hey rotor heads - gkid finished off the fp (blades and holder, one rotor head bearing holder pin, flybar, shaft and separated the swashplate), so i just wish i had one to fly lol

the fp can be twitchy at times, usually its the flybar, or the tx, or the wind - wind doesn't move the heli or the blades much, it moves the flybar - imaging putting paddles on the cx2 flybar and how that would work with the tiniest of wind - also, on the cx2, the swash connects directly to the lower rotor and imparts changes immediately - on the fp, the cp, the king2, the blade 400 and even the trexes, the swash connects only to the flybar paddles, and only changes the pitch of the flybar paddles, which take a while to bite some air and move, thus imparting motion to the blades, so yeah, there is a noticeable delay, at least to me when compared to the cx2

if the flybar paddles were made of a heavy metal like depleted uranium they would have enough gyroscopic weight to hold their position against the wind, but they would also be so sluggish to fly up and down to tx control inputs that it would be pretty much uncontrollable - the problem here is always controllability versus gyroscopic stabilization - the flybar paddles have to fly, that is when we input a control the paddles just change pitch, and then they fly in that up or down direction and thus move the blades, and getting more gyroscopic stability means taking away from controllability

the whole reason the little heli's use flybars is the servos have to push so hard to control the blades directly (like they do on the full-size heli's which use hydraulics to push them around, not servos), but we controlled the blades directly on the cx2 so i don't really understand this

anyway, the cp, king2, 400, belt-cp and the trexes all have the same exact flybar paddles, just a little bit bigger in each case, and they all have that inherent flybar twitchyness - the higher head speed gives faster paddles which gives a bit more gyroscopic stabilization, but the instability is still there

if the 400 didn't come with the radio i'd say go for it, but i'm not too impressed by the radio (imo, its a repackaged cx2 radio guts with some added whackyness for extra flavor - also more an airplane radio than a heli radio, with flap switches and aileron trim stuff versus hover pitch and hover throttle and gyro sensitivity) - eflite only charges 90$ for the dx6i radio by itself, so that leaves 400$ for the 400 heli (1$ a size point) which is way too expensive for what you get

a full brushless falcon ep 3d is only around 229$ including tx and is the same size as the blade 400 ((1/2$ a size point) and comes standard with a shaft drive tail , a brushless king 2 is about 200$ too but is a little smaller than the 400 (about 350-ish and about 3/4$ a size point), and i really like to fly it inside (with plastic blade cp blades) more than the 400 or falcon 3d which are just too big for my 10' by 10' flying area - the trex is just way too expensive for the extra 3 inches of blue anodized alumibling (800$ w/ best motor, esc, gyro, servos, etc) which comes out to about 2$ a size point

one thing that sets the king2, falcon 3d, 400 and trexes apart is the tail rotor is driven off the main shaft (not using a separate motor) - i notice a delay there too as the tail has to 'catch up' with the heli sometimes

for work for my real estate clients i'm using the falcon 3d pretty much all the time now, with trex 450 flybar paddlles and plastic blades (325's) for that little bit of extra stability and extra lift to handle the camera weight - though i may try the 400 soon to see how it handles the weight of the camera


keep up the good work!


edge