dragos_cscc

My Feedback: (5)

Looking for a stable electric helicopter that's easy and cheap to fix, and doesn't require much maintenance or setup, can be flown indoors or outdoors and can get around 10 minute flights out of the batteries. Tall order, I know, but the Trex 450 seems to fit the bill.


Why so many different versions, one better than the other? Are there problems with the plastic rotor head parts? Slop in the head? Hard to hover or not stable? Anything that needs to be upgraded right out of the box? I will only be hovering and doing forward flight with this, basic training. Have no desire for "3D" stuff.

What would be a good motor choice that would extend the flight time a bit?
I'm used to the NiCad batteries, these LiPo balanced batteries seem quite fancy. How long does it take to charge a pack? Can you fast charge them? Do I need the $200 charger, or will the $50 LiPo one work fine?
About how long will a 2200mAh battery last just hovering and forward flight?

I have an older Futaba 6XH from a Nexus 30. Can I use the Rx/TX/servos/gyro?

Thanks for the help

D

Red Baron Gary

My Feedback: (59)

re te battery charger , look at the Turnigy line at www.hobbycity.com
the primo dc/dc charger they have is under $80.00, will charge any batt that's on the market as of this date, comes wih a fistful of (usable) cables and balancing adaperts.
Gary

BoysToys

Maintenance, none of the current electrics will require much maintenance once correctly built and setup. If you don't crash, all you will have to do is charge your packs and fly. If you fly like I did when I was learning, any helicopter will require frequent and in depth maintenance.

By indoors do you mean your house? If so, there is no way I would fly my 450 in my house. Those blades pack a pretty good punch and I would not want them crashing into any of my furniture, tv, or walls. As far as outdoors, a 450 is a great starter. The only drawback is that they are hard to see, and keep your orientation, once they start getting farther away from you.

The 10 minute flights is going to be a tall order. I only get 4-5 minutes out of any of my electrics. For that matter, I only get 8 minutes out of my nitro birds. If you want more flight time with electrics, buy more battery packs. You can get decent 3S 2200mah packs from HobbyKing for about $20. Stock up and fly as much as you want.

There are so many versions becuase the 450 has been out for years. Align keeps updating it to make it better and get people to buy the new version. Each version will fly pretty much the same. There are not any problems with plastic rotor parts until you crash. With the plastic, you will break main grips, mixing arms, ect when you crash. The aluminum will survive all but the most severe crashes. I have put my 450 in more times than I count and I have yet to replace any of the metal head parts. Any of the current Align kits will fly just fine stock out of the box, if built and setup properly.

The stock motor will work just fine. For longer flight times, drop your headspeed down and buy more lipos. Lipo packs take right at an hour to charge and balance. To increase pack longivity, you should only charge at 1C. A 2200 pack, with low headspeed 2,200 -2,400 rpm should get you around 6-7 minutes of hovering and forward flight. HobbyCity 3s 2200 20C packs with one of their inexpensive balancing chargers will work just fine. Your milage will vary depending on setup, how smooth you are on the sticks, wind, ect.


I am not sure about that one. Is the radio capable of CCPM programming for a 120 degree swash setup? If so it should work. For the servos and gyro, you will need micro servos like Hitech HS65 or equivalent on the swash. Do yourself a favor and get a good heading hold gyro with a quality tail servo. I like the Futaba 401 and the Futaba 9650. Don't skimp on your tail setup. It will be hard enough to controll the cyclic when learning, you really don't want to be chasing the tail all around.

No problem.

Hope this helps.

gnd2

Honestly, If I'm reading the OP correctly, I think expectations may be unrealistic.

IMO, if you're not patient and mechanically inclined enough to set up and repair your heli, collective pitch is not for you. If you want to fly in your house, collective pitch is not for you.

The Trex's don't require a lot of maintenance if you don't crash, but you WILL crash. And they need initial setup. Relying on someone else like a hobby shop to set it up for you from what I've seen just leads to a lot of frustration. You really need to learn how to do it yourself to get the most enjoyment out of it.

The Trex plastic parts will handle fine for hovering and forward flight, it will still be very stable for a CP heli. It will break more easily though.

