Flying hedge trimmer, are you ready for some football, Lucky

When I got home last night I felt really blah.  I had no desire to do a home workout or anything resembling work for that matter.  I treated my poor mood with play.

I got all of the parts of my Blade MQX out and ready to fly.  I had thumbed through the manual during the day to loosely familiarize myself with the copter.   I expected it to be a different flying experience from what I was accustomed to with the RC planes I have flown.  I didn’t expect it to be significantly more difficult.  I was wrong.

On my initial attempts I was trying to keep the Blade very close to the ground, not getting it more than a foot off the ground at any time.  The copter seemed to be drifting more than I expected but I later attributed that to my very conservative lift offs which could drag the landing gear, tipping it one way or the other.

I found myself really having problems with disorientation with the 4 additional control directions I had to deal with.  With my RC planes like my Sky Scooter I am controlling throttle, tail elevator  for up/down angle and the ailerons on the wing that handle turning.  With the quadcopter I have throttle to control altitude up/down, right/left rotation, bank left, bank right, and forward/reverse which is controlled by dipping or raising the front end of the Blade.  I really had issues when the copter was coming towards me, I just don’t have the reflexes yet to be able to react accordingly.

I went through three battery charges of flights.  I was surprised how long the tiny lipo battery lasted, giving me a solid 10 minutes of fly time.  As expected the Blade had a LOT of crashes however none of them caused any significant damage.  Luckily despite my issues with overall control, I was pretty good at just killing the throttle whenever I saw an impact coming, saving the Blade from any high speed crashes. The funniest incident was when I had the copter up 5 or 6 feet in the air.  It drifted too close to one of the plants on top of the media cabinet and chopped a few leaves off, sending the Blade back down to the carpet.

As you can see in the video, I did have some pretty controlled hover time going on but I was really bad at doing any “steering”.  I moved the Blade around the room almost exclusively using the banking capability of the quadcopter.  If I tried to turn it I always had problems with it either gaining or losing altitude since left/right is on the same stick as the throttle. I also expect that flying outside with the Blade will be a much better experience.  The living room, despite it’s size, just had too many obstacles for a noob copter pilot.  The backyard offers much larger open spaces to allow for pilot error.

Tuki was not a fan of the helicopter.  As soon as I put it in the air he retreated back inside his cage.  Perhaps he didn’t trust my flying ability.  He is a pretty smart bird I guess.

In between the charging cycles of the copter battery I supplemented my night of play by getting on my warlock, named KeddieFruger, in WoW.  I have not played anything but my panda monk in WoW for the last 8 months.  I was pleasantly surprised with how much fun I had playing my warlock.  There have been a number of changes that make them much more powerful than they once were.

I did a couple 5 person instances.  Despite having gear that was not great via MOP standards and not knowing the instances or how to really play my warlock well anymore I still unleashed the most damage of anyone in the group.  It was cool.  It’s fun having 5 or 6 demons by your side unleashing all sorts of hell simultaneously on bad guys.

Tonight there will be no time for copter flying or WoW playing, I am hosting my fantasy football draft party.  I will be quite busy rearranging the furniture in the house, setting up food, drink, and getting all the tech up and running.  When I first started hosting this party a few years ago I provided a bunch of food that I had to bake/cook myself.

Since then I have streamlined things. I will only be baking some spanikopita and buying some pizzas.  The other team owners will be filling in the gaps.  I realized that although it is nice to provide a big, diverse menu for the party it was totally unnecessary.  This is a fantasy football party for cripes sake,  the core needs are pizza and beer, done.

This party also means another late night by the time I wind up cleaning up afterwards. Sure I could worry about cleaning up the place until the next day but I hate going to bed having the house in disarray.

To add to the formula I am picking up Lucky this afternoon for 4 days of dogsitting.  It will be interesting to see how Lucky does with a house full of fantasy football owners around.  It will be fun having Lucky around for a few days, he is so much fun and Uncle Shawn lets him get away with more than his dog dad does.  I am sure Sadie will be thrilled to see her good buddy this weekend.