A mini-review, comment and a question-

I recently bought a Blade CP on impulse while browsing my LHS. About three years ago I spent a summer learning how to fly helis on a Venture CP, and even though I haven't flown in over three years I figured that I wouldn't have much trouble re-learning to fly on the Blade.

That indeed turned out to be the case, at least for hovering and basic tail-in maneuvering. The blade seems less stable overall, probably due to its diminutive size and lack of rotational inertia when compared to a .30 sized nitro heli. I'm also not quite sold on the separate tail rotor motor - I know that an extra servo, gears and a belt would add weight and cost, but I feel it would be more responsive and accurate in the yaw axis. Just MHO. It's still fun to practice with - I'll start messing around with nose-in flight again in another few flights, and then start flying some patterns.

But now for I have a general performance comment and a question. I am slightly disappointed with the collective response on my blade. Except with a brand new battery with lots of surface charge, the "stock" pitch setup causes the rotor to bog slightly at full throttle & collective. Since the throttle-collective mixing is fixed, I tried to adjust this by shortening the collective links by the minimum increment (a half-turn) and this definitely helped the RPMs, but the climb performance actually got worse.

Any suggestions? I'm not really ready for the 3D upgrade kit and I'm not sure I am ready to make the financial commitment to LIPOs, but would a motor upgrade work with the stock NiMH? If so any suggestions?

Thanks for any comments!