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

you may find that the head hold gyro will help you with your stability issues. It's will cost you about 150 bucks to do the modifications, but! if you are going to stay in the heli hobby, you can always pull off the gyro and move it to another heli.

One thing you can check is that all the servos are operating.

Unplug both motors, then power up the heli. During left and right cyclic only the left and right servos should move. Forward and back should cause all three to move. The rear 2 should go opposite the front servo. Example forward stick, front servo moves down and rear 2 move up.

If during left and right stick if only one servo moves, it could cause one side of the swash to go up but not the other to descend creating a loss of lift in only one direction but not the other.

The servos all seem to be working correctly, I am thinking if one of them was not, I would get a dive to one side or the other rather than a even drop. It could be I am just not very used to the controls here. Obviously it requires a bit of finesse, it just seems a little off.

I will get a gyro for this as I need one for my nexus anyway and can justify that but I think what this heli is really dying for is batteries which is where my conflict lies. I really am having a hard time spending almost as much (if not more) than the price of the heli for batteries and a charger/balancer when I can't say for sure I want to move to a larger electric heli. I think having the lipos and a gy201 on the back of this would probably make a world of difference but my whole reason for buying this thing was to learn well enough to get into something else. I like the electric but have always run nitro so I have nothing when it comes to battery stuff.

forget the gryo spend the money on the Lipo's get a DN charger/balancer and 2 DN 20c 1350mah 3s 11.1v, modify the canopy a bitto allow for the extra length.

I fly planes, all nitro, have ni-cad and nimhd chargers snd nothing for Lipo's I mad a fuw equipment purchase mistakes in the Lipo market.
but I made good.
All my issues with the CP went away with the purchase of the charger balancer and the 2 lipo packs.

more head speed, 8 minute flight times. The mimh packs the heli comes with are not a good fit for the CP heli.[img][/img]

Hobby man, can you set me up with part numbers on the packs, charger, balancer, and plugs as well as where you purchased (assuming you shopped around a bit?). I think I have gone the last 5 batteries or so without a single mishap until yesterday. I set the radio on the ground while I put the battery in and as I went to set the heli down somehow I bumped the tx and it throttled up, whacked me in the leg broke the tail rotor, a blade grip, bent main shaft, and bent the tail boom. Half an hour later and another rummage through the parts box and its good as new.

Is it possible though, that the tail motor can be losing some of its power/authority this early? I have only owned this thing about three weeks and have probably charged and flown it about 15-20 times total. It seems as even on a fresh battery that the tail really always needs a decent amount of trim or input on the sticks to keep the tail steady. When I try to spin the gear (the black plastic and not the tail pinion) it will slip on the teeth of the motor gear rather than turn the motor though when running the motor will turn the gear