dabigboy

Maaan, I'm having a BLAST with my Axe CP! I picked this thing up 2 weeks ago (sweet ebay deal, worked out very well) and am pleasantly surprised at how well it flies. I guess after all the talk about how difficult heli's are (and my own very negative experience with a CP Walkera last year) I was expecting it to be nigh impossible. Well it kinda was at first I guess.......getting better now though. I'm pretty comfortable with a tail-in hover, though I've just started to branch into hovering from either side......it's interesting, I have to stay concentrated to keep it in one place, but if I *think* too much about it then I get crossed up and have to snap back to tail-in. I knew all this would be challenging but I didn't expect the mental-discipline part of it so much. So far I've only trashed one set of blades and some blinds in my house, LOL (it's windy here a lot so I'm just hovering in my living+dining room for now, which is almost totally devoid of furniture....would love to find a big gym or something).

One of my co-workers showed interest in all this and offered to go 50/50 on a set of cheapy mini IR combat heli's (which are pretty cool to zoom around the shop, actually). Now he's thinking seriously of some sort of "proper" intro heli, something like a Lama or Blade etc. Now if I can just get him sold on glow-powered planes too........hehehehe! [8D]

stanza

Now that's the spirit! Many of us have had a bad experience at one time or another with some particular model. But that doesn't mean that every other cp heli is hard to fly.

speed959

hey would you recomend a blade cp pro

homeunt

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lol same here. I started my heli hobby, my next door neighbor started with his rc cars and plane then a small heli. and a neighbor living across the street was interested until I told them how much it costed for me to 'lift the thing off the ground'

dabigboy

Haha, "cars - planes - helis" nice progression in difficulty there. Ya I guess the price of admission for a new full-function heli is still fairly high, but maybe this would be a good time to introduce him to the cheaper coaxials? Once he's hooked he'll probably soon be pouring in major $$$ anyway on the bigger birds. For now I got by pretty cheap, the ebay thing just worked out really well (previous owner even upgraded to HS-55 servos) but I can see a lot of money going into this pretty quick, LOL. Already spent $50 for a lipo, now thinking I want to upgrade to an HH gyro and conventional tail rotor, which looks like it will run me upwards of $200 (more than I've got in the entire rig thus far, amazingly).

speed959, were you asking me? I can't speak from experience on the Blade in particular, but I did a bit of nosing around before buying the Axe. Sounds like it's a good machine, and it looks as though you get a lot of cool stuff for the price (ships with an 800mah lipo, plus a balancer/charger) but I'd be concerned about stability for learning....it's supposed to be able to do aerobatics, and it's awfully tiny, even smaller than the Axe (the smaller it is, the harder it is to control, generally). Nose around the forums a bit, there are plenty of discussions about it by people more knowledgeable than me. I will say that the separate motor for the tail rotor is a negative point.....the Axe has this setup, and it's a little flaky. For now I'm just hovering indoors, and it's fine (minus the slightly annoying surging) but the one time I took it outside in light wind I had a lot of trouble keeping the nose pointed where I wanted, and a couple times I just didn't have the yaw authority to keep from weather-vaning into the wind, although this *may* be better now that I've got a lipo battery. I'm very happy with the machine for now, but I'll probably be redoing the tail rotor setup at some point, or just getting a more advanced heli.

Tonight was awesome.....after finally finishing up my very nice Tiger 2 aircraft (moderate repairs from a crash like 3 years ago), I had a great Axe flight and did not once have to "dump" it and land to avoid disaster. But I think I'm outgrowing my living room, I feel like moving around a little more now.

homeunt

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lol, I can't introduce him to a coaxials cause I'm the guy who skipped coaxials and sims lol.
I cant stand the simple mechanics and sitting in front of a computer imagining something happening that happens on the screen.