Upgrades

Done a few mods to the heli since the last post.
Have upgraded a few bits as below:
Align V3 headblock - Stronger and better than HK one
Align V3 Tail boom and Tail drive support - enables me to also fit the one piece Align tail drive gear as you need to have split bearing holders.
Corona DS-919MG Digital Servos on Cyclic, super fast and strong metal gears. Make a huge difference to the smoothness of control.
A couple of sets of Fibreglass blades as spares.

Have a few things on order from Hobbyking specifically:
11 & 13 Tooth Pinions
Carbon Flybar Paddles (look really well made)
Turnigy 9x LCD Backlight Kit (this will be awesome! and only $5 USD, just waiting for stock)
New Gyro tape (as it was cheap)

Crash

Had a bit of a mishap.
Was doing some fast flight out the back of my house and somehow managed to misjudge a low turn, I smacked the heli in the side of my shed, only just caught the edge of the roof.
Broke both blades and bent the flybar, cracked the main rotor hub and broke two servo's.  The main shaft is badly bent too but thats about it. Not too major and its amazing how long the HXT900 servos have lasted given a couple of ground strikes and nearly 100 or so flights!
New parts on the way as well as a full re-setup of the swash etc.  Should be up and running in the next week or so.

New Canopy

I found an old airbrush while tidying up my garage, so I made an adapter for my compressor and tried to think of something to paint.
So I bought a new white fibreglass Align canopy and did a bit of masking and painted it up in an Orange pearl with chequers.  All painted details no vinyl.
Pic to come.

Flying

I've been flying a lot recently, doing a lot of big sky flying mainly.
Lots of fast circuits and just flying around.
Looking at doing a few minor jobs on the heli such as replacing the swash as it has a fair bit of play now.
Also looking at getting a screw pack as a few screws have been stripping there hex heads from being screwed/unscrewed.
Would also like to re-mount the gyro on some decent foam or gel type tape just for the sake of it.
Have replaced the skids with the 450 Pro skids after cutting the old ones down to use as a spacer. Pro skids have a different fixing.

Parts

I bought some Align one piece links for the head, these are called V3 parts as they are an upgrade for the 450SEV2.
Simplifies setup, just needed to resize them a little as they were a bit tight. Well worth the $7!

Yet more flying

I've been flying at least once a day for the last month! :)
I've now progressed back into forward flight and covering a lot larger area than before.
Will be getting back into aerobatics over the christmas break when I can get some decent time to have a fly.
I've put on some fibreglass blades and can't tell any difference between them and the carbons to be honest, so fibreglass it will be from now on. Especially for $12 a pair!!!
No real accidents to report, and everything seems to be holding up quite well.

Flying and more Flying

I've been flying most nights for the last few weeks.
Confidence has returned and I'm now doing lots of low circuits and general flying here and there.
All of this has been done in quite a small area. I will soon start to get it really cranked up in a bigger space for some decent fast forward flight.  Once that becomes easy again i'll move into doing some light aerobatics :)