Bell Bloke
Key Veteran
Location: England
| Well folks the Lama went out on its first real mission today, I have to confess that I have been using the Bell 47 so much that I keep on putting the Lama on the back burner. The Bell has been showing off a lot lately, appearing in various magazines and articles, and putting in guest spots at local and not so local shows. It’s now logged 38.5hours and has been solid as a rock!
Then came the Century Hawk Sport Pro converted to electric and then to a camera ship. That is now going wonderfully and is out working most of the time.
So now it’s the Lamas turn. For various reasons the Lama has had a learning curve all of its own. But I have now logged 1hours hover testing, and all temps are good. The gear problems have been resolved and I am still running my oversized, yet scale sized main blades on the 3 bladed head. My 3 bladed hybrid tail is also working a treat.
So today I went for it and flew the lad in anger, and boy does it fly nice. It is really smooth and easy to fly. This chopper is a real low level keep it in ground effect merchant.
Basically it loves low level flying at any speed 6-12 inches off the deck. Now I don't know why this is, but you can just tank about inches from the ground and it just follows the contours of the terrain.
It's bloody great!
I think that it thinks it’s a hovercraft!
Anyway it looks good.
Flying about at a more normal 10 feet it's a pussycat. The controls on the 3 bladed head are a little less responsive than the Bell 47, and when coming out of fast forward flight, it has a little tendency to lift its nose more than you expect it to. However after 10mins of flying you soon forget this effect and instinctively fly around it.
To give you an idea of how nice it is to fly I gave the controls to a friend of mine who has only really flown a hummingbird. He popped it up into a hover and ventured a little circuit, no problem.
I have to laugh though, because this heli is definitely KING of the ground effect. Low level missions are its forte, and I think this one will be mainly spending its time on below radar assaults!
I believe that this Lama would actually make an excellent training helicopter, except for the fact that if you did get it wrong you've got 3 blades to break and not 2.
Shame really.  |
