Dont leave home without your Tranny, its a bummer getting to the field and finding out that you did :-) That may sound like a joke but when you do it.....you`ll realise it ain`t.
Check the weather forecast the night before your flying day. That way you`ll know what you`re missing if you don`t charge your batteries. Dont Forget to check the flight box battery either.
Dont leave that gallon of fuel in the garage, I aint never seen an I / C powered Heli yet that flys well without it. Its just yet ANOTHER excuse for not flying anyway.
Have at least one spare glow plug, a plug spanner can come in handy to......as can a spare "all in one" plug clip and battery.
Occasionally things are damaged at the field, either through small "flying" accidents or simply by snagging the bits of a heli that stick out. Tail rotor components are typical of these things, so carry at least a spare pair of tail rotor blades or you can find your flying day cut short.
Don't leave your equipment in the car when you get back home. Lots of heli's and support gear have disappeared by doing this.
Keep a few cleaning cloths in the car (or flight box) to wipe of the excess muck that covers a well flown heli. I've found that a clean heli flies better and they cause less trouble with SWMBO. (She Who Must Be Obeyed)
Fishing line weights are perfect for those heli's that MUST have weight added to the nose. Mixed with epoxy resin the resulting "mess" can be poured directly into the nose of a fuselage and there it stays.
Make a check list of things you need at the field and READ it before setting off.
After a days flying, do a thorough clean up of the heli. The oil residue left behind has a nasty habit of gumming things up (like pitch sliders for example) and causing problems at the next flying session.
Do a proper Pre-Flight check of the heli. Many 'copters have been lost due to a simple link being broken, and they're more often broken when the heli's being carried, or transported to and from the field, than they are while they're flying.
Lots of discussions have been entered into on the subject of how to best tighten the crankshaft "prop" nut. I wouldn't dream of poking a screwdriver into the exhaust port, but some people do use this method. As I like the ring on my piston to to expand and contract, I figure that anything that can squeeze the ring slot can damage it, so I don't use that method. My preferred way it to stop the crank from turning by removing the carb and inserting a piece of hardwood into the inlet port, which is "carved" out of the crankshaft itself. The wood is softer than the metal of the crank AND the metal of the crankcase, so it can't damage either in any way, but it's strong enough to allow the prop nut to be tightened "properly"
There's a "special tool" now available which sits where the glo-plug normally sits, and this tool stops the piston from going over TDC (Top Dead Centre). I'm not in love with this method either as it appears to put all the stess onto the con-rod.
How many of us have "lost" a screw or nut at the field when we're doing "running repairs" because the box we put them "safely" in gets kicked over? A simple way to stop this ever happening again is to line the box with sheets of Blue-Tack and press slightly on each item that's placed in there. Even the "Nut Monster" can't get them now :-)
Then there's the task of removing all those heli's from the car when the flying is over. The BEST thing to do now is to get the wife to do it. It's easier than doing it yourself, and if anything gets broken you've got someone to blame. If you lay some paper out while the wife's doing the lump work, she'll be so happy that you were thoughtful about the carpet, that she'll even THANK you:-)
Remember that the hot sun steaming through the back window of the car can not only distort those expensive fibre-glass rotor blades, it can also cause the covering on "woodies" to lift away from the blade, so get those heli's out of the car as soon as you arrive at the field. This also helps keep temperature changes to a minimum in the gyro department.
If you have any tips or ideas that you may think would be of interest to other flyers, please feel free to either Mail me here for inclusion on this page, or send me your URL so i can link direct to you.
COME ONE COME ALL
(HE HE ! I SAID "COME" HE HE
!)
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