"Science has not yet taught us if madness is or is not the sublimity of the intelligence."  ~Edgar Allen Poe

Washed the truck for the first time since last summer!

 

     Remember the "virtually indestructible" MIA G10 Landing gear?  Turns out, not so much.  It looks pretty sitting on the shelf, but once I got a chance to fly a few battery packs through it, I was less than impressed.  After a few relatively soft crashes onto carpet, this is what the MIA gear looked like:

 

 

MIA Landing gear... save your money.

     The stock landing gear took a lot harder hits.  It eventually took a fall onto concrete from about 80 feet to do the stock gear in.  I decided I definitely wanted to keep the aluminum skids, but opted for plastic skids instead of carbon or G10.  My next set of gear will be as flexible as possible, in the hopes that it will displace before it breaks.

What's going on here?

     That's stock gear for an Align TRex 250.  It's a slightly larger bird, but the gear fits the 120 SR very nicely.  Most people run small spacers to make the Align gear clear the drive gear on the 120, I opted for a more interesting route.  Notice the blue surgical tube and springs?

Align 250 gear, with shocks absorbers.

     I'm fairly certain that I have the only 120 SR with shock absorbers.  And for good reason: it's pretty goofy looking.  But hopefully it will cut down on landing gear and frame breaks until i learn how to fly a little better.  There are CNC'd aluminum struts available for the TRex 250 that are now a bolt on swap since my 120 is modified for the Align gear.  Once I'm more confident in the air, I'll swap to the CNC struts.

     As my 120 SR is being modded, I decided I needed a more beginner-friendly single rotor heli to practice with.  One that I could fly inside easier, with cheaper replacement parts.  I present the 120 SR's smaller brethren, the mSR.  At about half the size of the 120 (7.0" vs. 12.5"  rotor span), the mSR is strictly an indoor machine.  Where the 120 SR could barely get enough altitude indoors to free itself from it's own rotor wash, the mSR zips around confidently with no issues.  A more experienced pilot could probably easily fly the 120 inside, but for a noob like me, it's a recipe for broken parts. The mSR's lighter mass also makes it more resilient to crash damage, and parts are cheaper to boot. I've had some really gnarly crashes already with the mSR, and no damage other than a cracked canopy.

mSR in front of 120 SR.

3D Model

    Another of my unfinished projects is my miniature brass cannon.  The idea was to build the world's smallest working cannon.  According to the Guinness Book of Records, the smallest firing cannon is 1.25" long.  I immediately set to work in Inventor modeling cannons, and designed a fully functional cannon with a total length of .75"  After rigorous stress testing, I began building 3:1 prototypes.

    The 3:1 model utilizes a .117 caliber bore.  Boring tools and ammunition are readily available for this size, making it affordable and easier to manufacture than the final 1:1 cannon.  To keep costs down, the barrel is shaped by hand, and a makeshift temporary carriage is used for the prototype.

    After cutting and polishing the bore, I shaped the barrel with a home-made lathe and rigged up a carriage from oak and aluminum for testing.  After making a few small adjustments to the design, the first prototype was ready to fire.

The first few prototypes at 3:1 scale

3:1 scale prototype.  Bic for size referenc

   I bought some M-1000 firecrackers to harvest my wicks and black powder from.  However, as it turns out, modern firecrackers contain a combination of aluminum powder and potassium perchlorate known as flash powder, not black powder.  While the black powder is mixed uniformly and very easy to work with, the flash powder's ingredients have to be kept separate from one another in very precise quantities in order to work.  This makes loading the charge into the cannon a daunting task.

    After numerous "blind" attempts at packing a charge, I did some quick calculations and came up with a rough ratio of aluminum powder to potassium perchlorate, and finally was able to fire some wadding.  It now sits, all but forgotten, awaiting some true black powder.

“Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.” ~Archimedes

Notice heat shrink tubing used for canopy stops.

