Post by rcdude07 on May 13, 2012 16:24:40 GMT -4
Since I'm not totally utilizing this heli to its full potential, here is an overview/unofficial review of the little heli.
I won this little 250 class heli from RCHelicopterSelect.com's November/December Facebook Giveaway. All I had to do was like each of their daily Christmas sale ad to get one entry each. I ended up with the maximum number of entries allowed and was selected as the winner.
Being the heli was coming from China it took several weeks to arrive. First it was due to problems found with the initial unit they were going to ship me during factory testing. Then it took 2 weeks to ship out via USPS, and another 2 weeks on the slowboat from China and trucks from the East Coast to the West Coast.
When I finally got it, I was perplexed by the box. As the box has 3 different helis listed and pictured, just denpended on what side of the box you looked at. A little digging around online and I found that this heli is rebranded/remodeled based on the build and mechanics (plastic frame, metal frame, carbon fiber frame, all metal head, plastic head, etc...).
The instruction manual was an attempt at a nice start/quick start. In the box there was an extra set of blades, a few extra nuts and bolts, and an allen wrench (that didn't fit the srewheads). But the English is along the lines of the famous video game line "All your base are belong to us!." So I stared at it enough to see the TX comes programmed with a linear pitch/throttle curve in normal mode and an aerobatic curve in idle up. There is software and a USB cable for programming the TX, but given the lack of English in the manual, all I understood was how to restore to factory default settings. The other important thing that I understood was how to charge the battery.
This particular heli is all plastic and everything is held on with screws that use one bolt on the back side of the screw. Of the screws I've taken off to make repairs, I have not seen indicates of Loctite being used, so I check all the screws periodically after several flights.
Right out of the box, the tail wouldn't turn with the rotor head. Turned out that the tailboom wasn't pulled out enough to create enough tension on the belt. Once I loosened a few bolts and pulled the boom out, things were good to go.
The included battery and charger have their own unique plug (no Deans, EC-3, JST, ect...). So unfortunately I was left using their supplied charger. The supplied charger works only via the balance plug on the battery and supports their 7.4V and 11.1V lipos. My WASP came with a 900mAh 15C (20C burst) 7.4v battery. I read somewhere the charger charges at .8 or .9A. To charge the battery, the charger is connected to the power source. A red light comes on the charger indicating there is no battery at this point. Plug the battery into the appropriate port via the balance tap. A green light comes on teh charger at this point. When the green light goes off, it indicates the battery is fully charged. If the green light is blinking, instruction manual says this indicates trickle charging. Being this is a lipo, I NEVER let this happen. As soon as the green light goes off, I unplug the battery.
Maiden hover: I topped off the supplied battery and took the heli out in my backyard late in December, first time since getting the heli that the weather was warm enough and calm winds. I slowly fed power and watched the tendencies of the heli, brought her back down, regained my composure and fed throttle and up she came. It was a very controlled ascent and I kept her in a nice tail-in hover about 3 feet off the deck. Just a little right tail rotor trim was needed. Kept her in a tail-in hover for about 5-7 minutes. And sat her down. I was stoked! Super easy tail-in hover without much drifting. I was surprised to not see any twitchiness/touchiness on the control inputs that are typical of these small helis.
TX: The TX is 2.4 GHz but has analog trim tabs. There are 3 LEDs on the front that indicate battery level. All of them lit indicates good power. It does run on 8 "AA" sized batteries, so the TX gets heavy compared to my Dx6i and Futaba T6J. Sadly there is not a good neck strap look on this TX. The stock TX also does not have a timer. So I use the timer on my cell phone and have put a key ring on the TX so I can use my neck strap.
I got just 3 or 4 flights more doing the same thing (tail-in hover) with it before I started noticing charging issues. The manual stated "do not charge for more than 2 hours." Well, at the 2 hour mark I would remove the battery from charging even though the lights indicated it was not done charging. I waited 12-24 hours and tried charging it again. The first time it indicated full charge after about an hour. Flew again, waited several days and tried charging again. Eventually it got to the point where I needed to charge the battery for 5 hours. So I contacted RCHelicopterSelect via email and began an email chain. Short end of the story: they are shipping me a new battery this month. Being I never hit LVC or puffed the battery, this sounds somewhat reasonable to me of a solution, but I still don't trust the supplied charger. The vendor sent me a replacement 800mAh lipo with JST connector. So I changed the connectors on the ESC and stock 900mAh lipo. And as I suspected the stock charger went bad, the stock battery is balancing well and charging well with my Onyx 235 charger. I keep my flight times right at 5 minutes and that usually depletes the batteries by about 400-450mAh.
I've had the heli airborne in winds up to 10 mph and granted my yard is protected by trees, I couldn't tell that the wind was affecting the bird.
This little heli is fun to fly in my backyard. The vertical tail fin is a little fragile, so I've had to glue it together twice from a few hard set downs. I've progressed to nose-in hover and hovering pirouettes as well as letting it slide around the yard. The heli is advertised as being 3D capable and product video shows inverted hovering. It'll be a while before I get to that point. But for putting around the yard and not having an mCPx I can't complain. Would I have gone out and bought this heli on my own? No, I have this thing about knowingly/openly buying cheap R/C stuff from a random Chinese company. I'd rather pay a little more and support a US company with good product support.
www.crackroll.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=16102&stc=1&thumb=1&d=1323693530
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I won this little 250 class heli from RCHelicopterSelect.com's November/December Facebook Giveaway. All I had to do was like each of their daily Christmas sale ad to get one entry each. I ended up with the maximum number of entries allowed and was selected as the winner.
