I purchased an axe about 3 weeks ago and have been progressing along as best as is possible with the machine. Now that I have some experience with it I thought I would post my thoughts and questions.

Having very little heli experience prior to this machine has made it a bit difficult but I think I can hover the axe halfway decent at least tail in. I own a LMH 110 and a Nexus 30 but crashing them is too expensive and the whole nitro thing makes them a bit more complicated, i.e I can't just throw in a battery and fly. I am dissappointed in Heli-max for a few things with the axe and I know the upgrades being done by members alleviate those problems to some extent but it just seems off to me to call this thing a fully capable machine.

The battery is ***** and makes flying a fight the whole way through. I seem to always have to change the trim on the tail. It will start out fine but within a minute or so of the battery life I have to start throwing in more right tail or adjusting the trim and it just gets worse as it discharges.

The heli seems very unstable but I can't really play with the trim too much more because if I try to adjust it it will only need to change again in minute. My main problem at this time seems to stem with pitch or speed of the main rotor. In a relatively stable hover, as I make corrections the heli seems to want to lose a good bit of lift. This seems more pronounced during forward and aft movement of the rotor. I can understand the need for more throttle during these changes as you are trading off some of the vertical component of lift for horizontal components (to make the heli change directions) but it seems that anything other than the smallest movements of right stick will cause the heli to drop. It seems like the air is just being sucked out of the rotor and there is no lift so it falls. Does this seem normal? or is it possible there is something wrong in the pitch of the blades. The heli has taken a few dips into the ground but nothing more than a few blade grips have broken which I have replaced (no thanks to the manual for any repair info other than the small exploded view.

DA