ORIGINAL: bjett80

WARNING - NEW FALCON OWNERS

I was very surprised when my replacement Falcon was delivered today ! My first one was returned when the ESC failed and I've been waiting like the rest of you for 3 weeks.

So I take everything out of the box, first thing I do is plug in the charger and start charging the battery. Nope ... no LED here either. Maybe you charge it until the battery explodes ... I guess that would indicate a full charge, huh ? I did notice the second time I charged it today went I went to retrieve it (I charge outside now ... too many scary stories) the charger was cold. Could be there is an internal cut-off ?

Anyway, I remember Gary's advice and with screwdriver and allen wrench I go over the Falcon from stem to stern physically tightening everything. I did notice all the servo screws seemed a little loose to me.

A few hours later, with the blades balanced and every nut and bolt checked, I hit the garage for the first hover. Ease up the power, the Falcon spools up nice and steady, then pops up about a foot in the sweetest hover I've ever seen. Nice and stable and sounding like it's got power out the wazoo !

I sit her down and catch my breath, ease up the power and she pops right back up about a foot. Nice hover ... very little drift, I let her fly for 15-20 seconds and slowly bring her back down. Just before she touches dirt something breaks off the tail, wiz's over my left shoulder and hits the wall like a bullet !

I kill the throttle, shut everything down and give it a look-see. One of the rear blade grips is missing, the tail rotor assembly has rotated about 30 degress and the rear guard looks like something nibbled about 1/8 inch off the edge.

So I spend an hour looking for the tail blade amongs all the crap on the wall of my garage. I find it intact and showing no damage.

Long story short ... looks like the Art-Tech people didn't tighten up the tail blade grip screw. You have to remove the tail blades to get to this screw, so I missed it during the pre-flight check. Remove the tail blades and you have a hex-headed screw holding the tail blade grip to the gizmo that rides on the tail rotor shaft. I checked the other one and it was loose as well.

You might want to check those screws ... if that tail rotor blade had hit me it would have penetrated skin !

Everything's put back together, and except for the minor damage to that rear rotor guard I think I'm ready to try again. Course, I'm looking at another hour moving all that crap off the garage floor and back against the wall so I can fly again. Looks like flying will have to wait till tomorrow !

Good luck everyone ... let us know how your first flights went.

Barry