Barryorbik

Flying time depends on a lot of factors including the ambient operating temperature but as a general guide my Mini Titan has a Scorpion motor (2221 -8 I think) with a 13T pinion and a 60A Pentium esc with the low voltage cut out set for 3V9, 325mm fibre glass blades and I use 2200mA 3S C20 FlightMax or Overlander lipo's.   I limit my flights to 5 minutes of 'sport' flying or six minutes of 'right way up' figure of eights and general circuits and find at the end of most flights the batteries are slightly warm with about 70% capacity used.   Hope this helps.   Barry

John, I would second the advice from Delta Whiskey. I came into this sport with an RTF 450 sized heli complete with a non- computer radio and soon found out it was a VERY BIG mistake. I could not tame the beast down to my skill level and spent a small fortune on replacement parts and many boring hours on the Phoenix simulator before I learned how to hover. I would say a DX6i or DX7 and the BNF MSR as a start then the MCP-x. The MSR gives you lots of chance to practice orientations indoors without damaging the furniture and is far more fun than a simulator, then when you have mastered that move onto the MCP-x, which I find is a bit too quick and intimidating in the house, so is mainly used in large halls or more often outside. The SR120 needs a lot of space but is not good outside in the wind and the natural progression from the MCP-x is the Blade 450 but againthis is really an outdoor or very large hall machine.   Best part is, if you have invested in a DX6i or DX7 you will be able to use the same Tx for all these heli's (and beyond)   Have fun   Barry

You would have thought the H&S guys in the US military would have insisted on a parachute being fitted to the rotor head, just in case!! Ha Ha   Barry

Its a good adverts and some of the camera angles were very cleverly chosen to 'loose' the tail rotors, either that or the 'paintshop pro' experts airbrushed them out. I love the washing machine pirouetting off into the sunset at the end.   Barry

We use this type of material to house the Ni-CAD and Ni-MH battery pack we use with our products and the proper material is 3mm thick and is actually two interwoven fabrics and has to conform to various BSI and international fire rating standards. The outside fabric is a satin finish silver grey colour and feels rubbery and the inner material feels like silk with a bright silvery white colour and the stitching is a Kevlar thread rated at 450C. A 300mm square piece of the material direct from the manufacturer when purchased in large volumes (over 5,000 pieces) costs us over £12.00, so that is why the correctly made Lipo bags cost so much.   In short if any company is selling ready made large Lipo bags for far less than the cost of the correct materials, either they will not be in business for long or they are cheating somewhere!! It's the old adage again 'you get what you pay for' or in this case it may be that 'let the buyer beware' is a better one.   Have fun but stay safe   Barry

Sean, I have been there with the garden ornaments as well. It never ceases to amaze me how a little twister sized heli (Esky King 2 in my case) can cause so much damage to statues and plants, even with just the wooden blades on. I'm only allowed to fly the MCP-x in the back garden now.   I am sure you will find any of the 450 up sizes of Align heli more durable and easier to fly than the twister, which looks very similar to the old Blade CP / Esky CP to me and both have the habit of stripping main gears in even a light blade strike.   Look forward to hearing how you get on and have fun but stay safe - and remember -bigger heli's cause bigger cuts!!   Barry

Sean, If you are pushing the boat out and buying bigger why not go for the Trex 550 or even my prefered heli the Gaui 550 ,which is 30 sized and so stable, plus you can still use your 3S 2200 packs but with two in series.   Some of the lads at our club have had Trex 500's but have moved up to the Trex 550 as it is still a manageable size and the spares are still affordable. It is also has better manners that the pumped up 500 and allows you to use a slower head speed which in turn helps to reduce the inevitable panic that occurs when you fly bigger and more expensive helicopters

I had not owned a foamie before, so took lots of advice on compatible paints and it appears that although most household water based emulsions are Ok they tend to flake off, so I used the RC Styro Colours (Acrylic Paint for Syrofoam and ABS) spray paint (takes two cans btw for the GF-15 at approx £8.00 per can) which I bought off 'the bay' for the main body colour. Detailed brushwork was done with Humbrol Acrylic paints which come in little pots and lots of colours and finally Henkel-Watermann Acrylic paints from my wifes acrylic painting set, for the pilots.   Hope this helps but I found out after reading the Humbrol tins that their paints can be diluted with water for use with an airbrush, so that could reduce the cost of painting the airframe substantially.