     Waiting patiently for the UPS man to show up with my tail rotor (and a few other goodies) so that I can get back into the air, I decided to do a few simple mods to the canopy.  First up was the method by which the canopy attaches.  This is pretty standard stuff, just a pair of carbon fiber rods through the main frame.  The canopy attaches using 4 rubber grommets pushed onto the rods.  The problem here is that the canopy is free to slide on the rods.  After a bump or crash, if I forget to reposition the canopy, the center of gravity is changed just enough to make re-trimming the controls necessary.  Furthermore, it is pretty much impossible to get the canopy back into exactly the same spot every time.  The fix: 4 pieces of heat shrink tube, cut into 3mm long sections.  Once melted onto the carbon fiber rods, the heat shrink provides a positive stop for the canopy grommets.  Just push the canopy on until it stops, and you're ready to fly!

The lip on the factory canopy.

Lip removed.

     Next up was purely an aesthetic mod.  In the picture to the right, you'll notice the "lip" around the top of the canopy.  This is (I assume) to hide the motor wire from sight.  It also disrupts the smooth fluid lines that the stock canopy has.  On larger helis, the motor usually sits lower in the air frame, so the canopies do not require this lip.  In order to make the 120 look sleeker, and more like larger 250 or 450 size choppers, I decided that the lip must go!  There are numerous aftermarket canopies, but I like the look of the stock one for now, and would rather spend money on upgrades that will make the heli fly better.

     After trimming the lip off  and reshaping the rear of the canopy, I carefully removed the connector on the motor wires, relocated the wiring so that it does not stick up past the top of the canopy, then reattached the connector.  The end result: a much sleeker chopper that looks more like it's larger brethren.

     As an added bonus, the sliver of plastic removed from the canopy was .01g.  That doesn't sound like much, but every little bit counts.  The next mod I have planned will add about 2.8g, so any opportunity I have to shave a little weight must be taken advantage of.

I decided that today's quote would be from one of the most brilliant men of recent times. Anyone familiar with his works and life knows how eloquent and quotable he was, and therefore choosing but one quote is very much impossible.  I give you but a small portion of the many wonderful reflections on our universe that he gave us during his life.


"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction." 

"Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new."  

"Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind."

"The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible." 

"Equations are more important to me, because politics are for the present, but an equation is something for eternity." 

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe."

"A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be."
 

And, perhaps my favorite,

"I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination."

                                                                                             ~Albert Einstein 

                                                                                         

During an over-zealous attempt at some spirited outdoor flying, the 120 SR plummeted about 80 feet onto my concrete driveway.  This left me with a broken tail rotor, and landing gear in 4 pieces.  I ordered a couple of spare rotors, and began pricing landing gear.  The stock gear can be had for around $6, but for about twice that price, I opted to upgrade to the MIA landing gear.  The MIA gear is significantly more resilient, and weighs a little less than the stock gear.  The wider A-frame design spreads the weight out more, which helps with stability on the ground and in the air.  MIA CNC cuts the struts from G10 fiber material, and the skids are hollow aluminum tube. 

120 SR with MIA G10 composite struts and aluminum skids.

If you're not familiar with G10 material (branded as Micarta or Garolite), it's some pretty amazing stuff.  It's a continuous woven glass fabric impregnated with an epoxy resin under very high pressure.  The material looks (and feels) a lot like thin cardboard, but is amazingly strong.  Basically a thin fiberglass on steroids, it has the ability to return to it's original shape even after some pretty grueling torture.  Based on standard ASTM tests, G10 has a Flexural Modulus of Elasticity around 2.7 million psi, and a Compressive Strength of 60,000 psi with a 10% deformation at yield.  For the layman, that means it is practically indestructible when used as landing gear on a 100g helicopter.  

“To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.” ~Copernicus

After using every bit of life that the Airhog's Reflex could muster, it was time for an upgrade.  The Airhog was a fun little gadget, but it's not really an r/c helicopter.  It's more of a toy, and would be a great purchase for a young kid.  Hell, I had a blast with it, but it does leave you wanting more performance and maneuverability.  You don't really fly it, but rather watch it buzz around randomly until it smacks into something.

Blade mCX

I've been researching this for quite a while, and if you are getting into the hobby knowing that you want to progress to more advanced heli's, this is the one to get: The Blade mCX.  It's an ultra-micro sized coaxial heli that is very durable and well loved by many.  It has the same fun factor as the Airhogs, but, being a hobby-grade model, has the distinct advantages of both higher quality, and available replacement parts.  The latter is a huge factor in a heli purchase- you will need replacement parts.