But understand that collective pitch (CP) heli's are inherently unstable, you have to constantly fly it. It will need constant input corrections on the controls to keep it in the air and it will take a lot of patience and practice to learn this. Not sure if you realized this already or not. Most people new to helis are surprised by how much work it takes to fly CP. If there's a shop near you with a sim setup, try it

A much "easier" heli would be a coaxial type. These are suitable for in the house and much more stable but less maneuverable. They're simpler to setup and cheap to repair. I wouldn't fly them outside though (the esky big lama claims to be suitable for outside but I haven't tried it so I can't say).

Not trying to dissuade you or anything, just giving you food for thought to help you make the best decision. If you like a challenge and will to put the effort into it, Trex's are great heli's.

Aframomum

My Feedback: (10)

The radio you listed (even though discontinued) seems like it would work for the time being. You would have to list the servo's and the gyro you have from the Kyosho bird to see if they would work. Trex's use small servo's such as the Hitec HS-65 usually with metal gear servo's verses nylon gears, so the servo's you have may or may not work.

What is your experience in setting up a heli? Did you setup or have any experience in flying the Nexus you mentioned? Are there any clubs that fly heli's around you? Best thing to help in setup is to talk to some local flyers.

If you want to have something to fly indoors, as mentioned before, get yourself a coaxial heli. Just do a search for coaxial's to find what kinds and what people think of them. I myself like Horizon's Blade mCX for winter flying inside.

Hope this helps a bit and good luck!

dragos_cscc

My Feedback: (5)

Wow, thanks for all the help from everyone. Certainly didn't expect this!

Sorry if this came across the wrong way. I don't have a problem working on the helicopter, setting it up, fixing it up after a crash etc, but eventually I would like to get the thing in the air and actually do some flying. I mentioned I used to have a Nexus 30 and could never get the thing set up right. The last time I started the engine it took me a good hour just to get it started. I put quite a lot of time in building it and trying to set it up right, but I dont think I got more than an hour on it hovering. I'm just trying to avoid that.

I guess I'll compromise on the indoor flying experience and go with the collective pitch. I'd like to try some autorotations in the future. The size will be another compromise. I imagine I'll have to squint my eyes to make out what the heli is doing cause the battery packs for the 500 or 600 are just outrageous. Also more expensive to fix.

Did a bit more research on the radio and it's not CCPM compatible. The T6HXs is but the regular, more generic T6HX (no "s" at the end) is not. Guess which one I have.

Speaking of cheap CCPM transmitters, and recomandations to go with a 450?

How can you tell when your batteries are in need to be recharged? I guess you're not supposed to run the LiPo batteries all the way down past a certain voltage.

Is the electric motor/headspeed held at a constant speed regardless of pitch (kind of like and electronic governor). Is that all controlled through the ESC? Do I need separate batteries for the receiver since the 4.8V and 11.1V difference?

Aframomum, that Nexus I had, I did build it and set it up by myself. It could have been a bit smoother, but it hovered allright. Also had a mechanical gyro, wood blades, standard S3007 on the tail.

Found a couple of guys who fly electrics around me, I'm gonna seek their infinite wisdom and help in setting this up for the first time, maybe some pointers.

http://www.alignrcusa.com/index.php?...oducts_id=1342

I've been eyeballing this kit for some time based on some of the recomandations from here. Metal head and tail parts for long lasting crash durability, belt driven/noob friendly, comes with servos, gyro. The price is kinda pricey though, but I guess you get what you pay for...

Any opinions?

Are parts for the Trex 450 pretty common?

Again, thanks for all the help.

BoysToys

Once you get your electric setup, you should not really have to do anything other than charge your batteries and fly. I also fly nitro and know what your are talking about when you had trouble getting your motor to start. Electrics are basically plug and play.

While a 450 can autorotate, it is quite difficult. They just don't store enough energy in the head to auto like larger helis. While packs for the larger 500 & 600 machines are more costly, you can pick them more reasonably from one of the Chinese distributors. The large helis are MUCH more expensive to fix. The last crash on my 600, it was really bad, cost me about $500.

As for transmitters. I fly with a Spektrum DX7. You can easily get by with a DX6i setup or even find an older 72mhz setup that has CCPM programming.