Graham, I left the missiles off as they were bound to get broken with my landing skills ! We have the luxury of having a nice long tarmac runway but I fitted the wing tanks in case I ever need to do an emergency landing on grass. I also added two plastic skids just infront of the two engine exhaust mouldings and on each wing tip - just in case.   Mine has already gained scars from transporting and some hangar rash and one of the extensions on the elevators snapped off, so I refitted it with a 3mm CF rod through the middle as a backbone and did the same to the unbroken one, also the little tips on the tail fins received the same treatment but with 1.5mm CF rod as they are bound to get broken off.   Wind here is pretty gusty today, so off now to the field for a social and domestic (with the MCP-x of course!)   Hope your maidens go well and all the best with the GF-15   Barry

Hi Graham, Not having had an EDF before I was surprised by the small throws they give buy they do work and they give pretty solid flight characteristics. The two Nato pilots we used were unpainted ones we bought at West Park Show and I think were about 2.50 each. Ours were 45mm high but with hindsight we should have bought the smaller ones, as I had to 'modify. the arms and height on ours to get them into the cockpit. I only stooge around and limit flight times to 8 minutes, so my 2150 packs stay pretty cool and unstressed.   The bigger heli fleet has not been out much recently as either the weather has been unsuitable of our social calender has clashed with a nice flying day!. As a result the little MCP-x has taken the most abuse as it is almost indestructable - even in my hands and goes everywhere with us when we are camping.   Have fun and enjoy your GF-15.  

I have been crashing and repairing my heli's for at least two years. My fleet is the same as Anothony's and I have suffered with similar repair costs plus lots of lost flying opportunities waiting for spares to arrive. The biggest advances I have made were not with Phoenix but firstly the Blade MSR, as this allowed 'real' indoor heli practice and latterly with the MCP-x (outdoors only though because its mighty quick) . Both of these heli's will help to develop your skills but if you go the MCP-x route its worth getting a BNF version and a Spektrum computer radio such as the DX6i, DX7 or DX8 etc, as this will allow you to tame it down quite a lot whilst you are learning. The MSR is cheaper but it can get a little boring outside in low wind conditions, as it only flies the right way up and is far too stable when compared to 'normal' RC helicopters.   If the MCP-x had been available when I started two years ago, I think I would have been doing F3C by now instead of still practicing for an A cert, plus my credit card bill would have been miniscule.!   Have fun but stay safe - Barry    

Thanks for your comments David and Tim, The nice thing was that my wife painted the pilots and she did an excellent job while I got on with painting the big bits. You can't see it in these photographs but they both have full coloured instrument displays to look at and the rear pilot has a wide eyed and very scared look on his face, so he must have realised who was actually going to fly the plane!.   Looks as though it's going to be too windy up here this weekend to have another go with the fixed wing fleet but I do hope to get the heli's up and flying instead. If all the flying plans go wrong then there are always the nitro trucks to play with - so many toys and so little time to play with them!   Have fun   Barry

Thanks for that David. Hopefully the photo's will now appear - as if by magic!!  

Just maidened my Graupner GF-15 and its great. My wife decided it looked too bare with the empty cockpit, so it now has two 'nato' pilots installed and I thought a coat of paint would help prevent finger and grass stains, so sprayed it with a water based light grey acrylic.   Quite pleased with it and it does fly nicely.   Unfortunately despite many efforts I could not get my pre-flight collage photographs (pasted in MS word) to load on this site. Any assistance in how to do this would be much appreciated.   Barry   Edited By David Ashby - RCME Administrator on 14/07/2011 17:03:39