flight, you know, era kinda came on. But I was a very early adopter of the Radio Master T X sixteen transmitter when it was first announced that with Buddy RC, the first shipment like twenty nineteen. That was announced at that radio, I pre ordered that radio because I thought it was too good to be true. And I didn't, you know, rotor flight was

I know, yeah.

And I bought it because I thought it was too good to be true. I I, you know, spent my, you know, lunch money on that just to try it. And I remember showing up to Urcha With that radio and my 700. And yeah, all the comments I got was like, You're not scared to fly a two thousand dollar helicopter with you know.

Yep. I've said it. I've said it. It's okay.

I mean, we all have thought it and I'm like, listen, I haven't had a problem yet. Like I'm literally here to test that theory. And, you know, we we we we all we were all doubting it, but man, like to this day, I haven't had a problem with it and that radio lasted me for a very, very long time. So with, you know, my kind of background also doing FPV drones, I saw how that entire side of the hobby did did what they did. d regardless of their

Mm.

able to access their settings on the fly through their video. just because they all ran the same flight control software, beta flight.

Yeah.

Regardless of hardware, you're telling me that everybody had access to all their settings on the fly at their fingertips? I was like, yeah, this this is too easy. This entire, you know, world here uses this thing that makes it easy, un universal. And us heli guys are just stuck choosing, you know, A or B for an ecosystem entirely. Yeah. And I get it. Nice. I mean the user experience is

Yeah.

That's a huge win for me.

So

Yeah, I love it. I'm using Rotoflight on all my machines, and Nexus, the original Nexus or the Nexus XR on a couple of my more modern LEDs.

Cool.

It's here to stay, you know, I'm I'm liking it a lot. So

Love it, love it, love it.

So speaking of like brands and stuff, who are your current sponsors?

Yeah, so I'm flying OMP hobby and more recently I joined

Stop saying the name.

T.K. Harden.

Yeah.

Yeah, I practice that.

Don't don't forget to say all capital letters.

That's right.

That's awesome. What uh what made you decide on LMP Hobby? I mean, a pilot of your talents surely has your choice of a lot of brands. What made you land there?

Yeah, thank you. So I yeah, kinda rewinding the tape back to my Gowie days, you know, I flew Gowie from two thousand eleven, twenty twelve, all the way Essentially until Gowie was no more. I mean, you know, Empire Hobby kinda dwindled was

Probably

twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen. So I was I was with Gowie almost till the very end and then flew you know, just the machines I had for for as long as I could. And then my my buddy Cade was flying miniature aircraft at the time and he enticed me into going to try, you know, the whiplash. Introduced me to uh Joseph and Judith of uh Miniature Aircraft at Urcha in twenty nineteen.

The M seven came first.

It might have did it? It might have. Yeah, the the point to make is just how quickly OMP uh grew in their model selection and Honestly, you know at Urcha you had to selectively represent the two brands that you're now a part of, you know, big events in general. And so that's where You know, that's where that became hard. You know, I think it's hard to be fully loyal to to just one brand and kind of selectively represent. You know, two two different teams. And so

Is really cool that the Mina Troners are like at every event, you know? Like

Oh yeah.

Nothing but good things to say about the miniature team. I I you know, I miss everybody, all good friends, great people, awesome machines, always a good time, great team. But with

You end up on O M P basically because of the micros, like that's what you

That's right. OMP micros kinda had me hooked with that brand. Yeah. And then honestly, with the entrance of of Jonas as the designer, we saw just this explosion in, you know, design effort. to just come out with very innovative, leading designs and with how quickly that progressed. you know, they extended the offer to to join, you know, fully OMP and be a part of those testing efforts.

It's wild. Th it feels like there was maybe a six month period where there were pilots who had like a four hundred and below contract with one team and then a five hundred and above with a different team or had freedom above five hundred size, but that period is gone. It feels like all the micro Heli manufacturers now have moved into five hundred, six hundred, seven hundreds and really

That's right. Yeah. I can't give you too much insider info. But

No, you can, it's okay.

Very exciting, very exciting things in the works here. Uh

Like the nitro?

Spill the beans.

