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  • As youngsters my brother and I wanted one of these soooo baaaaadly. For years and years we yearned and pleaded (might have been months, but at that age a month or a year is still forever and ever). Birthdays, Christmases, other events that children use as leverage to extort stuff from parents came and went to no avail. Then we came across a second hand one at a jumble sale. It was like striking oil in your back garden. A jumble sale! This piece of cutting edge technology, this actual helicopter that actually flew like an actual helicopter (ok, only in circles, but what wondrous circles of real actual helicoptering it promised). It did have a broken drive shaft but dad looked at it and confidently declared "that can be repaired", so we persuaded the stall holder to put it aside and beetled off to round up all the money we had in the world.

    At home a bit of drilling, a bit of pinning, and a bit of Aralditing was done and the thing was clamped up and set aside to set.

    "When can we play with it?" "Not until it's properly set, a day at least".

    Awaking early after a troubled night, sleep disturbed by the constant calling from the toy in the next room, we snuck in for a peek at it. Just a look, just to see how it's getting on. Oh but it looks to be done, it feels fairly solid, it must be done. We'll have just a quick go. Set up and ready I tentatively pushed forward the throttle, spinning up the rotor, gently, tentatively, it took to the air. Bolder now I push the direction control forwards and give it shot of power, it pitched its nose down and effortlessly accelerated. It whiped round the base as magnificently as all the advertising promised, real actual proper helicoptering. But the altitude is wrong, quick adjust the power, too much, too little, much too much, much too little, then the bump as it made it's unscheduled landing. Brother takes the controls for the second flight but when he throttles up all we get is a thin whizzy noise. A quick inspection confirmed the worst, drive shaft broken, in the same place as before, fixing pins torn and bent. Later dad confirmed what we suspected, it was beyond re-repair, our impatience had turned it to scrap. There was no telling off, no further punishment, as we knew, and he knew we knew, that the important lesson had been well and truly learnt that morning.

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