Alioth's Journal: More 'build fly crash'

Oh dear...

The HDX-300 heli is giving me a fit.

First, I find out that the supposedly hardened main shafts I had as spares weren't hardened at all. One self destructed in flight (fortunately only a few inches off the ground) - when it bent with the head turning at 2500 RPM, the heli seemed to explode, ejecting the battery and various other bits. Nothing damaged though apart from the banana-shaped main shaft.

So I did a test. The remains of the hardened shaft I broke while trying to set up the gyro and the new supposedly hardened spares I have were compared. I could put the proper hardened shaft in a vice, tonk it with a 3lb lump hammer and it wouldn't bend. If I hit it really hard it would snap. By contrast, my supposedly hardened spare shaft bent easily by hand, and in the hammer test would bend with a very light hammer tap.

Then after putting yet another supposedly hardened shaft in the heli this morning, I thought I'd fly it for 5 minutes before going to work to try to set up the tail better. I forgot how long my Tx antenna was, and clipped it with the main rotor. This chopped the last 3 inches off the end of my transmitter antenna, and ... bent another main shaft, and destroyed one of the main rotor blades.

So now I'm out of main shafts, rotor blades and patience. The week long wait for new bits to arrive from the USA will give me time to regain my patience, I hope!