In a sense you could say he did fly mine as well. And he did tune it.
So here's the story...
This weekend is the Northeast Model Helicopter Jamboree held annually at the Rochester Aero Modeling Society's field in Macedon, NY. This is Kyle Stacy's home field and it is always a great event. Not high profile like OHB or some of the other shows around the country, but it draws in a number of pro pilots each year, has strong sponsorship from various vendors, and gets better and better each year.
This year Bert and Suzi Kammerer made the trip up from Florida, Andrew Merlino flying for AMain Hobbies, AJ Jaffe for team Futaba, and some up and comers such as Chris Diamanti, and a number of others.
The guy that puts it on is Chris Reibert. He's been a team pilot and rep for RC Aerodyne, OXY, MKS servos, Futaba, VControl, and others. He's a regular contributor in RC Heli Pilot magazine. etc. etc. Great guy. Asset to the hobby.
And he has a 2 year old, cute as a button, little girl named Hailey who was diagnosed with Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis early this year. The club decided to make a big part of this year's event be a donation to the Arthritis Foundation for research into JA. But how to raise some money for it?
Chris called around with some help from Kyle and rounded up a big old pile of parts donations from SAB Heli Division, Pulse Battery, Scorpion Power Systems, Mikado, and BK Servos. Kyle built it and a grand prize raffle was born!
And this is no normal Goblin 700 KSE. This has the same custom engraved head components that they make for Kyle himself. Kyle has couple of these in his hangar. And then there is this one. In addition Kyle signed the canopy. Rounding out the package is a Scorpion motor and ESC combo, fed by Pulse batteries to power it. BK Servos make it shuck and jive. A new VBar Neo keeps it in line, directed by a VControl transmitter.
A ready to fly, one of very few, Goblin 700 KSE with VControl.
Originally the plan was to hold a silent auction for the item, but after some thought and about 24 hours before the event they decided to make it a raffle instead. 100 tickets would be sold at $50 each, making for pretty good odds, especially if one bought multiple tickets. And by going raffle instead of silent auction, they drummed up a lot more overall interest in the item and the awarding of it. As a silent auction it was clear that if you weren't ready to pony up at least $3k you weren't going home with it, and there aren't many who have the resources to make those kinds of bids. Plus if they sold out the tickets (pretty good chance) they had a guaranteed $5k to donate to the charity, on top of any other donations people made.
I bought 5 tickets. Some bought as many as 10. And I hoped that just maybe I might be lucky...
And I was! Ray Stacy, Kyle's father, mixed up all the slips. Little Hailey reached in and pulled a ticket... right from the top. Ray says, "No no no, dig in there a bit." Throws it back in and Hailey reaches in a pulls out a fist full. Ray helps here separate them out until there is one left and then opens it up. Reads it to himself while Chris is reading it too. Chris laughs and Ray turns and starts talking about the great weather they're having for the event or something. Crowd laughs and then Ray reads the name out loud.
Paul... Volcko...
"No way," I say to myself.
Chris looks right at me and points to me.
"No way!" And I lit up with what must have been the biggest smile I've had in at least a few years.
- Picture by Eric Williams
- ticket.jpg (82.31 KiB) Viewed 2505 times
After a couple pictures with Kyle, Chris, and Hailey...
- Picture by Ray Stacy
- award.jpg (84.73 KiB) Viewed 2505 times
It was time to get real nervous.
Part of the deal was that you go to the line with Kyle and he'd take it for a quick flight. I thought great. Told him to "tear it up". He proceeds to make a couple rounds of the field and land it. I was watching, but I was in a daze at this point. I don't really recall what he did during the couple of circuits. Said, "nice" or "great" or something like that and thought to myself, "now don't do it..."
He turns to me, extends the transmitter to me and says, "Want to take it up?" "Oh... oh... no..." I'm thinking, but my mouth says, "I don't know." Doh! Chris says, "I've seen your videos, you're fine."
I was about to ask how he has the switches setup but he beats me to it and starts explaining. Turns out we run the same setup on the switches. It's setup for a full-collective range on all three flight modes. Good to go.
I take hold of the VControl, first time holding one or really seeing one up close so I'm dazzled by the design and the backlit display and the novelty of it. Feels pretty good in the hand I'm thinking to myself. I'm getting my hands and fingers into position and realize I had just packed up and didn't have my neck strap on. I started to have another bout of second thoughts as I've only rarely flown without a neck strap and never since I started pinching instead of thumbing. When you pinch you only have your pinkies to support the Tx on the back (at least the way I do it) so a neck strap is kind of important for me to feel comfortable and confidant that the thing isn't going to fall to the ground.
I push through the neck strap anxiety after getting my fingers in place and getting a feel for the thing. Feels solid, in my dazed mind. I'm about to flip off TH when Ray pops around Kyle on the right and says, "Really, you don't need to do this if you're too nervous" or something to that effect. I say, "I'm okay. Not going to do anything crazy." (What the hell does my brain-mouth system got going?! Stop already! You had two outs dumbass!) Chris says, "Just hover it."
There's a gallery of people watching me (that top photo only shows the spectators that had gathered for the upcoming night fly and fireworks show, all the pilots and familes were lining the side to the right in that picture), I'm standing next to arguably the best pilot in the world at the moment, and I'm running on a crazy high of adrenaline and dopamine and whatever else gets pumped into the system during something like this.
I flip off TH, bring it up to a hover. Get it about 10-12ft in the air and wiggle the cyclic stick to get a feel for the roll rate setup. It is sluggish, but that's a very good thing since my hands and fingers were probably shaking like mad. (Kyle told me afterward that's set for stock settings in the VBar and VControl, as far as rates and stuff go). I say to myself, "Well, here you are, might as well go for it a little bit." So I flip it to skids out and do a negative collective push out. I pop it a little at the back side of the rainbow and hear someone behind me exclaim "Wow" or something like that. Kyle says I may want to flip up to IU1 if I'm going to be doing that. "No need, that's all for that." I bring it back towards us and do a big slow backwards loop and then land it with a mini-auto.
"Holy shit. That just happened," I'm thinking to myself.
I'm still dazed during all this. I think that's all I did in the flight, but I honestly don't know for sure. Those are the only two things I remember doing, and I'm only 90% sure I actually did do them.
Any way, I make sure I'm flipped to TH and Kyle pulls the canopy and disconnects power and we head back to the fence to collect everything. I shake hands with Kyle thanking him for everything, same with Chris, Ray, and then Bert Kammerer comes out to us and I shake his hand and thank him as well. Chris asks what servos I run on my other KSE and I say BKs, he tells Bert as he's walking away and he says something... again dazed and tripping on endorphines. I probably grunted at him for all I know.
Kyle takes me back to his trailer and gives me a box (I recognize it from the kit I built as the one with all the baggies of parts in it) and shows me that he threw in some extra SupraX6 connectors (good, since I'll need to make a charging adapter or two at least), explained that the Scorpion ESC has a BEC in it but it didn't have enough to power the servos so there's a flight pack on it for the electronics, etc. Also said it's running the Vbar gov so it can be controlled from the transmitter and when I plug it into the computer it will ask me to register it, etc.
So I pack it all into the truck, after shifting a bunch of stuff around, wasn't planning to have a whole extra 700 size heli and transmitter going back with me.
And that's the story of how I got to fly one of Kyle Stacy's KSEs and he flew mine too. It hasn't been "tuned" by him, persay. But he built it and set it up so good enough for me.
No, I don't personally have video of the flight. I'll be asking people if anyone took one and will post it up if I find one.