I will say the latest testing efforts I was a part of being the M seven R that we now see, you know, in the in the wild that was, you know, an improvement to an existing chassis that was very tangible. You know, I was very familiar with the M seven airframe as it was, had put on hundreds of flights with that heli and couldn't even imagine you could make it better. But, you know, the M seven R Is you know, paved pave the way. There's there's more you can squeeze out of it and you know that.

weight side I would I almost feel like the M seven R is a totally different machine. Like yeah, it has the same flight characteristics, but it doesn't fly the same. It's

Yeah, I think a lot of that you could attribute to to the head. The head's a little bit different. You know, you no longer have the option to run the softer dampers with that teeter kind of in the center, which is how I like my M seven. And so the fully rigid POM setup is is definitely uh different in itself.

Very cool. Well, they got a lot right in that helicopter. The M seven R is one of my absolute favorite seven hundreds. It's a fantastic flying helicopter for sure.

Yeah, that's that's a great question. I think, you know, I'm not super experienced in that realm just yet. I will say the last Urcha Cup preparation, you know, campaign. was a huge learning lesson for me in in, you know, understanding how I learn best and and how I practice best. As much as I would like to say that I prepared, you know, months in advance. See music.

Yeah, it was about...

But even then, you know, we put together a a two and a half minute uh sequence music wise.

Way slower.

faster. So to kind of hit these beats and put the heli where you want it in the sky, it's a challenge. You really find yourself pushing the helicopter to get it there. And and that's actually an interesting insight because when you go out and fly in Headphones.

Yes, it does.

Where you should be practicing, you know? Right. And so that had me pretty frustrated. But, you know, the next day I woke up on fire, you know, so I got to the field super early and then Yeah, of course, just like with any fresh heli build, you know, there's things you gotta tweak, things you gotta tune. It took

Nice, okay.

Yeah, so got to reuse that that sequence there. But but yeah, that's kinda that that rush that rush of preparation. That's that's kinda what it looked like. You know, hopefully I can learn from that. You know.

When you do practice, do you Practice fatigue. Do you your brain just shut down and say, Okay, I think I'm done after like twelve, fifteen flights or whatever? Did you get fatigued?

Definitely. Yeah. T fifteen, twenty flights in a in a flying session is kind of the sweet spot. Nothing nothing more than that. You start getting burnt out. Here in Florida, I mean, twenty flights is a full day of flying when you're charging in between.

Yeah.

And you're just you're just tired from being out in the sun all day, you know?

Oh yeah.

Um but in general I think a good way to yeah, keep yourself from getting burnt out with Hellies in general, I think, is uh just taking a break. Taking a break is I mean, for s for someone like me it's something I have to do. I have a lot of other hobbies and so I kind of juggle between them all. Um Yeah, I dabble with motorsports. I I go drifting, you know, I've got two drift cars I I build myself and

That's awesome. And y and one last question from me too. So all this practice and these routines, you're getting them down this set m maneuvers and blah blah blah. You ever thought about joining the US F three N team?

You know, I've had a lot of people motivating me to do that. I had full intentions of doing that this year. Truthfully, uh I really did. But Man, j I barely find time in the day to Do basic things, just yeah, I I'm really busy and with all that I just I don't know if I could commit to to the level of practice on top of on top of that. You know, hey, selfishly, if we compare the prizes urch a cup first F three and

That's fine. Yeah.

Oh well we're trying to change that.

Risk versus reward. Let's be real here. You know, what's the enticement for one to get into that versus that? I mean.

Yeah.

You're gonna spend your own time, you're gonna spend a lot of you know, calories, a lot of blood, sweat and tears and you know, I get it. I get it. It's the pride, it's the you know.

But but Patrick, you're not the you're not the first pilot or the second or third that has said the same statements.

And I don't want to say that's what's driving it all, but it it it is an additional work.

Uh no, no, to to no to truly be compensated for your skills is is rewarding. It's it's great. I mean, you know, the trophies are cool but you know, a little little cash in the pocket's even better. So we get it. And we're and we're trying to strategize around, you know, doing something like that in the near future. So yeah, you guys keep your eyes and ears open. If I can I hear

If I could just feed this in here, my my little win with my micro helicopter at iHobby in 2011, and my little 450 class second place. I as a I don't even know, you know, freshman in high school at that time came home with fifteen hundred dollars in my pocket.

Boom.

Wow, dude, that's huge.

So Yeah. Yeah. So hey, I was happy in that, you know, if anything set some expectations for me.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

But uh no, it's a it's a good time regardless. I mean I do it'cause I'm competitive and, you know, I'll do it again anyway.

