ScoobLou

iTrader: (21)

Anyone fly the above?

I need some advice as I want to buy my partner one for xmas but have no idea what I should be looking for.

My budget is about £150.

ScoobyJawa

Do I fly one - no, do I own one yes! I can barely get the damn copter of the ground!

DJ_Jon

iTrader: (7)

I own several, have worked in a model shop selling them & fly on a regular basis. £150 won't get you what I would class as a proper model helicopter, it will get you an indoor electric "toy" helicopter. They are very difficult to fly & I'd recommend something else for your budget.

You are probably better off buying a second hand RC plane, £150 would get most of the gear, if not a full set up. Is this a hobby your other half is wanting to take up or just a bit of fun on xmas day?

ScoobLou

iTrader: (21)

Hiya Jon

Thanks for your post.

This is going to be a hobby for him. I can spend more it was just I was going to get him other bits too. What kinda money for what you would class as a proper model helicopter?

SwissTony

iTrader: (19)

shame Pete's not around, he could have helped

LG John

I bought a blade 400 £290 and it's an excellent heli that appears to be suitable for beginners and intermediates (although there are probably easier heli's to learn on!). The most important thing you must understand is that I got it in Feb 2009 and by June had spent easily the same again on spares and repairs. I've also repaired and rebuilt it about 20-times.

During the learning process the financial and time outlay to correct your 'mistakes' is heavy and I'm not even out of the woods yet. I've still to make a proper effort to learning to fly nose-in before moving onto fast forward flight and basic 3D moves. All of this will most likely result in BIG crashes costing more money and time.

In short, don't get into this hobby lightly! It's very expensive, takes a lot of your time (i.e. non-flight time) and it can be so easy to throw in the towel and have your heli gather dust. All that said, it's very satisfying when you have a good steady flight without incident.

Having had experience of RC nitro cars and heli's I'm of the opinion that radio controlled models should never be given as a present (which is a shame because they are such a convenient gift). The reason for this is that I liken it to buying someone a Ferrari without giving them the money they need to insure, service and run it. RC models are the same; the cheapest expenditure you'll usually have is the initial outlay!

ScoobLou

iTrader: (21)

Thanks for that Saxo. Money wouldn't be the issue but it going on the shelf collecting dust might be!

I think I need to find out how serious this hobby is to him!

I'm runinng out of ideas on what to buy him thats the problem, he seems to have everything!

yoza

I had an ACRO WOT and a WOT4.

I joined the Mersey Model Flying Club paid for the insurance, but never got to grips with it.

I was on a buddy lead for about 20 flights, then when I went solo, things went fine for a couple of flights, then I stuffed the ACRO, and soon after binbagged the WOT4.

The time taken to build the planes was huge, and then covering it in Pro-Film to make it look nice, then just 2 seconds to bin it.....not for me.

My eye to hand/hand to eye coordination is poor, it took me all my time to realise that right was right, and left was left as the plane flew away from you, but when its flying towards you right is left, and left is right....

My trainer told me to simply point the stick at the wing you want to lift, I was actually thinking this as it spiralled to the ground.

Lots of rules too, shouting, going up...dead stick....coming in, putting your peg on the board for your crystal etc, etc.

I dont think they liked us at the club, too maverick.

The best times we had were on my mates farm, no rules, just fun, but the fun didnt last.

PS. A buddy lead is were an experianced flyer will get you up on his radio, then flick a switch which will give me control on my radio, then when your in trouble he will flick back to him and recover the plane.

DJ_Jon

iTrader: (7)

Saxo boy hits the nail on the head & said what i wanted to say in a much better way.

To answer your question, a full heli setup is going to cost over £500 & then the fuel repairs after that as he will crash it.

the other option is this piece of kit: if he is into planes

Or this: if he likes choppers i use this to help hone my heli flying skills as it is very representative of what a 30 size heli flies like.

Edited to say: Yoza is right, there are a lot of rules at clubs & a lot of grumpy old men, usually, however its the best place to learn to fly IMHO

LG John

Absolutely, this is not a hobby to 'impose' on someone that has shown a vague passing interest. You can't really surprise him with this gift. Instead, spell out what's involved in terms of time, money and - most importantly - commitment to learning. If he's still interested then I'd try to up the budget into the £200-300 mark for an initial outlay and explain he's going to have to cut back on nights out to pay for the inevitable repairs

Another thing to be aware of is that on a heli such as mines (the 400) a charged battery lasts for about 6-8 minutes and it's up to me to use the timer and bring her down before it runs out. The battery is a 3-cell lipo that produces 4v per cell at full charge. You cannot run the cells below 3v without serious damage to the life of the battery. It then takes about an hour and a half to recharge with the stock eflight charger. The stock charger is pretty crap and can only do one battery at a time. I've made do for now as the grass area outside my flat is ideal for flying so I don't need to travel. I fly for 6 mins and then use the 1.5h to gather my thoughts and make any subtle adjustments before my next flight. However, if I was having to travel 10-20 minutes to a suitable open space then I'd want more flight time and thus more batteries. Most people that are semi-serious about the hobby would cycle around 6 batteries and use a decent charger £100-150 to charge them. You're talking around £50 a pop for a half-decent 3-cell lipo battery and 6 of them only gets you about 40 minutes of flying time before you have to recharge them all.

