Hope you've had a good trip.

I'll have to give that packing tape tip a shot, as well as replace the screws since their heads are rounding out.

Well, got several decent hovers in today, and one BIG scare.

When I got to the field to pull out the heli, my airplane, and my field equipment, I realized that I didn't bring the training gear. Rather than drive the 30-45 minute 25 mile drive back to the house to go get them, I just bit the bullet and hovered without them. Much more stable in a hover, I do believe. My fist couple of flights had me very nervous, and couldn't get to far into the flight before I had to set her down to take a quick breath and go again. After about the 3rd flight, I was feeling pretty good about my tail in hovers, and wasn't quite as nervous as the other flights. I even started working into side in hovers. I was doing OK with the side in hovers, but not quite comfortable with them.

Towards the end of my last flight of the day, it was starting to get dark, and I had already had her hovering for longer than the earlier flights. I moved into a side hover as I had been doing, then it happened. I lost it. I don't know how it happened, but she took off and started flying out of control over the bean field opposite the runway, as well as over the runway. About this time, everyone in the pits watching ran for cover, scared senseless. Since I was not going over the pits (if she did, I would've bit the bullet and ditched her) and did not want to have to foot the repair bill of her again (not this soon after getting her back together anyway), I continued trying to regain orientation and control. There were a couple of points in the flight where I had her somewhat stabilized and began getting oriented to bring her back in by backing her up over the runway to put her in a tail in hover to set her down. The first couple of attempts at this failed, but she was still over the field and runway, not going into the pits, so I didn't give up hope. Then suddenly, I had gotten her to a point where she was stable and oriented tail-in, nearly in a hover. I krept her back in front of me, got her in a hover, and set her down gently. That incident was enough for me for the day, so I shut her down to start packing up to head home.

I don't know what caused it, maybe mental fatigue from the increased duration of the flight over what I'm used to, maybe the dimming daylight, maybe disorientation, maybe my noobness, or a combination of these. I had been doing some OK side in hovers on that flight, but as the flight drew on, their quality began to degrade each subsequent side in hover that I performed. I noticed that when doing some of those side in hovers, I was sending commands that I thought were the right ones, but were not. Not really disorientation, as the direction was correct, but I was thinking it was tipping one way, when it was actually stable. I also have a tendency to overcorrect in orientations other than tail in if I'm not right on top of it, or have kept it in that orientation longer than I'm used to before moving back to tail in to stabilize.

At least she's down safely without going over the pits and injuring anyone. I'm looking forward to giving her another shot tomorrow if the weather permits it.

Happy flying.