Fama Kiss flight

Flying the Fama KISS with Nino - Aldina Hadzic in background

Yesterday, I flew with one of my former students to Bologna to fly the small turbine helicopter the Fama KISS. The student, John Heath, is interested in buying one and in becoming the British distributor. He is working with the CAA to see how possible this might be.
I had an interesting flight. At first the KISS would not start, owing to the ignition breaker having been left out. Then we got a hung start because the battery charge was too low. However, all these things were overcome and we took off to fly up to the hover area.
I was happy in the hover. There is more lateral travel than I'm used to, but the machine was nice and responsive and I enjoyed hovering it. However, when we took off the vibration was awful - I looked in amazement at Nino, and he looked annoyed with the machine. The blades must need tracking, he said. We flew for a while, but the vibration was getting worse, so we came back and landed, Nino still muttering about tracking.
When we landed, however, and Nino had a look around the machine he found it was not the tracking that was lacking, but that a bolt in the head had sheared off! Considering we had no back pitch it flew pretty well!
His mechanics rushed out and in a few moments (half an hour) the fault was fixed.
John then went flying and commented how smooth it was. I think I will fly it again and see what the full KISS is like!