So to recap:

circa £250 for the heli
circa £300 for lots of batteries (eventually you'll want/need this amount)
circa £100 for a decent charger
circa £250 for repairs in first 3 months

...you can see how quickly this can run away from you. Also, if you get a Blade 400, for example, buy these blades. They are fairly cheap and cheerful but ideal for learning on as you will snap them all in your first few hours of 'trial and error'. Furthermore, you'll bend your main and feathering shafts pretty much every time as well (circa £2.50 and £3.50 respectively (it all adds up!!)). I bought one pair of carbon blades at £30 and fitted them for when the heli was on display. I then figured I'd have 'just one flight' and it was sooo smooth. One flight became two, and then three....I then I minced them I shouldn't complain though, I lost control nose-in and had to duck and jump to avoid the heli on it's way to terra-firma. This raises another issue; these things can be highly dangerous. My heli is only a 450 size and being light and electric it's not that powerful in the grand scheme of things. Regardless, it could easily maim or kill a person if it hit them.

ScoobLou

iTrader: (21)

Thanks all you have been very helpful.

I've gone off the idea now

SteveScooby

iTrader: (2)

Radio Control Syma 3 Channel Apache Helicopter on eBay (end time 08-Oct-09 19:37:28 BST)

I got one like this, quite good fun, but i got bored after I landed it on the roof of the house by accident!!

Dr.No

I had exactly the same urge - for the wife to buy me a helicopter or for me to buy one myself. However, I read into it and decided that to start with the best idea was to buy a proper simulator - for the PC - complete with rc handset etc, so that I could get most of the fun of trying to fly a plane or heli with no repair bills and at reasonable cost.

My wife bought me this: Phoenix model flight simulator | Welcome

It came in a package with an eSky handset, and works really really well... it certainly allowed me to see what mess I would have been in had I just gone out and spent £500 on a decent 6 channel heli.

Bill was about £90 ish, around this time last year. Heartily recommend it - and if he gets on well with it and wishes to progress to a real one then it's a very useful practice tool.

DN

RoadPest

RC Helicopters from BuzzFlyer - Model Helicopters UK.

pacenote

IMO A good heli to start with is one of these.

Fast Lad Performance

within budget and one that will help master the basic controls, is flyable indoors and out if it's not too windy and relatively cheap to repair if crashed. There's quite a few videos on youtube if you do a search.
If your guy wants to do abit more serious flying It's also worth finding a local club from here
British Model Flying Association - the body responsible for model flying in the UK
and popping down to have a look at what guys are flying etc.

I really enjoy the hobby and started out on heli's without any previous RC experience as I fancied a challenge Moved onto fixed wing after ( dead easy if you've mastered basic heli flying ) It can become a bit addictive though and you can end up with a few aircraft.

Here's one from the hanger

billythekid

I started flying electric helicopters about 2 years ago.

I started off with a good old 4CH fixed pitch bird, and TBH it was a massive learning curve. I have very good reactions, but its just soooo easy to crash.

For every 1 hr of flying I must have spent 4 - 5 hours doing repairs, reading the (massive) threads on RC Universe. As an example the Dragonfly 4 thread is 370 pages long... takes 3 - 4 nights to read it all... I stuck at the DF 4 for about 6 months. After 20 - 30 crashes it was too battered to carry on with - and by this point I had mastered tail in and side on flying.

I moved onto another Walkera bird, the 36. Its a collective pitch heli - its a lot lot more powerful. But its also a bit easier to fly, IMHO.

I spent a LOT on this one. Went brushless, did various head / tail upgrades, blade upgrades. Must have spent £300 - £400 on it. After 2 big crashes I decided to buy another, and went with another 36. a lot of people slag off the Walkera products, but I think they are ok. I only fly in my back garden and tbh I find there is lots of support on the net and parts are easy and cheap to get. The 36 thread on RCU is 478 pages long...

So, what I would suggest.

1. Buy a sim, forget the crappy ones that come with the model. Get a proper one. Realflight or similar. PM me if you want a cheap fully legit boxed version with controller version(3.5). Spend 10 hours, minimum on the sim - so say 2 hours a night, for a week. Dont even touch the helicopter till then.

2. Buy a decent helicopter, but nothing OTT. I am going to suggest the Walkera 400 Creata. Its about £200. Its an evolution of the 35/36. Easy to get parts, lots of setup advice online. 2.4ghz too.

2. Make sure its set up correctly. Check EVERYTHING before the first flight. Dips, trims etc. Follow a "blades off" check process to make sure everything is correct. The last thing you want to do is crash and burn £200 of spanking new heli because a dip was on 1 rather than 0.

3) Once you are ready to fly follow a training plan. There are quite a few on the net, Radds Flight school is the best known - there are others. I did Radds, it helped me a lot.

4) If you start to struggle with something - say you cant hold a hover, then put the heli down and go back to the sim. Thats what its there for.

5) Buy some spares (lots), blades are not enough. You need fly bars, blade grips, main shaft etc etc. Get ready for some very serious micro screw action.. I would say there is probably just as much to learn in the setup / repair aspect as the actual flying!!

6) Be aware of the dangers of Li-Po batteries.

7) Enjoy!!!

There are loads of other things but I would be here all night.

Its very rewarding once you get the hang of it - but its not going to happen overnight. I would say 6 months or so for nose in flying if you could get several hours in a week.

But its the coolest thing when you can get your heli out and do a few laps of the garden

vindaloo

Does no-one use/make training undercarriages any more? Long springy things with ***** on the ends. Stops it flipping over so easily.

Add a tether especially if space is restricted. If you are not in an entire empty field or park. SPACE IS RESTRICTED. Learning in the garden, you will crash into the fence/house/tree etc...

I still have my planes but I don't use 'em. Never really got back into the scene after I moved. Got or had a trainer, a Snipe and a motorised Obelix. And a self designed hooligan thing on 2 channel with an OS20.

J.

Leslie

I have never tried one but was told about this firm which makes stable ones which are good for starting on. They have different models and there is a smaller one which can be flown indoors as well.

Les


E-flite - Advancing Electric Flight