I decided that I was ready to move on to a single-rotor craft.  They are harder to fly, but much more maneuverable.  They fly very similar to their full-size counterparts.  A lot of people recommended the E-Flight mSR.  This is another ultra-micro, but the mSR sports a fixed-pitch single rotor.  Alas, the mSR was not exactly what I was looking for.  The svelt mSR has a fly weight of around 28g and a 180mm (7") main rotor.  Indoors, it would be fine, but it does not have enough mass to navigate even a slight breeze outdoors.  The next step up in E-Flights line up is the SR, which is a collective pitch chopper, and not for the intermediate or novice pilot.

Finally, E-Flight released the 120 SR.  This is what I was waiting for!  A fixed pitch, single rotor craft that is, for all intensive purposes, an mSR's big brother.  It literally looks like someone scaled all of the CAD drawings for the mSR up to make the 120 SR.  At 106g with a 318mm (12.5") main rotor, the 120 is capable of handling light winds outdoors, and still small enough to fly inside.  The Bell-Hillard swashplate and head setup, when combined with a 45 degree flybar, is very stable while still allowing for nimble aerobatics.  The stock tail boom and canopy supports are all carbon fiber tube, making the 120 lighter than other sub-micro helicopters on the market.  When I found out that there is an aftermarket that supplies billet aluminum and carbon fiber components for these helis, I was sold.

My 120 SR.  Coke can for size reference (and refreshment).

I installed '96 DeVille tail lights about a year ago, along with a shaved tailgate handle and a Grant Fabrication roll pan.  After countless hours of metal shaping and body work, it was looking pretty damn good.  I say "was" because shortly after the body work was done, I had a guy in a Hyundai ram the back of my truck.  Apparently his phone call was more important than watching where he was going.






I truly wanted to save the tailgate, but a complete skin was more cost effective.  Being both a new father and a college student, cost effective is always the deciding factor. After a quick call to Bob Grant, I got my hands on a Grant Fab "Cali Combo."  After tacking the skin into place, I rode around long enough to develop a very nice rusty patina.  A quick coat of rust neutralizer and rattle-can clear coat gave the results you see to the right.





After finally tiring of the rusty look, I decided that some more body work was in order.  A lot more.  It's not perfect yet, but has come a long way since the wreck.  One more skim coat and a lot of block sanding and it should be ready for paint.

May dad gave me an Air Hogs Reflex helicopter several years ago, and I flew it until it literally refused to move.  The little coaxial took a beating, and a fair share of mods, before it finally gave up.

For reference, here's what it should look like:

And here's mine when it finally quit.  Stripped of everything that is not absolutely critical to fly, and with several modifications, the little craft is actually quite nimble.

Alas, with this bird flying no more, it was time for an upgrade.  After much research and deliberation, I ordered an E-Flight Blade 120 SR.  This little chopper is the perfect first step into the challenging world of remote control helicoptery (is that a word?).  More on the 120 SR soon.

My biggest waste of time (and money, if you ask my wife) over the past several years has been my 2005 Colorado ZQ8.  I built this truck in my garage with the help of my friends and family.  The truck features SMC, Viair, and Slam Specialties air ride components, custom fabricated wishbone 3-link suspension, Z'd frame rails, and a 3.5" traditional body drop.  It has gone under the knife several times, and is constantly evolving.  This truck was my first complete ground-up build, and the learning process shows.  It looks rough, but functions well enough to be driven daily for 112k miles over 6 years.

I have literally thousands of pictures of the build, but I'll let this video get you up to speed.  New developments will be posted here.

I have many hobbies that I am involved with, running the gamut from hot-rods and mini-trucks to radio controlled vehicles and overclocked computers.  I have been an active member on many forums, usually one or two for each of my major interests.  Frankly, I am beginning to forget screen names and passwords for them because I have so many.

In the interest of simplifying the online log of my day to day events, I have chosen to create this blog to share the experiences I have while attempting to be a jack of all trades, and master of none.

In closing, I leave you with a favorite quote of mine- one that I feel embodies the spirit of this blog:

"Boredom is the feeling that everything is a waste of time; serenity, that nothing is." ~Thomas S. Szasz