rmracing

I am starting to question this little yellow helicopter. I am a newbie to RC helis, but I have about 8 hours in a real one, so I understand the way these things fly. With the RC, I can hover around all day long (which is pretty fun), but the minute I build speed and hit transitional lift, the RC heli wants to go over on its back, even full forward cyclic won't keep the forward motion. It takes full forward cyclic just to prevent doing a tail stand.

Also sometimes I just completely lose yaw control and have to crash. I have cracked open the M24 control unit a couple of times, so maybe the gyro is messed up. I asked what a replacement control unit costs, and the guy at Kyosho told me almost as much as the heli itself. I am going to go through my spares that I have, then probably go buy a Corona (have heard good things), but in the mean time, has anybody else had these problems or could mine be caused by all the ground impacts?

Thanks for any help!

Robby

-pkh-

My Feedback: (2)

I don't have a FP micro heli myself, but a guy brought one out to our club to get some help with it this past weekend... an M24, in fact. Damn, what a waste of money those things are (IMHO... sorry, not a personal attack on you)! I can hover and do forward flight with my nitro CP helis all day long, but I could barely even hover this little FP thing! There was so much delay in the cyclic response, and the non-HH gyro and FP tail rotor really made tail control miserable! I now have much respect for any of you guys who can fly these little beasties, but I am just going to stick with CP helis and HH gyros, myself!

If I go with a small electric, it will likely be a Zoom/Shogun 400, T-Rex, or this new Ikarus Viper 70 CP heli that's coming out... trying to fly a tiny FP heli just seems like no fun to me!

rmracing

Thanks for your response, that makes me feel a lot better! I am not against buying a nitro, CP, or big helicopter, I just want to make sure it doesn't cost me $200 every time I crash (which is why I looked at the Corona). I would also like something that is ARF just due to time constraints. Any suggestions?

-pkh-

My Feedback: (2)

Well, I know the FP heads are more durable, but consider this...

On one battery charge, I tried hovering this guys M24 and crashed it about 10 times! Yes, it survived unbroken. When I learned to fly my CP nitro heli, I got in close to 90-100 tanks/flights (10-15 min each) before I crashed even once (I had an improper setup when I tried to go inverted my first time). To date, I have about 150 flights in with only that one crash... it cost me about $120 to repair because I broke one side of the chasis, as well as the usual parts (tail boom, main blades, shaft, etc.)

So my view is, the micro FP helis don't seem to be as much fun to fly as larger CP helis (in my limited experience, both real and simulated). They are more durable, but they need to be, since you'll crash them much more!

ARFs vs. kits? If you build the kit, you'll be able to troubleshoot and repair your heli very easily when you crash or just have mechanical problems. I'd highly recommend building your first CP nitro heli from a kit.

I built my Raptor 50V2 from a kit, and am glad I did... I was able to troubleshoot/debug a number of problems that came up, and was able to rebuild it after my crash pretty easily. The Raptor manual sucks, but Raptortechnique.com has an excellent build manual and detailed radio & gyro setup instructions for the Raptor. I recently put together a JR Venture 30 ARF... that is a nice heli, the manual is excellent, and the ARF goes together in a few hours. I've also heard good things about the Century Hawk helis... they are the least expensive CP nitro helis I've seen, but I don't believe they are as good a quality as the Raptors or JR helis...