Well, today I had my first lessons in being a chopper pilot.
No, don't laugh! - you can teach an old dog new tricks y'know.
It's all the fault of a friend of mine who bought me one for Christmas. OK, so the rotor diameter was only about 150mm and after takeoff it invariably headed for the nearest wall, but it got me hooked. So I bought a better one and now I'm the proud owner of a heavily modified Twister Bell 47.
So far the modifications have involved supergluing a couple of struts on the tail following an unfortunate collision with a chair, gluing and reinforcing the cockpit moulding which came second in a battle with a wall, and a bodged repair to one of the rotor blades which lost a bit when I tried to land on a table and missed.
There are two big problems. The first is that this chopper is truly huge - 340mm rotor span - so there's not much room for error when going through doorways. Well actually there's a lot of room for error and I've found most of it.
The second problem is that I'm totally incompetent. I used to think that I knew the difference between left and right, but only when the damn thing is pointing in the right direction. If the nose is towards me, left is right, right is left, and by the time I've figured it out there's yet more work for the Air Accident Investigation Bureau.
Has anyone else tried to fly one of these things? Is it like riding a bike? Will I master it before I run out of superglue?
