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Scale Outdoor RC Helicopters - Where To Buy?


Greg Watkiss
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Can anyone give me some advice as to where I can buy Scale helicopters for leasure flying. I already have a collection of off-the-shelf standard helicopters ranging from micro indoor to large outdoor but I want to purchase a helicopter for outdoor use in a scale or near scale that is modelled on the original helicopter. They can be military or civil and any style of rotor setup ie coaxial or fixed pitch etc. I have searched the internet but unless I am doing something wrong I can't find any retailer who seems to want to sell this type of RC helcopter.

I look forward to your replies.

Regards,

Greg

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Hi Greg.

How much money have to got!! To be honest, there's quite a bit of choice out there. A lot depends on how much you want to spend, whether you want to go gas, methanol or electric and what size heli you're looking at..

In my experience, not many UK shops sell scale helis probably due to the overall cost. In most cases its buy the mechanics then a scale fuz to suit. The UK seems pretty averse to scale heli and gliders. I find the best places tend to be in Europe which can also push the price up.

Vario are well engineered but ridiculously priced in my opinion. I was considering their Bell 230 fuz for my X Treme but they now want £645 for the fuz alone. You wont get much change out of 2 grand for Vario mechanics and fuz then, you have the engine \ motor etc to buy.

Electric wise, there are some great helis out there from 600 size and bigger. Scaleflying.de do some very good fuselages and even have some 700 'super scale' mechanics and fuselages for around 1500 euros

helicoptermanufaktur.de also do some scale fuselages and mechanics.

Although there are some dedicated heli shops such as Midland Helis and Fast Lad, they seem to concentrate on 3D rather than for the scale flyer so its pretty much pick and mix.

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What kind of "scale" are you looking for Greg? After flying my T-Rex 500 for five years I decided I was crashing rarely enough that it would be worth risking a scale fuselage on it. I got an Align Hughes 500, designed specifically to fit the 500 airframe. I don't know how close it is to true scale, but it looks good enough to me, and to our club members.

So now I've bit the bullet and ordered a Bell JetRanger fuselage for my T-Rex 550. This time it's a .30-size item from Century Helis in the US -- not Century UK, who've practically stopped importing Century's items. I've ordered it unpainted, saving about half the cost.

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