This posting has nothing to do with security, but everything to do with electronics and building devices. If you’re looking for a fun personal project, read on! Helicopter flying skills required.
A couple weeks ago, a friend called and said he was driving into Akihabara, Tokyo, and asked if I wanted to join for the ride. Akihabara is known as the ‘electric town’ within the Tokyo metropolis. In Aki (as we call it, short for Akihabara) you can find everything from good deals on normal consumer electronics to PIC micro controllers, components, and anything else, including toy guns, dolls, and English maid garbed girls hailing customers. Will try and include some Aki video some time. Smugwimp, my friend, said he wanted to go to an remote control model store to find something to build a camera stabilizer thing-a-majig, but once he said that, I thought about how long I have wanted to get into RC models. Since I was a kid, I’ve wanted to fly RC airplanes and helicopters – especially helicopters. We took a trip to Aki and both of us purchased a tiny indoor helicopter for practice.
Of course, I promptly destroyed my helicopter, smashing it into walls, television, doors, children, myself, so that $90 investment is  parked on top of the bread machine awaiting new parts. So I went into Akihabara a few days later and visited Futaba for a look, and picked up another bigger version.
Well, as the story goes, another week later, I found this even bigger RC super store. I visited this store and just had to get the big one. I had to have one of those nice alloy, carbon fiber, tough, fast, shiny 400 or 500 series. helicopters. After about 15 minutes of wandering around and looking for parts for the two other choppers that were crashed, I picked up the box for an Align 450, went to the counter and asked for a beefy battery, speed controller, charger, connectors, and servos. On top of the $450 for the kit, the additional accessories and necessary parts totaled another $200. I thought about it, then proceeded to put everything back, which obviously upset the store clerk. Whatever.

I got on the train, came back home, then noticed this RC forum where they talk about many, many Chinese knock-offs sold out of Hong Kong by an online store called Hobby King. They sell the 500 version of the model I almost purchased above for a mere $67. Of course, there is a price to pay in more building, greater inspection and quality control before flight, and greater attention to detail inspecting bearings. Well on my online journey, I found this forum thread that covers all the shortcomings of the knock-off version and clearly tells you what else to upgrade and purchase while building in order to produce a good stock version of the model.

So far, here is what I’ve put together and should be flying by next weekend….

The next step is to mount a GoPro camera on the front nose.

73s….