paedbo
Posts: 501
Joined: 2/11/2005
From: Bridgeport,
CT, USA
Status: offline
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I was asked a question about this heli in another post and figured i would post a seperate topic,
I inherited this bird because a friend didnt have the patience with it and was wasting money on it.
Its an FP bird, the question i was asked was what parts or upgrades can it use from the get go.
I have a honey bee 2 cp bird that was my first heli, out of the two, the honey bee 2 flies better than the colco thunderbird, However when it comes to crashes the colco is a hell of alot better at surviving than the honey bee 2. I was actually able to learn more nose in hovering with the fp colco than with the honey bee, because i was always frightened of crashing the honey bee 2 and losing a main gear, blades and maybe rotor head pieces or popped apart swashplates. With the fp bird since i knew how resistant it was to crashes, i wasnt afraid to turn it around and actually do the nose in hover thing, it actually helped me alot faster in a few days than weeks with the other bird.
anyways, the colco thunderbird II will fly but its alittle harder than other micros. I have no experience with other fp birds and im sure there are others out there that are just as resistant to crashes but might fly better.
but anyone interested in the colco here is a small list of things i learned from it.
Most parts for this bird can be found here http://www.raidentech.com/cothbisppa.html
1. the paddles are under the main blades, i find that in crashes it is easy to break the fly bar. so i shortened the fly bar by about an inch because it is fairly long. I get less cyclic response out of it, but it helps for the first few flights of learning to hover. Anyhow if you buy the colco thunderbird make sure you buy plenty of spare flybars (#EH09) Stabilizing Wing Beam
2. my friends main motor died and he started to buy new motors from the reaidentech link i listed above. Most of the parts are fairly cheap, but the motor he was getting was not strong enough to lift the bird very high so when he gave it to me i started using the mabuchi 370 motors that come with the honey bee 2 cp, which you can find at heli-fever.com its 10 times better!
3. the landing gear is weak and you will often snap a leg off it so buy a few spares (#EH20 Foot Pole Support) i dont change them out right away sometimes i just tape it back to the skid to get more flights out of it, you could probably glue it also.
4. the battery pack it comes with is horrible. ( nimh) get a good lipo battery for it, now whether or not to use a 2 cell or 3 cell lipo im not sure, i have been running it on 11.1v 1200mah pack. i tried an 11.1 1800mah pack, it will fly but its too much weight. There might be some concern about flying the colco on such a high voltage but so far i havent had any problems with it ( about 15 flights)
5. Dont buy the tail motors like the one you see on the raidentech.com site, instead use ones like from heli-fever.com ( under the esky 3d parts list) they last alot longer. ( plus they already come with the capacitor soldered on)
6. Its hard to bust the main blades but it does happen occassionally. They will pop off under high force but every once in awhile you hit them just right and break them. I've hit steel poles with it before and i pick it up and straighten everything out and off i go again. I have found sometimes when changing blades that they are way out of tracking and cause the heli to shake violently and it has no power and will barely lift off, you basically have to find which blade is tracking lower, then give it a good twisting by the roots and retest it until you get them to track properly.
7. Ive never had much problems with any of the rotor head pieces, only the figure 8 shaped links that connect the flybars to the main paddles tend to wear out fast if you crash often ( they pop off the main blades to allow the main blades to be ejected from the heli in a serious crash) So here is a list of all the ball link parts of the head that tend to wear out that is good to keep spares of (#EH03) Single Hole Tie Bar , (#EH02) Rotor Head For Thunder bird, (#EH04) Rotary Sleeve Spindle For Thunder Bird, of course theres a few other ball link parts that connect to the swash plate but i havent had to change those yet. ( all the rotor head pieces even the swashplate cost no more than $2.50
other than that i cant think of anything else right now, the colco does use a pg-03 gyro and has a 3 in 1 box permanently attached to the front of the frame The honey bee fp2 seems very similar as far as the rotor head setup and all, but i think it uses a 4 in 1 box, i prefer having a seperate gyro like the colco thunderbird II has. oh yeah, one other thing i did have to do was pull the servo arms off and readjust them because i would have the trim all the way over to one side and the heli would still tip to one side.
anyways like i said i wouldnt suggest a micro for a beginner heli, they are just so hard to control, but if i had to do it all over again and my only two choices as a beginner was this colco thunderbird or my honey bee 2 cp, it would of been the colco, sure it dont fly as good, and cant do inverted flight etc, hell it cant even fly in light breezy winds. but it would of saved me alot of $$$$ in broken parts. The money i spent fixing the honey bee cp 2 could of easily gotten me a trex kit. or similar.
Just for a reference, in 3 weeks time with the honey bee 2 i had to buy $100 worth of parts ( blades ate up most of that cost) with the thunderbird in the 3 weeks i have had it, i spent $26 and some of that cost was to fix damage he had already done to it.
< Message edited by paedbo -- 6/13/2005 2:34:48 AM >
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colco thunderbird II ( aka cyclone) - 
