Just got my Baby Belle out of its condition inspection, and had a couple of hours on it doing tracking and balancing and general hover practice when the local airfield had a special on fuel: Normally $4.60/ gal was $3.60 for the day. I lit her off and half way there the MR chip lite came on...

Dennis Kenyon, the gentleman that had the accident in the Schweitzer 300 at the Utah helicopter meet, has placed 4th in the World Helicopter Aerobatic contest flying an Enstrom F28. With the reduced power available in the F28, Dennis had to eliminate the maneuvers requiring abundant power and...

64 helicopters attended Homer's event this year. OH58s, R-44s, R-22s, Bell 47s, one with the "No Bar" mod, Enstroms, JT300( Highly modified Rotorway Exec with a C-18 turbine), Rotorways, Safaris, Mosquito, Helicycles, Scorpions, Brantly, Hughes 500s. All in all a great event. Anyone...

Well I guess this group has seized its engine or something. It is deader than the dinosaur. I've tried everything I know to kick something off but..... so long Stu

Does anyone know where the kickstarter is for this group? stu

Attention to all hands, that is if there are anyone lurking about. There will be some kit helicopters at the following events: 1. Golden West EAA Regional Fly-In Yuba County Airport (530)852-0321 www.goldenwestflyin.org 2. Utah Helicopter...

I'm looking for a castellated socket 2" OD with 6 tangs, splines, whatever they are called. Needed to disengage the yoke nut from the top of my rotor mast. Google just runs me back and forth thru India, NSW and other places. Anyone know of a source? Stu

I'm just having more fun than should be legal and it probably isn't if I look far enough into the County, State and Federal statues, but I am never-the-less. I have pretty much followed the Cafe numbers for header length and the 4-into-one collector. Keeping in mind friendship to my...

I've heard for sometime that the R-22 is harder to fly than the little ultralite Mosquito. This past week end I took a 1/2 hr ride in an R-22. In my opinion the cyclic in the R-22 with its lack of feel or any kind of force feedback is at least an order of magnitude more difficult to adjust to...

Just back from Bensen days and Sun'n Fun. I flew (hover taxiied) a 254# legal ultralite helicopter. I was amazed at the lack of any tendency to depart to a foreign zip code. The little Mosquito Air felt more stable to me than a Bell 47. At Sun'n Fun John Snider demonstrated several autos to...

At Oshkosh this year I watched Rusty Nance (Current Pres PRA) flying the little Carter gyrocopter perform a jump takeoff that went from ground to around 100' in the air and then just flew away. Jay Carter showed me a video where the ship jumped straight into the air and came straight back down...

Hey Ol Shy & Bashful are your rotary wing interests pretty much restricted to the pilotage aspects? Are you interested in the aerodynamics and maintenance details? I've been seeding this NG trying to get something cooking for some time and haven't found either the right seed or the right...

I just had a strange one. I have been balancing my rotor system using a DSS balancer where I would get the ips and phase angle measurements, turn the rotor to the angle with respect to the photo cell described by the phase angle information, then sight over the velocimeter and add weight to the...

Foxair Heliservice is presently the No. American distributor for the Dynali helicopter. It looks like May or June this year before we will see one around. Hopefully they will have one at Oshkosh and maybe even Homer's. Also 5 Aerokopters have been delivered to the SA dealer who reports...

I recently tried a pair of Marathon flat free wheelbarrow tires to replace my pneumatic tires that had developed the habit of slowly leaking out the air. @#$%^ The rolling resistance was so great I couldn't move the helicopter by myself. In fact even with my wife's help it was very hard to get...

Is there anyone out there? I have been dissatisfied with my trailer that I'm using to haul my 1,000 # helicopter around. It is basically a car hauler that I've stripped the springs down to 1 1/2 leaves and put soft car tires on it to make the ride a bit softer. Even with the reduced springs,...

American Sport Copter the US source for the Ultrasport series of amateur built helicopters is closing it's doors. By December 31 it will be no more. If any of you need or can forsee needing parts, act now and contact them for whatever is left of their inventory. Part of their problem was the...

I recently purchased the Sears "Professional" Lithium batteried driver drills. I purchased two because I was in the process of erecting a metal building. The batteries and charger worked good but the keyless chuck on both drills exhibit what I call "Auto Loosen". I have several other keyless...

There is now a dealer in South Africa for the Aerokopter. He has written what I think is an excellent article on test flying the Aerokopter for the SA Flyer magazine. Unfortunately, Aerokopter is not presently interested in providing the ship as a kit and sells them complete only. Present...

There is a new kit helicopter that is coming into the North America scene. The Dynali. A gentleman in Canada is the North America dealer and will be taking delivery of two ships early in 2008. Tech details will be forthcoming and I will publish them in the Experimental Helo magazine as well...