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Flite Fest Ohio 2018

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Flite Fest Ohio 2018 is on the books – we went, we flew, we crashed. Here’s a little brain-dump of lessons learned from our second year.

More Stick Time

My first year I spent a lot of time building a project that ultimately didn’t fly. For me it was a disappointment. So this year I did a build ahead of time and planned to do much more flying. It turned out to be much more crashing because I didn’t have all of the bugs worked out of my plane. It did fly, and it helped me achieve my goal of more stick time at the event. However, the stick time paled in comparison to the time I spend in the bean field looking for my plane after a crash. You haven’t fully experienced Flite Fest until you’ve gone looking for a downed plane in the bean field.
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I’m in Le Drib’s vlog!

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Actually my plane was in Drew’s vlog earlier this summer. If you don’t subscribe to his channel on YouTube, you should.

He was at Flite Fest East and flew his quad in the one combat session I dared enter. My plane is a white FT Flyer with blue stripes on the leading edge of the wing, along with American flags on the wings and vertical stabilizer 🇺🇸 It was also sporting a streamer that day 🎉

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Flite Fest East 2017

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I was finally able to get to Flite Fest in Ohio near Canton. It’s a 12-hour drive from home in Minnesota. To split up the time on the way out, we took the SS Badger across Lake Michigan. They have an eastbound red-eye option that leaves at 1:30AM (Central) and arrives 4 hours later at 6:30AM (Eastern). Even though it makes the trip technically longer, the downtime is much appreciated.

In hindsight, I wish I had arrived at the departure dock earlier. They encourage you to arrive an hour before departure. Ideally I would have arrived before midnight so I could be asleep by then. We got there around 12:45AM – but I was just glad to have the opportunity to rest. Getting a stateroom for the red-eye is a must:

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HK-T6A as a Trainer Buddy Box

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I got super-cheap HK-T6A V2 6-channel radio for my first model airplane. It’s great because it’s programmable using a computer and a specialized USB cable. Using the USB cable, you can also play simulators such as FMS and RC Desk Pilot (among others). Did I also mention it’s dirt cheap?!?

After I built another plane and also purchased a small multi-rotor, I quickly realized the need for a transmitter that could handle multiple models. The Turnigy 9x fit the bill. I kept my old HK-T6A for using on the simulator and now my son will use it to fly his FT Flyer.

The 9x has a trainer switch and a trainer port, so I wondered if I could buddy-box these two radios. There’s plenty of information out there regarding modifications to buddy box two HK-T6As, but using the 9x as the master and the T6A as the slave seems like it would only require a specialized cable with no modification to either radio.

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