Yesterday just as I was sitting down for dinner the UPS guy dropped off the new TV stand that DW ordered from Amazon. Those guys at UPS must eat their Wheaties, because that thing was over 70 lbs and he didn't look like he was struggling at all. I went and got the hand cart to move it. Surprisingly, for the price it's real wood and not that particle-board stuff I'd expected. Anyway, that's what we did yesterday evening, put that together. DW is pleased, and that's always a good thing.
Today I decided to try placing a TV camera on a small helicopter (fixed pitch) for a video. I should have stayed inside, it turned out to not have enough "oomph" to outfly the little bit of wind and I saw that it was being carried off into the woods. Not quite in the nick of time I chopped the throttle and let it drop, but it was into some trees right at the edge of the woods. Not very hopeful, I trudged on down the hill to look for it and finding nothing, decided well, maybe if I wiggle the sticks I'll hear a servo move, but nothing. Next I tried advancing the throttle, hoping to maybe hear the rotor blades flapping against some leaves. To my astonishment it dropped out of a tree not three feet from where I was standing! But it was missing the TV camera/transmitter and battery powering them. Looking around a bit I found them under some leaves about a foot from where the helicopter had fallen.
I must be living right.
In total all that was missing was the tail rotor blade, about a $4 part.
And I have a shaky video of a short helicopter flight ending in bouncing through the tree leaves. It turns out that while velcro may be okay for holding a TV camera on a fixed-wing airplane, it's lousy for a vibrating helicopter and it was slowly shaking loose. The next Amazon order will include some tiny cable ties to strap it to the landing gear.
To make up for my luck in finding the helicopter, when I went to water some newly-planted grass seed I found that some yellow jackets had decided to build their nest under the hose bib. I didn't find that out until I went to turn the water off and one of them stung me. A couple squirts of wasp & hornet spray took care of that, but I'd forgotten how much a yellow jacket sting, stings. I am now being reminded.