Hirobo XRB Lama

 
Here I am hovering Hibro's XRB Lama indoor helicopter. As you can see, it works outdoors too. This was my second day with it, but I had spent a lot of time on my RealFlight simulator before buying something breakable. This helicopter is unique in two ways. First, it isn't R/C. It's tethered by a control cord. One of the nice things about that is that it never runs out of juice. The second thing is the that tail rotor isn't functional. Instead, it has two rotors turning in opposite directions to neutralize the torque. To turn, or yaw the helicopter, one rotor slows down while the other speeds up.
Here Steven is concentrating on keeping the helicopter's tail pointed the way he wants it. While we have been flying airplanes for some time, this is a completely new experience for all of us. Several days after we got this, Eric and I got to fly a friend's bigger helicopters. While the sensitivity was greater on the bigger copters, the basic movement was about the same, and quite doable.
I'll start working on more advanced forward flight as soon as I'm completely comfortable with hovering while looking at the chopper from any direction. Inverted hovers will have to wait until I get a cordless model.
Up
Home