That's awesome. Bringing it back to micro helicopters, uh before we let you go, we gotta talk about this M one V three Under the shelter of Torches Flight that was recently on Hurts or the BK Hobbies YouTube channel. Dude, that was badass. Between tables under the shelter, maybe a five foot by five foot box you just put on a clinic with a tiny helicopter. It was awesome to watch. That was a badass flight. Like, did that just come out of nowhere?

Thank you. Thank you. I'm gonna circle this back because my highest viewed YouTube video, you know, in my early days of microhelys, was with the Blade Nano CPS. And the nano CPX was what the M1 is to the M2, you know, as it is to the MCPX. you know, you were able to fly that helicopter, you know, in your bedroom, over your bed, or in the case of that video that some of y'all might have seen in like, you know, what you know, back in the day.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You can fly this thing anywhere in your house. I you know I will challenge you. I will challenge you. There's nowhere in your house you can't fly this thing. And you know, it's it's funny and that's kind of what I wanted to show through that video video.

I mean bro, the control

It was amazing.

Control you have on this bird in that video. You know how you go watch golf and th and everyone can just stand that close to a golf and be like, Yeah, really trust this guy to hit that little ball straight ahead. I mean it's the same thing with you flying this bird. It's right there. Everyone's just standing around watching. It's like holy Yeah, this is really cool. So yeah man.

I'm glad you called that out, Brian,'cause it's amazing. Like Patrick and Carl and all those guys are just standing right on the edge of this tiny box. No one flinches, nobody takes

Ha ha.

And and that's a testament to to you, honestly. Like th those pilots know what's up. These are not new people who don't know.

Carl is the safety officer of torches, but he's my accomplice, so

I know, which is equally as funny.

Yeah, it was it was a little bit of a challenge, I will say. It was very windy that day. I'm surprised uh a bigger challenge. You kinda don't even see it on video. Um but that whole flight took place under the the the bench level, you know, the bench top level.

What is he never got high?

So it was like me standing up, you know, I'm looking down at the helicopter. Your your depth of field is like you're just staring at the ground. This thing's on the ground.

Yeah. I don't think it got higher than four feet, man. It was

Yeah, yeah. But it's you know, the performance of this thing makes it easy. I mean the the disc loading of it is, you know, twenty five percent lighter than the M two V three Pro or Sport. So it it it just feels like a feather. You know, I've put on a lot of flight time on the M two lineup and I was I was shocked this M one feels that light, you know, off the first rip and that whole flight by the way was only in bank two. It wasn't bank three, it was bank two. Low RPM.

It's a great crew at Torches. I travel a lot for work and I swore earlier this year I flew more at Torches than anywhere here in Atlanta. I'm I'm usually there midweek, I which I think is why we haven't crossed paths, but yeah, I fly there a fair amount as well.

Yeah, right on. I'll try to catch you next time you're out of here.

Yeah, right on. Hey, can you tell us when the OMP Nitro is coming out?

Ha ha

Sorry, you're cutting out. Say it again?

Yeah.

Oh, we had to try at least once.

Yeah. Good talk.

Well, I think we're gonna wrap things up here, Patrick, but just one kind of last quick question unless anyone else has anything they wanna jump in with afterwards, but You know, OMP Hobby's got a great diverse team. They're all over the globe from competition pilots to content creators to everything in between. Is there a lot of great camaraderie on the team? Do you guys talk shop a lot as a team? Is there an active chat? What's it like as a community?

The USA team is great. I think we do a good job of staying in touch with, you know, the global uh OMP teams. You know, we've got the the German team uh that we stay pretty close to. But come see it for yourself. We're gonna have a whole OMP city, tent city at Urcha. So come and hang out with us, you know, we we we meet up every big event. The last one we saw each other at was the chill out at RCHO.

Yeah, I'm not surprised. Great line of products coming out of OMP hobby for sure, from micros to the M seven R and everything in between. And scale helicopters on the horizon now too.

That's right, that's right. We've got that M four, the scale body, three blade head coming out soon.

Kenny, Brian, Alex, anything else?

I think we covered quite a bit. I'm not sure. Sure, I'll think of something later, like usual.

Ha ha ha.

Just always a pleasure to to talk to Patrick, to see Patrick at the events, watch him fly. So uh I've I've seen you plenty of times, Patrick. So sit down and have dinner with you and chit chat, you know, just geek out on things. I mean you're you're an awesome dude.

Much appreciated. Thank you very much. Means a lot.

