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Lost an arm
Feb. 8th, 2014 03:58 pmA couple days ago I bought Phoenix RC, an RC aircraft simulator. It's an amazing amount of fun, I've been playing with it like nonstop. Thursday night I stayed up Far Too Late messing with transmitter settings (on the transmitter itself; I can use my tweaks on the real quad) and last night I was playing with acrobatics (which I will likely never do with the real, $400 quad, but is a lot of fun on the imaginary one). It has a USB widget where I can plug in my actual controller, and the physics are great. It emulates different kinds of wind, you can tweak the weight / horsepower settings of the quad, simulate random equipment failures, etc.
Anyway, after doing that for two days, and today being the first nice day in a week, I took it out and immediately lost an arm. I was practicing zooming as fast as I could toward the construction site and then back, and I flew too fast too close to the ground and crashed.
That construction site makes me sad, too: we used to have this enormous field behind our office, but now past about 50 yards it's a muddy construction site. For what I'm sure is going to be Joe's Pine Tree, Doberman, and Swimming Pool Emporium or something equally unfriendly to fly over.
It was a pretty impressive crash, to be fair. Even from about 30 yards I could see little bits fly into the air, the thing flipped and rolled a couple times, it was very photogenic, unlike when I lost a prop flying it into a ping pong table. I managed to find all the bits that fell off, and I snapped an arm in half.
Funny thing: the props, including the ones that dug into the ground, were perfectly fine. Carbon fiber is some tough shit. The arm was toast but the prop on it still looks (and works) great.
I have eight (now seven) spare arms, so it's already flying again. But, first major crash! Woo!
Anyway, after doing that for two days, and today being the first nice day in a week, I took it out and immediately lost an arm. I was practicing zooming as fast as I could toward the construction site and then back, and I flew too fast too close to the ground and crashed.
That construction site makes me sad, too: we used to have this enormous field behind our office, but now past about 50 yards it's a muddy construction site. For what I'm sure is going to be Joe's Pine Tree, Doberman, and Swimming Pool Emporium or something equally unfriendly to fly over.
It was a pretty impressive crash, to be fair. Even from about 30 yards I could see little bits fly into the air, the thing flipped and rolled a couple times, it was very photogenic, unlike when I lost a prop flying it into a ping pong table. I managed to find all the bits that fell off, and I snapped an arm in half.
Funny thing: the props, including the ones that dug into the ground, were perfectly fine. Carbon fiber is some tough shit. The arm was toast but the prop on it still looks (and works) great.
I have eight (now seven) spare arms, so it's already flying again. But, first major crash! Woo!
