Ok, I've slowly been working up the courage to get my lil' guy above 5 to 6 feet off the ground. I've been keeping it around eye level which is about 6 ft for the last week. I get real nervous and bring it back down whenever I find myself looking up at it. Today you'd be proud of me. I took the lil guy up to about 15 to 20 feet. I was still nervous as heck and the sweat was dripping off my hands, but I kept it up there for the majority of 2 lipo packs (a little over 17 minutes). I'll keep working on it this week. I'm still getting 4 to 5 lipo packs a day. By next week I'd like to start working on forward flight and maybe a few banked turns. I don't want to get greedy.

My RC Tek 450 should arrive on Wed. It'll be a week or two before I'm ready to order up the TX/RX, servos and everything else.

Ted

Congratulations, I am on my second AXE CP and getting it up to about 3 to 4 ft, is yours stock or have you added a Gyro

It's stock accept for the GY 240 gyro, the C12 ESC and converting it over to use the larger BP 910 lipo pack.

Ted

Congratulations, strat-- for me that came right after getting it out of the garage . It was really weird to have all that air around it, but then it clicked that it was ok to run into air, so I could try out more stuff! Flying up in the air is the first real orientation change, but it's a good one to make. You're safer 20 ft off the ground than 2, even if it doesn't feel that way at first.

Only real gotcha I can remember is that you can get in an orientation where the heli is sliding directly down toward you but since it isn't changing aspect, you don't notice it at first. Watch out if it starts getting gradually bigger!

OK, let me start off by saying do not try this at home! My hands are still cold and clammy and it's been 30 minutes since I flew/almost crashed.
Whoever said height is your friend, thank you. I had a split second to level out my heli and idle up the main rotor or I was going to rotor plant right into the windshield of a LMTV (really big truck that is replacing the Deuce and a half ((really big Army truck)).
I saved the windshield and most importantly my lil' buddy. Wheeeww!

Ted

Strat - I posted a thread about the same issue - hard to determine orientation above my head (which is 5'2'' on a low gravity day!) Answer was to back out a bit so the angle you are looking at the heli with is smaller.

Geez Guys,
Now I know where I can contribute some of the "SHAKES" I had Sunday morning, maybe flying at 50-60 ft looking at a "mighty-tiny AXE CP," flying away from me, at first. Then flying backwards at me, as I pulled in the reins, when realized "I" was the Axe's intended target! Osterizer's has got it right, when it gets bigger, you may be its intended TARGET.
Been flying closer to Earth since then, no more shakes.

Rick

So it's safe to say height = Shakes!

I too have been having some of the "Afraid of Heights", and SHAKES too!

I ws flying at about 7 or 8 feet, enough that I was looing under the rotor's....and it started heading towards ME! I managed a semi-soft/hard landing, and bent the boom, but nothing broke, and nothing seemed out of kilter, so I bent the boom back, and kept on flying! But I was a bit nervous, and I kept it low!

I look forward every day to run a couple of 1250 LiPo packs through it!

dreimer,

how much time flying do you get with the 1250 packs??

strat,

I don't know....the motor gets too hot to tell! I haven't modded the heat sink yet to let the heat out. I'll get to that as soon as I get more white gunk....I need to do the same for my video card! I hover for around 10-15 minutes before the motor starts getting really hot. The battery still has tons of power left, but the motor just can't handle it.

heat-sink mod? I must have missed that one, don't suppose there's a link to it?

thanks!

Here it is. It's just to cut the holes that are covered by the heat sink...there are pics to show too...Good Luck! I have to do this too.

[link=http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_5990275/anchors_5990275/mpage_1/key_Heat%252CSink/anchor/tm.htm#5990275]Heat Sink Thread[/link]

When i fly with my canopy off the motor is cool. Are you flying without your canopy? I bet if you aren't you could get a few more minutes out of it.

Ted

I do fly without the canopy....it's a pain to keep taking that on and off....I also don't have a fancy laser thermometer, so I use the back of my fingers...and it's fricken hot!

dreimer,

I flew the AXE CP this morning and then grabbed our shops laser thermometer and took readings off the motor.

Flying Time: 11.04 min
AXE CP w/: GY240 Gyro, C12 ESC and BP 910 LiPo Pack
Main Motor Temp w/o canopy and vents cut into heatsink: 126 degrees
Tail Motor Temp: 87
I'll try to get a w/ canopy temp reading later today.

Ted

dreimer - the heatsink mod works wonders!! When I replaced my connectors with UltraDeans, I kept the leads long enough to connect/disconnect them outside the canopy with the canopy on. I found if I kept the canopy off, I spent more time trying to tweak the yaw than I did actually flying! So I just set it close enough and deal with it!

I was thinking of doing something along those lines too. The canopy does transmit the sound a bit more, so it's a lot louder with it on.

I wonder about the ground effects, and how this handles with the canopy OFF, and the training gear ON? I know that in my garage, where space is a lot more limited, the ground effect is much more than outside in the open.

After all that....the canopy does serve another purpose. My LiPo sticks out a bit from the frame, and when I crashed last time (really just a hard landing) it dented the front edge of the pack. The canopy would have protected the pack in that case. I don't want to puncture my pack.

Maybe this weekend I'll get that heat sink vented!