To The Skies!
So I finally put some of the poker money to use and got my first full-fledged RC helicopter. I had tried researching my first chopper online but got too many mixed messages so I just went to a local hobby store (Hobby House, located next to Ski Haus) with the plan of talking to somebody for a while. As it turned out, he was just preparing to demo a beginner electric (I have no interest in gas power) to another customer. He flew it around a little, I liked the look of things, and I asked if he would recommend it for a newb. Apparently it's their number one seller, and his favorite intro model, so I went with it.
It's the E-Flite Blade CX, you can see it compared to the trusty Picoo-Z here. Note the two main rotors and lack of tail rotor. The two rotors are on separate, co-axial shaft, and spin in opposite directions. This cuts down on maneuverability a bit, but it gives a ton of stability, so it's a good feature in an intro chopper. Other than that it's nothing particularly noteworthy but for $200 it came with absolutely everything it needed, and I'm extremely happy with it. I'm no expert yet, but I can do successive laps of the living room with (usually) little trouble.
The only drawback is all the things that make it a good indoor chopper (small, electric, dual rotor), make it a weaker outdoor one. A bigger electric can do fine outside, but with this size I can't really fight any wind at all, and the dual rotor can't fight as hard against the wind because it just can't tip in any direction far enough. In fact, since the bottom blades' plane is controlled by the servos and the top blades' plane is always being pulled towards level by the flybar, if you try to lean it too far in one direction you can actually hit the blades against each other, which is a terrible thing. It seems that you can get a smaller flybar (designed for a different model), and at the cost of some stability you can get a bit more maneuverability. I'll hold off on that for now but it's an interesting idea.
Oh, and for the Vernon folks, no I haven't forgotten about the UFO idea (hope none of you have). I think I'll need to step up to a larger, stronger model before we try it though.
It's the E-Flite Blade CX, you can see it compared to the trusty Picoo-Z here. Note the two main rotors and lack of tail rotor. The two rotors are on separate, co-axial shaft, and spin in opposite directions. This cuts down on maneuverability a bit, but it gives a ton of stability, so it's a good feature in an intro chopper. Other than that it's nothing particularly noteworthy but for $200 it came with absolutely everything it needed, and I'm extremely happy with it. I'm no expert yet, but I can do successive laps of the living room with (usually) little trouble.
The only drawback is all the things that make it a good indoor chopper (small, electric, dual rotor), make it a weaker outdoor one. A bigger electric can do fine outside, but with this size I can't really fight any wind at all, and the dual rotor can't fight as hard against the wind because it just can't tip in any direction far enough. In fact, since the bottom blades' plane is controlled by the servos and the top blades' plane is always being pulled towards level by the flybar, if you try to lean it too far in one direction you can actually hit the blades against each other, which is a terrible thing. It seems that you can get a smaller flybar (designed for a different model), and at the cost of some stability you can get a bit more maneuverability. I'll hold off on that for now but it's an interesting idea.
Oh, and for the Vernon folks, no I haven't forgotten about the UFO idea (hope none of you have). I think I'll need to step up to a larger, stronger model before we try it though.
posted by SomeJerk at 2:36 PM
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