It’s beyond obsession at this point. I’m going to need a 12-step program.
Yesterday I converted some old ‘iron’ at the gun shop to one of these at the hobby shop (I don’t have a need for a piddly 9mm anyway). This is Heli #3:
As I type, the batteries are charging for the Heli, and the transmitter.
I saved $35 by buying the BNF (Bind-n-Fly) version of the kit. The Spektrum DX6i I already obtained is compatible with this (and the P-51 too as a matter of fact).
Then this morning, I received shipping confirmation of ‘Heli 4’ from the on-line retailer XHeli.com. This is my first time ordering stuff from them. What surprised me was that within 24 hours the merchandise was picked, packed and on it’s way!
Thank you for shopping at XHeli!
Your order’s shipping label is generated and is scheduled
to be shipped on 05/21/2010 via UPS.
EXCELLENT!!
I’m having it shopped to my office in Tacoma since I don’t want to have it sitting on my porch all day at work. Plus, there is ALWAYS someone there to sign for it, since we are 24×7 shop. Fast FAST shipping and great prices. We’ll see how it all works out.
This is what I’m expecting. 🙂
Now, I already had this one here. Which now I think I paid WAYYYYYYYY too much for:
I’ve been practicing with it for a week now. It’s OK, and it has some cool planes in it, but the helicopter physics seem… weird. Really weird. And I completely irritated that I had to build a WINDOZE box to use the thing! Luckly I still had an old (circa 2006) Dell computer floating around, and it’s running Windoze XP (which the new software needs too.. got lucky there), but the hardware was not up to the task. Wish I’d known that when I bought it. So $100 for the software kit, then I had to toss in another $80 to get a decent DX9 compatible video card for the OLD PCI (not enhanced regular old PCI) interface, AND 1GB of memory for another $50. (poor thing only had 128MB in it.. not enough to even open the program.
So almost $250 to construct a flight simulator with a used computer!
Then.. then, I find this recommendation lurking around one of the Heli message boards. Heli-X.
It’s written in Germany AND it runs on Mac OSX!!!! So of course I downloaded it (it does not come with any controller, BUT the controller from RealFlight works PERFECTLY!). It’s also fairly pricey too at $50 Euro, and it only handles Helis BUT the physics in the trainer are SO much more realistic, at least to me.
Here is a shot of the simulator (sorry, I don’t have the controller hooked up at the moment so it’s just a shot of one model on the ground). It’s pretty good, and I’m learning that Variable Pitch, fixed throttle flying IS A LOT more intimidating that fixed pitch variable throttle!
When will this end?