It flies!

With the subsystems working and a stable yaw controller in place, I took the helicopter out for a test flight at the Marguerite parking lot yesterday.

It's a lot easier to control now; the SAS is definitely keeping it upright. I had a lot of space to fly it in and it was pretty tame. It picks up velocity pretty fast if you're not careful, though, and you have to be pretty thoughtful about how you respond. Took some rolling landings, but everything was fine.

Today, tied the yaw gain to the transmitter knob so that I could push it up a bit. Much easier to control yaw now. Flew it in the parking lot by the apartment.

Pretty docile and easy to control, for the most part. Yaw is a little tougher to wrap your mind around, but if you can keep it pointing in the same direction then the rest of the controls are much easier. I got it to hover for a few moments, had some deliberate landings, and then crashed it into the narrow space between the car and the garage.

Looks like I bent the flybar (stainless steel rod holding the stabilizer paddles) and the feathering bar (bolt holding the blade clamps to the main shaft). Also, one blade tip is smashed up, but that seems to be it. I'm surprised nothing else is broken: the plastic pieces all held while the steel yielded.

I'll need to do some grinding to get the bent flybar out, and I'll have to find a pair of small metric sockets to get the nuts off the feathering bar. Also I can't seem to find a replacement feathering bar anywhere in the States. But all in all, that crash could have been a lot worse.