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New Year€™s with Family and Helicopters

Posted on January 2, 2011 By Tom 1 Comment on New Year€™s with Family and Helicopters
Family

This year our family wasn’t able to get together for our annual Christmas gathering. Schedules were just too crazy. We made up for it by getting together for Thanksgiving, then again for New Year’s. Even so, the whole group was able to join us, but it was still a nice gathering. We consumed collard greens, black-eyed peas, ham, and macaroni, as well as jalepano cornbread and chicken enchilada casserole. That was followed by the consumption of lots and lots of football on TV.

With its high ceilings, I figured our family homeplace in Gray Court would be the perfect place to fly my new helicopter. Since it was rainy out, this turned out to be a great diversion for my siblings as well as the kids that were there.

Hawkeye Helicopter

For Christmas Laura had given me an Air Hogs Hawk Eye Helicopter. It takes 640X480 still images and 320X240 video – hardly high def, but still loads of fun. There is no sound with the video. I’m not sure how much on-board memory it has, but it doesn’t have to be much. It’s only got about 5 minutes of flight time per recharge on the batteries.

Since Christmas I’ve been practicing and have finally gotten the hang of flying it. Most flights still end in crashes, but now most of those are semi-controlled crashes. I’ve been getting longer flights since I don’t crash as often, which means longer videos.

The photography function on the helicopter isn’t very useful. It tends to be haphazard, blurry, and very grainy, even under excellent light conditions. Video is the way to go, even though the resolution isn’t that great.

I started by annoying my parents and aunt and uncle by flying it through the living room.

…then took it outside for a few test flights. I was able to get several sustained flights, but for some reason the camera didn’t want to cooperate. This was the best video I got, and it’s fairly short.

Houston arrived with his camera, and he was able to get several action shots of the helicopter in flight.

Hawkeye HelicopterHawkeye HelicopterHawkeye HelicopterHawkeye Helicopter

I managed to catch him in this video taking one of the photos.

And finally, here’s a fairly long flight where various family members wave, and generally avoid trying to get hit by the thing.

The helicopter continues to amuse, and was a big hit at our New Year’s Day gathering.

Tags: family helicopter New Year toys

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One thought on “New Year€™s with Family and Helicopters”

  1. Dwight says:
    January 4, 2011 at 8:40 pm

    Adam too has now become a pretty good Air Hogs pilot. (When I watch your videos my brain fills in the missing clacking sounds as the copter crashes!) Adam took his to New Hampshire and flew it in my brother in law’s big construction shop.

    Reply

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