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First 'proper' Helicopter Advice


Edmund Comber
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  • 2 weeks later...

Having taken advice from a number of places, I was just about to order (literally as I was about to click the ‘Buy’ button having input all the details for the online order – my friend phoned so I decided to hold off) a HoneyBee Fixed Pitch (HBFP) as an intermediary step as they seem to fair well from ‘incidents’ and are simple and  robust such that often all you need to do is straighten out and carry on flying.  The HBFP draws strong opinions from two opposite camps, but seems to be a good trainer option.  However yesterday a friend brought round a new Hirobo Quark FP micro helicopter and we (I hade 4 flights) flew it in my meadow.

 

I loved it.  It will do exactly for what I want in terms of intermediate training, and I can fly it safely indoors, and outdoors in calm weather or light winds at weekends (getting dark earlier now and I don’t get home from work).  It is tweakable to make it more demanding to fly as my skills progress, beautifully engineered, robust (sacrificial blades) during incidents.  I plan to get a T-REX 500 kit at Christmas, but this Quark is just perfect for my current requirements – yes it is expensive, but it is quality, and it works!  I will have mine this evening! as my pal is getting it for me as I type!

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  • 3 weeks later...

Definatly the 500.

I bought a 450 v2 and am having fun with it, but a 500 would be much better. The 450 is fast, small and light so it accelerates very quickly and gets very small even quicker! Bonus is that parts are cheap as are batteries.

The 500 is smoother to fly, copes with winds better and is just under twice the size of the 450. It will fly on 5s cells very well and go ballistic on 6S, but neither size need to be big in the MaH stakes so arnt mega expensive. It also flys well out of the box except if you fit a carbon boom. If you do this then it needs to be grounded due to causing interference and yes this includes 2.4!

The 600 flys even better then the 500 but the down side is that it needs 6S 4200's to fly and 8S cells to fly proper 3D. Also needs various parts upgrading to fly good 3D so all in all is a very expensive machine.

500 gets my vote! 

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The two TRex 500's that fly every time I'm at our club, go through sportsman standard 3D manoeuvers each battery and their beepers go off at 6 minutes on the Align TRex 500 5S lipos that retail at about £60 each. Their other lipos are £90 each and don't appear to give any advantage...

They are a very smooth machine though that I've seen fly in winds of about 10mph without noticing it. Oddly, the best fliers other regular machine is a full spec 90 size Synergy that now hardly ever sees the light of day..!!!

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Thanks for the help and advice.  As I said ain the original post - I am not interested in 3D - don't ever expect to get that good!  so the longer times would be welcome.  The Lipo's for the 500 are a concern cost wise - so the T-REX 450SE v2 and the Mini Titan SE are back on the agenda - remember I want to fly in a small meadow.
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If I do go for the smaller heli - I am currently favoring the Mini Titan SE.  However I won't be buying till Christmas / New year - maybe February when I have a birthday.... by then the 'credit crunch' might mean that vendors are willing to reduce their high (40-45%?) margin to secure sales and there may be 'bargains' to be had.....
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