today i had three 100% enjoyable flights!!! my first fun flights in months!!!

in fact i was having so much fun during my first flight that i was ignoring my flight time alarm. i ended up running out of juice 10' high in a turn. i had to bail it in to the street to avoid a passing car. i busted my blades & possibly a bent spindle shaft too, but oh well. i finally got my dd to stick like glue with john adam's setup so i'm happy. luckily the lhs was open, so i got some blades and took it up for 2 more perfect flights. john adams setup ROCKS!!!

fyi, i found out why i was having very bad tail wag problems. just before those 3 flights i was trying to tune the gyro again and had a light bulb moment. i realized when i was looking at my old 4n1 case to identify the proper connections on the salvaged 3n1, the cover on the 3n1 side was installed upside down. the confusion lead me to connect the 3n1 servo leads incorrectly; the 3n1 rudder input connected ch3 on the rx, and the 3n1 throttle input was connected to ch4. [sm=red_smile.gif] so reversing my connections fixed all my problems... hehe, i'm very amazed how i was even able to hover it for 3 packs like that!

btw, before today's flights i went ahead and did a few more mechanical mods. i removed both motor heatsinks and shortened the landing gear. now it looks very sporty & low profile, and without the tail heatsink the battery location changed drastically. now my heli balances with the rear of the lipo lined up with the shaft! this makes for a much less overall inertia. that tail heatsink wasn't worth blowing up my inertia. after my flights today, i'm converting to the "weight is everything" religion.

[edit: added pics with the rest of the mechanical mods done. the second pic shows the back of the 3n1, where i accidentally reversed the wires.]