| By Baz | ||
| After watching the night flying at the 2005 3D Masters I decided that I had to have a go. I started off with some second-hand gear which was a Raptor V1 canopy with a red rope light and a blue rope light for the boom plus 2 x drivers and MS 600 night blades. The canopy was all done, all I had to do was put the rope light on the boom. When I got to the field I added 3 large glow sticks, one on the tail and one on each skid. I was told to let my eyes adjust and to watch out for the landing as it can be deceptive. I hovered for a couple of minutes and cautiously had a go at some circuits. I did lose orientation a couple of times. Then I had a go at landing, all I can say is it’s a weird feeling. I landed but I thought I was still about 8” off the ground, strange. I went out for some more circuits and I lost orientation completely, my eyes had gone blurry. I shouted to the lads “I’ve lost it totally” (webmaster's/editor's note: I think Baz may be being less than honest about the actual words used here), thankfully they shouted instructions and I got back control but I must admit I panicked for a minute, I landed ok. One of the guys said he had the same problem keeping orientation while watching. I was going to call it a day with a lucky escape but you know what it’s like so I refuelled and went back out. It was all going fine but then I lost orientation again and this time I was not so lucky and the inevitable happened. | ||
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| A couple of weeks later I came across another pair of MS 600 night blades so I thought I would give it another go. But this time I decided to have a complete change. The red rope light on the canopy was conflicting with the blades and the blue on the boom did not show up that well. And I just wasn’t happy with the glow sticks. At this point I would like to mention that the pilot that I brought the gear from had no problem flying this setup. This proves that when you are an experienced pilot with a lot of confidence, a couple of glow sticks and any old colour rope light, if any, is enough. So I used my own V2 canopy and bought a green rope light which was recommended. I put the blue on the undercarriage and moved the red to the boom and bought a yellow for the tail. This way I did not have to use glow sticks any more. | ||
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| I went back to the field and got into the hover, straight away you could see the difference. There was much more detail and it was a great confidence boost. I went out to do figure of eights to check orientation and to see if my eyes went blurry again. This time my eyes were ok, but we noticed orientation problems on turns at certain points. To remedy this we moved the yellow rope light onto the canopy window, which completed the shape of the canopy and added width. At the same time we replaced the red with a green for the boom and fins and we also fitted a remote landing light assigned to a spare switch made from an old servo. | ||
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| I had quite a few flights with this combination and tried loops, rolls, figure of eights and inverted with no orientation
problems. I have recently changed the blue on the undercarriage to a high brightness white and found that it generates enough
light for landing so I am not using a remote landing light any more. Vibration from the heli was causing it to fail anyway. I
have put yellow on the boom and fins just to try something different.
Thank you to Darren and Barry for helping to solve the orientation problems |
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One final handy hint, look at this |
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| Regards Baz | ||
