Beginner

[Sbert]

Hello everyone my handle is Sbert, 65 years old and have been cleaning chimneys for 31 years. I seen a commercial where they are selling a RC Helicopter for 2 payments of $39.00.
This got me to thinking about using a RC Helicopter for take a string over a house then pulling a rope over with the string, Then you can use it as a saftey rope to walk up these high roofs to the chimney.Now we use ridge hooks which are hard to get in place sometime.
It would be good also for using a wireless camera to check the tops of chimneys and ect. I read where the T Rex 450 is the one with good lift. New these cost around $900.00 Ebay $19.00 up.
Can someone help me out here . Like what kind, where to buy.
Thank You
Sbert

[hawkman]

Hmmm....quite a novel use for an rc heli

The Trex is a popular heli....quite pricey for its size but its not a cheapo machine...I have seen a Trex used for fishing of all things...albeit over a fishpond....its on YouTube somewhere...check it out.

If there is any golden advice...its this

Get a good rc simulator...like Realflight g3 or Phoenix...a good simulator is worth its weight in gold. Get good with the sim....really good. This will take a lot of time....but you might learn fast, I dont know.

You want to be able to fly the pants off that model on the sim...so your flying becomes second nature...beacuse if you start using a heli for camera work etc...you will have your hands full.

Good luck

Rob

[hawkman]

Before I forget

www.trextuning.com

good website for the Rex

Rob

[Aztek1701]

Hi Sbert,

Firstly Welcome to the forums.

As hawkman says, its an interesting idea for sure however I think Ive spotted a small flaw here.... Your idea as it reads to me is to connect a string to the bottom of the heli and fly up and over the roof of a house, theoretically landing on the other side prior to disconnecting the string and using that to pull over a rope. There are about 4 problems with this as far as I can work out. 1. The string would be heavy.. Not to start with but after youve paid out enough to get from ground to roof twice or more I suspect it would weigh a fair bit. 2. The drag from the string would make the heli a ***** to fly and thats before we start factoring in wind components. 3. If you were landing it on the other side of a building, you wouldnt be able to see the heli. 4. Wouldnt the string get tangled in the blades as you descend on the other side?. I can see a possible way of doing this which would be to send the heli up about 4 times or more the hieght of the house then hover forward and descend keeping the string below the heli and the heli in view. The problem with this is you would need to lift even more string and the heli would look pretty small at the top of the climb.

The camera idea would be feasible but you'd need either a big heli with a proper pan-tilt camera mount or to be an excellent pilot to be able to get anything worthwhile back.

To be honest here I think you need to be looking at a T-Rex 600 to stand any chance of doing this because it is a much bigger and more stable machine. In fact your chances would improve still further if you looked bigger than a t-rex 600... Minicopter Joker for example or even the as yet unannounced huge t-rex (at a guess the t-rex 900?)

Theres also the small issue of insurance... To do something like this, you are gonna have to be insured and I dont think that the standard AMA insurance will cover it cos you are using the machine for "commercial" purposes, also since you are using the heli for commercial purposes I bet both the pilot and the machine would need to be ceritified by the FAA. (Not sure about this one though)

As a starting point, I'd go along with hawkmans suggestion of a sim and I wouldnt try the string idea until you can fly the pants off the thing without the string. Then Id probably tie a 100 feet or so of string to the bottom and try flying it around with it.

Good luck with your venture I'd love to see it in action if you can make it work.

Take care.... Azzy

[chaos]

Hello Sbert

I agree with Aztek1701 regarding using the heli to pull a string. If there was any drag on the string it would tend to tilt the heli, which would make it pull against the drag even more, which would tilt it more, which could get out of control real quick. The problem is one of "dynamic rollover". If I was going to try that at all, I'd want to go straight up twice as high as the building, then move to the other side of the building while dropping down in order to keep from getting any drag on the line, and when a helper yelled that the heli was on the other side I'd use an extra servo to drop the string and let a small weight deliver the end to the other side. But you can't fly a heli unless you have an eyeball on it, so you would want a a .50 size heli at least. I'd be concerned about the liability situation. If the thing got out of control and whacked a neighbor it would be a sorry affair. It's a clever idea but I'd be afraid of it on account of the liability.

People do use these things for taking photos/videos, but again, operating around and over people seems to be a liability problem to me.

If you intend to do either of these things, get real good at controlling the heli and practice that string thing on a farm building where nobody is around.