Radio Control Helicopters - 2004/02

February 2004 135
AS I’M WRITING this month’s column, the
days are definitely getting shorter in upstate
New York. It’s the first full day of fall. For
us, now the flying season consists mainly of
flying on the weekends. Shortly it will be a
good idea to do some R&R on the fleet.
I start with a good bath for the helicopter
using alcohol (I use denatured) in a spray
bottle. I spray everything down, at least
around and in the engine area. Keep the spray
away from the electronics. I do some battery
cycling, check the bearings and regrease or
replace them, check ball links and balls,
replace the rubber dampeners in the head,
replace worn belts, etc. A good overhaul will
make for a spiffy helicopter when it comes
time to fire up for the spring.
In August I experienced one of the best times
of my life in the hobby. I got to spend four
days with the master himself: Curtis
Youngblood. Ray Stacy, in conjunction with
Performance Hobbies in Webster, New York
(a suburb of Rochester), the Rochester Aero
Modeling Society (RAMS), and the
Rochester-based Association for Radio
Control Helicopters (ARCH) put on a threeday
helicopter fly-in.
The day before the fly-in there was a
“chopper school day and picnic” for roughly
15 of us to spend some quality time with
Curtis. To get some exclusive time with the
“guru of the helicopter,” we got together, paid
for his time, and brought him up a day early
with us.
Curtis is a gentleman’s gentleman. We
Dan Williams, 27 Treeline Dr., Liverpool NY 13090; E-mail: [email protected]
RADIO CONTROL HELICOPTERS
When Curtis Youngblood speaks, everybody listens—mostly. He
checks Ray Stacy’s Vigor CS while Ray plays with his radio.
Curtis gives Juan Rodriguez pitch-curve insight on his Raptor.
Curtis did a great deal to help get our machines tuned.
The model is Jim Pemberton’s Vigor before a flight check. Look
at the background—a tough place to fly, huh?
The graduating class of the 2003 Northeast Helicopter Fly-In
School gets together for a photo as the sun sets.
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136 MODEL AVIATION
started before 9 a.m. and went until after 9:30
that night. Curtis went nonstop, teaching us
the fine art of helicopter setup, flying
techniques, helicopter checkouts, the
occasional 3-D demo, and there were some
stories mixed in. He was his cheerful self no
matter what kind of disastrous helicopter we
asked him to check. If someone wasn’t
asking him something, he was offering to
help.
Curtis loves this sport more than anyone I
know. I certainly don’t have the nonstop
enthusiasm he has. We abused him. We
probably asked him the same questions again
and again. We asked him to check, setup, and
fly anything from a Raptor 30 to a Bergen
gasser and almost everything in between. No
matter what we asked of him, he
immediately responded with a smile and
jumped in to help.
For Curtis’s checkout, he looks for things
such as no slop in the links. He doesn’t want
any servo-gear slop. If there are bellcranks,
he doesn’t want side-to-side movement or
slop in the bearings. Swashplates should
exhibit little slop in the bearing or in its fit to
the main shaft. The same thing goes for the
mixer; no slop in the mate to the main shaft,
antirotation pins, or any of the arms.
He looks for geometry of the arms to
make sure links are the correct length.
Symmetry in all links and arms are key to
keeping control interaction from occurring.
All arms have to be exactly at 90° at zero
pitch. All servo arms must be perpendicular
to the bellcrank it’s driving, or at least the
correct geometry for the particular helicopter.
The throttle-servo-arm geometry must match
the carburetor arm at all throttle settings.
Curtis looks for a stiff tailboom and
support. The tail-pitch linkage should be free,
with no friction or slop. The tail rotor pitch
The flightline at the 2003 Northeast Helicopter Fly-In. It was a
nice, relaxing three days of helicopter flying.
Curtis performs his signature maneuver at the Pembertons’—a
hurricane, backward inverted. Notice the smoke trail.
mechanism must be as precise as the design
will allow, taking every effort to remove slop
and be free of friction.
Curtis checked out Ray Stacy’s Vigor CS,
and Ray keeps a tight machine. After Curtis
was finished critiquing Ray’s helicopter, I put
mine out of sight; I wasn’t going to waste his
time.
He also shared some insights. We talked
about various blade sizes and what works
best in a particular application. A long blade,
such as a 710-millimeter (mm) or 720mm,
may pull maximum power from the 90-size
engines, but it isn’t the best size for
autorotating. A superlong blade such as this
actually becomes a drag on the reserve power
when performing an autorotation. The
680mm and 690mm blades are better for auto
maneuvers but don’t allow the big engines to
put out maximum power.
Vic Campbell has developed new widecord
690mm blades to provide the best of
both worlds. For more information, contact
Vic at (417) 546-6224 or on the Internet at
www.vblades.com.
Curtis also tweaked engines in various
helicopters that day. Many times I observed
him feeling the engine backplate. After
noticing it a few times, someone asked him
about it. He replied, “If you can put your
finger on the back of the engine at the
backplate and can hold it there, it’s not
running too hot.”
Curtis didn’t use a thermometer, an
infrared temperature gun, or anything like
that—just his finger. He doesn’t appear to be
a gadget guy. I guess keeping it simple allows
more time to worry about flying the
helicopter. It certainly works for him.
The “school day and picnic” was partly
hosted by fellow ARCH member Jim
Pemberton and his wife Erin, who put Curtis
up in their beautiful home for the duration of
his visit. They reside in Spencerport, New
York, which is a suburb of Rochester.