Being the heli was coming from China it took several weeks to arrive. First it was due to problems found with the initial unit they were going to ship me during factory testing. Then it took 2 weeks to ship out via USPS, and another 2 weeks on the slowboat from China and trucks from the East Coast to the West Coast.
When I finally got it, I was perplexed by the box. As the box has 3 different helis listed and pictured, just denpended on what side of the box you looked at. A little digging around online and I found that this heli is rebranded/remodeled based on the build and mechanics (plastic frame, metal frame, carbon fiber frame, all metal head, plastic head, etc...).
The instruction manual was an attempt at a nice start/quick start. In the box there was an extra set of blades, a few extra nuts and bolts, and an allen wrench (that didn't fit the srewheads). But the English is along the lines of the famous video game line "All your base are belong to us!." So I stared at it enough to see the TX comes programmed with a linear pitch/throttle curve in normal mode and an aerobatic curve in idle up. There is software and a USB cable for programming the TX, but given the lack of English in the manual, all I understood was how to restore to factory default settings. The other important thing that I understood was how to charge the battery.
This particular heli is all plastic and everything is held on with screws that use one bolt on the back side of the screw. Of the screws I've taken off to make repairs, I have not seen indicates of Loctite being used, so I check all the screws periodically after several flights.
Right out of the box, the tail wouldn't turn with the rotor head. Turned out that the tailboom wasn't pulled out enough to create enough tension on the belt. Once I loosened a few bolts and pulled the boom out, things were good to go.
The included battery and charger have their own unique plug (no Deans, EC-3, JST, ect...). So unfortunately I was left using their supplied charger. The supplied charger works only via the balance plug on the battery and supports their 7.4V and 11.1V lipos. My WASP came with a 900mAh 15C (20C burst) 7.4v battery. I read somewhere the charger charges at .8 or .9A. To charge the battery, the charger is connected to the power source. A red light comes on the charger indicating there is no battery at this point. Plug the battery into the appropriate port via the balance tap. A green light comes on teh charger at this point. When the green light goes off, it indicates the battery is fully charged. If the green light is blinking, instruction manual says this indicates trickle charging. Being this is a lipo, I NEVER let this happen. As soon as the green light goes off, I unplug the battery.
Maiden hover: I topped off the supplied battery and took the heli out in my backyard late in December, first time since getting the heli that the weather was warm enough and calm winds. I slowly fed power and watched the tendencies of the heli, brought her back down, regained my composure and fed throttle and up she came. It was a very controlled ascent and I kept her in a nice tail-in hover about 3 feet off the deck. Just a little right tail rotor trim was needed. Kept her in a tail-in hover for about 5-7 minutes. And sat her down. I was stoked! Super easy tail-in hover without much drifting. I was surprised to not see any twitchiness/touchiness on the control inputs that are typical of these small helis.
TX: The TX is 2.4 GHz but has analog trim tabs. There are 3 LEDs on the front that indicate battery level. All of them lit indicates good power. It does run on 8 "AA" sized batteries, so the TX gets heavy compared to my Dx6i and Futaba T6J. Sadly there is not a good neck strap look on this TX. The stock TX also does not have a timer. So I use the timer on my cell phone and have put a key ring on the TX so I can use my neck strap.
I got just 3 or 4 flights more doing the same thing (tail-in hover) with it before I started noticing charging issues. The manual stated "do not charge for more than 2 hours." Well, at the 2 hour mark I would remove the battery from charging even though the lights indicated it was not done charging. I waited 12-24 hours and tried charging it again. The first time it indicated full charge after about an hour. Flew again, waited several days and tried charging again. Eventually it got to the point where I needed to charge the battery for 5 hours. So I contacted RCHelicopterSelect via email and began an email chain. Short end of the story: they are shipping me a new battery this month. Being I never hit LVC or puffed the battery, this sounds somewhat reasonable to me of a solution, but I still don't trust the supplied charger. The vendor sent me a replacement 800mAh lipo with JST connector. So I changed the connectors on the ESC and stock 900mAh lipo. And as I suspected the stock charger went bad, the stock battery is balancing well and charging well with my Onyx 235 charger. I keep my flight times right at 5 minutes and that usually depletes the batteries by about 400-450mAh.
I've had the heli airborne in winds up to 10 mph and granted my yard is protected by trees, I couldn't tell that the wind was affecting the bird.
This little heli is fun to fly in my backyard. The vertical tail fin is a little fragile, so I've had to glue it together twice from a few hard set downs. I've progressed to nose-in hover and hovering pirouettes as well as letting it slide around the yard. The heli is advertised as being 3D capable and product video shows inverted hovering. It'll be a while before I get to that point. But for putting around the yard and not having an mCPx I can't complain. Would I have gone out and bought this heli on my own? No, I have this thing about knowingly/openly buying cheap R/C stuff from a random Chinese company. I'd rather pay a little more and support a US company with good product support.
www.crackroll.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=16102&stc=1&thumb=1&d=1323693530
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