For your batteries. You should use a timer to tell you when to land. To find out how long you can fly 1) Go out a fly normal for a short timed period (say 3 minutes) 2) Charge you pack and see how many MAH it takes to recharge the pack. 3) Divide the MAH need to fill the pack by the time flown to get MAH per minute 4) Multiply the total capacity of the pack by .8 (Say 2200mah X .8 = 1760mah) 5) Divide the 80% number you just calculated by the MAH per minute figured in step 3. 6) Set your timer warn you when you get to the flight time you just figured. Hope this makes sense. Using this method will help your batteries to last much longer. Your ESC will likely also have a low voltage cutoff. You don't want to fly until that kicks in. If you do, your packs will come down very hot and likely not have too long of a life span.

The headspeed on an electric can be controlled by throttle curves, like a nitro, or a governor, again like a nitro. Different ESC have different quality governors. I use Castle ESC and really like the way their governors work. Once again, you can simply use a V throttle curve to control your headspeed.

With a 450, you will not need a seperate receiver pack. The ESC will have an onboard BEC, Battery Eliminator Circuit, to power your electronics off your flight pack. The BEC will drop the voltage from your flight pack down to power your electronics.

Once again on the tail, I would get a quality gyro and digital tail servo. There are many combinations out there (Gy401/9257 is just one example).

That T-Rex setup you linked to is a very nice beginner setup. Look around and I am sure you can find it in the $450 range from a quality vendor (ReadyHeli, Heliproz, GrandRC, ect.).

T-Rex parts are very common and can be found at just about all helicopter specialty web sites.

Go over to Helifreak.com or RunRyder.com and do some searching. Those are both Helicopter only web sites and have tons of useful information. Helifreak also has an entire series of build, setup, and programming videos available from free downloading in the tech section.

Good luck and feel free to ask for an and all help needed.

B

gnd2

Sorry, I missed the part about the Nexus, my bad. I think that heli is a little before my time in the heli world. Things have gotten quite a bit better in the last few years since then so I think you should have a better time with the new helis



I haven't gotten into autos yet (except for a couple forced ones when the power cut out due to gears binding nothing to brag about though [:'(] ) but the guys I know flying 450's, 500's and 600's say that the 450 is nearly impossible to auto, 500's and 600's are much better. But ya, the batteries on those things are nuts. I decided to skip the larger electrics for now and just bought a used 600 nitro from a friend. Flies great but he already had it tuned up. Nitro engines can be a little finicky but they've come a long way, and I guess the bigger ones (600n uses a .50 size) are a little more consistent.

That's a bummer. I have a Futaba 6 channel 2.4 GHz that I'm thinking about selling. Nothing too fancy but it's decent for electric helis. But if you think you might eventually try nitro again or go to scale models with retractable landing gear and other accessories, you'll want at least 7 channels. Anyway, let me know if you think you might be interested.

that's right, running them down to far can ruin them. The ESC that comes with the trex has a battery warning. It will reduce the power/pulse when the battery reaches a certain level to let you know the battery is done. The better radios also have a timer. If you start out with short flights and keep track of how much the battery has been drained (by how much charge you put back in) you work your way up until you figure out the maximum time you can fly, then put that into the countdown timer in the radio. You can also start to feel it losing power a little bit.

The align ESC does have a governer, but it's not really needed. You use throttle curves in the TX to increase throttle with collective to maintain a constant head speed. The ESC also provides a BEC (Battery Eliminator Circuit) which provides 4.8V to the receiver through the throttle channel connection.


It's a nice kit, you should be very happy with it. If you were doing hard 3D you'd probably want better servos, gyro and motor but for basic sport flying it should be great. Trex is a little pricey, but they set the standard. Everyone else is pretty much following them. The trex450 parts are some of the most common and easiest to find out there so you should have no problem with that.

There are other brands out there that are basically copies of the trex, may be a little cheaper and, in some peoples opinions may even be better in some ways. But really you can't go wrong with the Trex. Personally I think it's the best place to start, then when you have more experience you can experiment with others.

Oh ya, I should mention that align has about the best manual I've seen. I don't have a lot of experience with the other stuff but from what I have seen, if you go with the cheaper knock-offs of heli stuff the manuals are generally really bad, so I don't like to recommend them until you have a pretty good idea what you're doing.


Edit: man I'm slow, BoysToys posted while I was typing [:-]

baurwin

check out flying-hobby.com. they have a sale on one item every 24hrs. they just had that same 450 sport combo the other day for $75 less. they also have good deals on the 500 esp pop up on there. and others.

rcuser

My Feedback: (5)

get an MCX for indoors and then a 450 for outdoors