Model Forum / Radio Controlled / Air Models / October 2006

Unfortunately, most of the cheapo ones are crap. My father just bought one
on Ebay for just under $40 that actually has possibilities but is near
impossible to fly in any kind of breeze whatsoever. It also tends to spin
but that is adjustable by turning a "pot" in tiny increments in the opposite
direction of the spin. As far as getting it to go in a desired direction,
that hasn't been done yet.
It flew well enough tho to whet both our appetites for a better copter. We
are looking at the Blade series of electric copters. He is interested in the
Blade CX. I think I want the Blade CP. I have seen the CP fly in my LHS and
was pretty impressed with it.
The CX runs about $190. I think the CP is about $200. Its supposed to be RTF
from the box. Hangar 9 sells em.
I don't know what you could get that is worth getting for less than that.

That sounds like you have one of the helis with counterrotating blades?
Two sets of blades stacked on top of each other? If thats the case and
the heli spins, one of the motors delivers less/more power than the
other. Usually that's either caused by:
- Gear mesh too tight (makes the motor work too hard)
- Gear slipping (you'd know that one - it strips the gears)
- Faulty motor (doubt that one from your description)
- Faulty electronics (specifically faulty ESC = Electronic Speed Controller)

These kinds of helis are the easiest to fly though. The Blade brand has
recently made some headlines with a good line of small helis, among them
one with counterrotating blades. The main advantage of this design is
that it's inherently more stable than a "real" heli. And thus a LOT
easier to fly.

A real heli on the other hand has only one main rotor, usually with
"paddles" at a 90° angle, and a tail rotor to counteract the torque from
the main rotor - all in all pretty similar to the full size helis. One
biggie here is that these are a whole lot more difficult to fly. They
are inherently unstable and need constant adjustments in all three axis,
which is pretty tricky for a beginner.

There are a few major design differences between various R/C helis.
First and foremost, electric vs. glow. Electrics are generally smaller
than glow helis, although if you want to spend big bucks you can get a
large electric. What's not so obvious with size is this: Small,
lightweight helis are very very sensitive to wind. Even a tiny gust will
toss them around a lot. Heavier and bigger glow helis are less sensitive
in that area. On the other hand, you can fly electrics indoors, glow
helis are a bit stinky for that purpose.

Specifically with electrics there are also two different types of
rotors: Fixed pitch and collective pitch. Fixed pitch (short: FP) relies
on motor RPM changes to influence altitude, collective pitch (short: CP)
is usually flown at fixed RPM. Because of this, FP helis are more
sluggish, and CP helis usually respond a lot more crisp.

Last but not least there are three different ways to deal with tail
rotors. The really cheap way is to just use a separate motor for the
tail rotor. Then there are shaft-driven tail rotors and belt-driven tail
rotors. The latter two are mechanically more complex and thus more prone
to damage and/or faulty installation.

With helicopters one thing is 100% sure: you will crash them while
learning. Depending on how much you practice on a simulator first,
you'll crash them a lot. And spend lots of money on repairs. Often a
cheap FP heli with counterrotating blades and no tail rotor can teach
you the basics without spending too much on repairs. Of course, they are
of no use if you don't either have a rather large obstacle-free indoor
area to practice (think gym here, not livingroom) or live in an area
with enough dead calm days to practice outdoors.

My recommendation would be to get a sim, even if its just the free FMS
sim with a dual analog joystick, and practice with that. Forget about
doing fancy stuff in the sim, practice spot-on landings, flying along
lines, keeping altitude and hovering. If you want, get a heli with
counterrotating blades and fly around with that a bit. It'll at least
teach you to keep your orientation straight. Once you can comfortably
say you can hover, land EXACTLY spot-on where you want to, THEN get a CP
(or FP if you prefer) heli, as large as you can afford, and try the real
thing.

Stay away from cheap helis. I won't give a brand recommendation per se,
but I've got some experience with a few of them:
Walkera: Good helis from a mechanical point of view, but really crappy
electronics. They got better lately, but their really cheap line still
has about the worst electronics (mainly transmitter and receiver/ESC)
I've ever encountered. If you must go that route, get at least one of
their newer 6-channel helis. They're often advertised as being ready to
fly right out of the box - which they really are not, they do need quite
a bit of adjustments and such to get them to fly.
Honey Bee: Same as Walkera, except their mechanical parts suck worse.
They're insofar a mixed batch as they do need a bit of adjusting before
they will fly properly, but they are relatively common and thus spare
parts are often easy to get.
Century Helicopters (Hummingbird et al): Good quality, good electronics,
just a tad pricey.
Blade Helis: Seems to be the current rage. Their quality is overall
quite good, and they do indeed fly out of the box. Not to mention their
prices are quite reasonable.
Raptor Helis: This is the only glow heli in this list - it's so
widespread thanks to a certain pro that it's easy to get spare parts for
it, and it's mechanically quite sound. AFAIK it doesn't regularly come
as an RTF though.

I know I left out a whole bunch of things, but that should do for
starters nonetheless. Helis are fun, but extremely expensive and very
tricky to fly. Whereas someone can learn to fly an R/C plane without any
prior experience in just a couple of days, learning to fly an R/C heli
takes weeks, if not months.

Have fun
Jenni

The tail rotor is horizontal?  It isn't going to do much to counteract
torque off the main rotor that way..  I'm not familiar with that helo
- and I'm not gonna go look - but it seems a bit of RTFM (Read The
Fine Manual) might be in order.

Your $100 budget won't get you anything useful or even out of the
"toy" arena..  You're going to be looking at around $200 for a
counter-rotating model (Blade CX or a Lama) or $250 for a true
collective pitch model (Blade CP, Honeybee CP2 etc..)

Yes, better types operate a lot differently than the super cheap ones.
My $300 heli isn't nearly as stable or responsive as my $1000 heli
which isn't as stable as my $2000 helis..