May 4th, 2010 
wcharly When Alan from Canada sent me this Antique Honey Bee electric, I was anxious to play with it. Then, all the old frustrations came back, as I tried and tried to get it to fly. We are pretty spoiled with all the LiPos, Brushless Motors, Gyros, Spread Spectrum radios, and the light composites we have for today’s helicopters. Remember, back only 35 years ago, this was real progress. Many things went wrong. Stripped gears, both tail and main. Such small Allen screws, that I could not find an Allen wrench to fit them. Parts kept flying off. There were no gyros in those days either and 2 minutes was tops on the battery. In the last minute, the battery gets low and slow, so trying to make adjustments was futile. It took a long time to charge the battery, just to try again. Of course once it flew, you sensed a deep satisfaction of accomplishment. But remember, these helicopters were new 35 years ago and most skeptics said we would never have electric helicopters. I am glad we never gave up, for today’s helicopters are truly electronic works of art. Thanks for watching, Dave
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ouch! that must of been a pain in the butt to set up back then!
when i was a kid my neighbor had a rc heli, i remember that thing always being on his work bench getting some kind of repair. think he only managed to fly it a few times it was hard to handle.. imagine he spent a lot of money on it too, pretty amazing you can get a ready to fly 7channel heli for a few 100 bucks now
Excellent source of wisdom and information on how much grief you guys went through in the early days. And to think I was whining about my $50 heli and how it won’t trim up right!
Learn some valuable lesson… true we taking things granted these days..
Graet video dave! Great to see a heli from the beggining flying again, man we do have it easy these days
5/5
You deserve a medal for your patience!!
I would have grabed the heli by the tail and make a “pearl Jam” with it 
Fantastic! Now to put brushless motors and a gyro on it to bring it up to date and fly it like it should be flown:) Unless you’re gonna keep it in antique status.
Bobby
man you are a pro, i cant even get my new heli fly even lol
i bet i can crash all those faster than anyone on the internet
Wow that thing is fubar
Dave Herbert you are a legend, thank you for sharing your vast amount of knowledge and experience through this video, I feel horned just leaving a message on your page.
You’re just a Great Great Master, Dave. I look forwards to welcoming you here one day
You are just a Great Great Master, Dave! I do hope you will accept our invitation to come over here one day
You are just a Great Great Master, Dave! I do hope you will accept our invitation to come over here one day
Really intresting Video Dave, I am sure the skills you learnt in those days must pay big rewards with todays heli’s too
Someone once told me all good engineers are also good historians, and this kind of thing is the proof. To really appreciate where we are today, you’ve just got to know this stuff. I’m a software engineer, and was lucky enough to be in on the computer revolution – this inspires me to pull out some old equipment and see if it still works – I bet it does
Damn your skills are just amazing!
Great video! well worth while to see the honey bee in action.
geeze my 40 dollar co=ax is better i feel lucky
“It is wonderful to be here in the great state of Chicago”
- Dan Quayle, former U.S. Vice-President
Nice piece of history. Love that your username has the prestige. Keep it up. You are an inspiration to us beginners and our Esky honeybees.
best vid ive seen, reminds me of my father on harley weeek end adventures when rc helis would just go up and come down . auto rotation at its beginnings
You are really a true inspiration and I wish you could have a holiday or something named after you. Anytime I have trouble flying I just watch ur videos.
everything is too easy nowdays, i loved building my tamiya rc cars and building my concept 30dx heli and well…pretty much built everything HA HA HA but thats half the fun,dont get me wrong RTF is great like my little MSR heli but so much more is learn’t from building something yourself and you also take more care of the model too as it took many hours to build, i love this hobby!!
i remember wanting the original honey bee as a kid i used to imagine flying it next to me to the park…..so glad i never got one as i would not of stood a chance of flying it
lol, you should have a running counter for each time you put up “To the bench”. Nice to see where we started out though. Thanks, keep up the great work
the good thing about brushless motors is that they last longer compared to brushed ones’~:
brushless motors are great because they require less maintennance and last longer.’~
i love this kind of blog.. I love helicopters because it is easy to fly and i used to be a pilot of helicopter.