Yeah, man. It's uh it's a lot of fun to see you fly down to Torches at the Winter Bash or or other events down there. It stops the whole flight line. Everybody's watching and paying attention. So congrats to you. And thanks very much for coming on the show and chatting with us for a while.

Thank you guys for having me. It was a pleasure.

Thanks Patrick. We uh we really enjoyed having you on. I could have talked to Patrick for a long time. I know we cut it off after like an hour and change, but what a great guy.

Yeah, yeah, he had a lot more than I thought he did there. He was he goes back a long way.

I know. Like we could have done the like memory lane thing for a long time. I love hearing old hobby stories. Like I never tire of that stuff.

Definitely yeah the hobby's changed a lot over the years so that stuff's like it is definitely going back to totally different time.

Yeah. It's cool to hear from people who have like progressed from the time of, you know, the flybarless unit becoming available to where, you know, where we are now to being able to throw down with an M one. I mean, can you imagine doing that with a with a micro helicopter, you know, ten years ago? Hell no. people would have gone running.

Yeah, that would have been like a dream helicopter back then, what we have available now.

I know. I don't think a seven hundred flew that well back then.

Yeah, it didn't.

But that was great stuff. So thanks Patrick. We appreciate you being up for it.

Or

our Facebook info, message us, our emails, all that info. You can find it on the web at www dot rotorrevolution dot live and find all those things there. Definitely hit us up. I wanna shout this out, guys. I don't know the name of the gentleman, unfortunately. But there are little moments that happen while we're doing the podcast.

I don't know.

Yeah.

The little moments like that just make me smile. So I appreciate you all supporting us that way, grabbing swag, you know, and wearing it at Funflies. That's awesome. So whoever that was wearing that hoodie. In Australia for us. That's awesome. So thanks very much. Thanks for all the support, the messages, the comments, the the interaction on Facebook, all that great stuff. We uh genuinely really appreciate it. It drives us to to keep on going. So thank you.

Thank you guys.

Yeah, thank

All right. With that, that's all we got. Anybody want to make fun of Alex before we go?

I think I imitated him today. Dormite.

I think you did. You were our honorary Alex today, so thanks Brian for that.

That was exciting.

You're just missing one thing. You got a crash.

Oh That was no crashing. Sorry. Sorry, Alex, you know, from this precision flying guy. I don't crash, bro. Knock on wood, knock on wood, knock on wood, okay.

Did we break the streak? Finally we had a week where nobody crashed. Kenny, did you hit any power lines?

I mean just the M one if that even counts.

I mean, did you have to replace a part?

The boom. But you know what, honestly, it doesn't really count because it was already kind of cracked, so I'll give it like it was ready to fail anyway.

All right. I don't know if we can count this as a crash free week. I feel like that counts in some way. Thanks, Kenny.

I ruined it. I mean I gotta do something while Alex isn't here just to you know, make him feel at home.

Yeah, right. All right. On that note, we're getting out of here. Thanks for listening and we'll see ya at the next episode.

Peace.

I am Alex and I'll see you on the next episode.

Alex sounds.

Awfully.

Feminine.

I don't

I don't know. Maybe he's really sick.

Chickish, yes.

Yes.

He has a cold.

So

We miss you dude.

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

All right, guys, I need like sixty seconds to run upstairs and make my son turn off the TV. I will be right back.

Okay.

Did you see my thing? Yeah.

I saw that, yeah. Oh hello, this is Alex.

Uh

Alex Bottom.

Yeah, I don't have anything on here to do it with or I would.

Dang that would be cool. That would be cool. That's a that's our homework for next time. To find a replacement bot for the missing member of a podcast recording. Uh Competizione Competizione.

Does it have an E at the R.

That's gonna be so hard to say.

Is it com is it French or is it

It's Italian, so competitive. Competition competizione. We we had Enrique say it for us on a recording, and he said, Il gabin competizione. And I was like, What?

What's the case? Like Tiziani.

Gary Angel there.

It's not like Mario.

Parmazana.

Oh man. All right.

Whoa whoa whoa whoa.

Oh I hear kids. Love you, Dad.

Sorry, Flint wants you to know that he says hi. Let's get it. Alright, goodnight, buddy. Love you. All right. All right, here we go. Time to start the news, but first, time for another beer. Much better. Oh.

Oh god, I wish I had a... All right.

Kenny, kick us off. What do you got?

OMP M2 Pro, you have to try the Palm Damp. Azure Blade. Nice sound too on the M too.

That was Alex's update?

That's amazing.

Oh my gosh.