Their home is on a cul-de-sac with quite a
bit of room between houses. The back of their
huge yard opens out into bean fields on one
side and adjoins the back yards of some other
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February 2004 137
homes on the other. It’s usually not a good
idea to fly helicopters at one’s home, but Jim
and Erin have an awesome place to fly. It’s
more like an estate than a home, and you feel
more like you’re flying at a ranch than in a
back yard.
Curtis took to this setting nicely in the
afternoon. One of his many demonstrations
consisted of some high-speed, low-level,
inverted backward passes around some
young trees planted along the back edges of
some of the properties. He managed to miss
the large shed at the back of Jim and Erin’s
property.
I held my breath several times as Curtis
did his signature “hurricanes” with his
model; he did them forward, backward, and
while doing slow pirouettes. A hurricane is a
huge high-speed inverted circle in which the
helicopter appears to be hanging in a knifeedge
attitude. The man is a master of his
machine.
That evening Curtis wowed the everexpanding
spectator group by performing
every daytime maneuver in the dark with
night blades—light rope on the canopy and
glow sticks on the skids. It doesn’t get any
better than this!
E-mail me for “the rest of the story.” The
ARCH group is a great crew to fly with, and
they can surprise even me. There’s never a
dull moment with this bunch, and it was only
the first day! I think Curtis will be back
again, if for nothing more than some comic
relief.
The RAMS club hosted day two through
four at its field in Macedon, New York,
which is northeast of Rochester. The field is
out in the sticks, which is a good thing for a
model club. The remarkable thing about the
RAMS group and a helicopter fly-in is that
it’s a “fixed-wing” club! It essentially closed
its field for three days to put on a helicopter
fly-in and did an awesome job.
The RAMS club ordered some
spectacular weather and put up plenty of
sunshade for the festivities. Approximately
45 pilots registered for the event. There was
plenty of open flying, with several flight
stations operating simultaneously. It can be
unnerving to fly with multiple helicopters in
the air, but all was well. There were no
midair mishaps.
Mixed in with the open flying were
Curtis’s occasional awe-inspiring
demonstration, fixed-wing demonstrations,
an ornithopter flight, and ARCH member
Chad Middlebrook even flew a
Robbe/Schluter Whopper.
The RAMS did an outstanding job of
running this event. The food was excellent,
the model inspections and radio impound
were as professional as I’ve seen, and the
facilities were great! Andres Rodriguez was
the event director, and he did a nice job. At
the pilots’ meeting Sunday morning, he
commented:
“I’ve run Pylon races, Pattern events,
Scale, Combat, and just about everything else
for fixed-wing events over the years. I dealt
with complaints, formal protests, whining
and crying, and shouting matches. But you
helicopter guys are a great bunch. Not one
complaint, everyone has a good time, and
what a pleasant change.”
(We must’ve really snowed him!)
On Saturday we had one organized fun-fly
event. Spot autorotation landing contests are a
good time (especially if you want to trash a
machine or two). We started out using a
version of The Spot for marking the target.
Inside was a metal ring where the sand usually
goes.
One pilot landed on one edge of the circle
with a skid and managed to kick up the other
edge into his tail rotor. It kind of made a
grinding sound. We painted a spot after that. I
managed to take out the crown gear on my
Millennium with a landing out in the north 40,
with no danger of winning the contest.
That evening we all got back together after
dusk to set up the helicopters for night flying.
Some of the ARCH members kept the
evening’s entertainment value in the
“priceless” range. Again, E-mail me for “the
rest of the story”; I’ve even got pictures.
A couple of us took to the gorgeous night
sky for a flight. Curtis was always the first one
to congratulate us on a nice flight. That was
my first public night flight, and I won’t ever
forget how nice Curtis was about my ho-hum
performance. If he really wanted to see
something, he should have seen my transmitter
antenna shake!
Then he stepped up to the flightline and put
in his usual unbelievable flight. Out in the
sticks the clear night sky is killer to begin
with, but in the middle of Curtis’s flight a
large meteor added to the show.
Sunday was kind of a letdown, with most
everyone packing up for home. Pilots showed
up from around New York, Pennsylvania,
Ohio, and some of the New England states.
They had a long way to go to get back home.
Curtis, being the way he is, performed a check
flight on a Raptor just moments before he had
to head for the airport.
We couldn’t ask for a better spokesman for
our specialty than Curtis. He is certainly a
better role model for kids than any
professional athlete ever dreamt of being. Oh,
and be sure to congratulate Curtis on
becoming a dad; by the time you read this,
he’ll be up to his elbows in diapers!
Keep your eyes and ears open next year for
a possible repeat performance in Rochester,
New York, of the Northeast Helicopter Fly-In,
or something like that. My hat is off to the
RAMS and Andres Rodriguez, Ray Stacy and
the ARCH group, Tom McCoy and
Performance Hobbies, and to Curtis
Youngblood for showing up in little, old
western New York. Curtis, come back next
year if you want to laugh so hard your gut
hurts.
Commercial Time: You can contact
Performance Hobbies at (585) 872-4990 or go
to www.performance-hobbies.com. The
RAMS club’s Web site is www.rcplane.com,
and the ARCH club’s Web site is
www.raymondstacy.com/arch/arch.htm.
If it’s sitting on the shelf looking pretty,
you’re not learning a thing! I’ll be back next
month. MA
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