Safety for your Heli

[R50]

Never Never Never leave your heli in an area where a dog or cat can find it. I found this out the hard way, I walked away for 2 minutes to get fuel and someones dog decided my rotor blade looked alot like his favorite chew toy!!!

[blax1]

:eek: OMG :eek:
Not to mention locking the pet up when you are spooling up @home ;)

[LEM]

Ouch... I have one of those Air Hog helis, fun to fly but not much control, my dog thinks it's a toy and keeps trying to snatch it out of the air. I have to keep it above her reach, which gets tough as the battery gets low.

[R50]

All I can say is valueable lesson learned, and It wasn't even my dog. But on the good side atleast they were only cheap wood blades, now I have to get carbon ones right! :D

[LEM]

Always nice to have an excuse to upgrade ;)

Here's my safety tip learned the hard way in a moment of stupidity while trying to figure out why your heli won't achieve enough lift to take off:

Don't try to hold the skids as you move the throttle up and down especially with in "idle up."

At first it worked great and told me that I wasn't getting any lift until almost full throttle. It seemed my blades had somehow adjusted themselves to negative pitch. :confused: Then when I pulled the stick back (remember idle up is on, don't remember why) my arm found out what it is like to be a tail boom during a boom strike. :eek: Fortunately for me it wasn't a larger Nitro heli. I still got a couple scraps and a really sore and swollen forearm.

Good news is I didn't let go so only broke a blade grip on the heli.

Looking back the phrase "what the #$&* was I thinking" comes to mind. It happened Sunday and today (Tuesday) almost all of the soreness is gone and I'm a bit wiser. Next time I'll have someone else hold it (just kidding). ;)

[GMONEY]

The safest thing for my heli's seems to be to leave them on the ground with no motor running.... I swear I plug in a battery or strike a glow plug and CARNAGE will soon follow..

[LEM]

LOL GMoney that's a good idea and it saves on repairs after the inevitable crash too.

[R50]

The best way to save money in this hobby is to just stare at it, but how are you supposed to impress a hot stipper future girlfriend like that ;) p.s. just got my carbon blades they're Helimax 600's, yes they're cheap but better than wood.

[Rappy1]

I am thinking back about a year ago seeing somebody at a local club stick a broom handle between the skids and have a person on each side holding it down with there feet. This would have been a 50 ssize heli with wood blades and they took it to full up stick. Once they let it fly it flew around about one circuit and then the blade let go in the middle of a hover. I am thinking maybe on a larger heli like a 50 you can over torque the blades to the point of almost snapping. I remember being taught on the full size ones that; if you over torque the blades it may not fail on you but the poor prick that is flying maybe 20 hours after you over torqued it may have a blade depart due to the damage you had done before.

[LEM]

p.s. just got my carbon blades they're Helimax 600's, yes they're cheap but better than wood.

And they look cool that aught to score some points with the "Hot stripper future girlfriend" ;)

[R50]

All I can say is these Helimax blades are actually pretty good, they're cheap but almost dead on for balancing. Has anyone else running wood blades noticed how much the tracking is off from one set to another, I mean the blades are warped?