This was the second Helicopter that I ever purchased except mine was the 72mhz version since the 2.4Ghz wasn’t out yet. I was really good with the little mosquito and had tried the Falcon 40. With not a whole lot of success and thought, well I will go back to something smaller. This looked good and stable in the videos and seemed to be ‘the thing’ that I could practice in the living room since the falcon 40 really isn’t a ‘living room helicopter’. The description said it was for intermediate pilots but since I had some months flying a co-axial and about a month or so on the Falcon 40 I thought ‘what the heck it looks like fun’. I knew that there would be some learning curve here but I was really unprepared for the difficulty of flying this little guy. I got this at a time before the mCX or mSR had been released and it was quite a handful. Taking off without crashing and just flying for more than a minute at a time was really hard with the included controller. I think they hadn’t heard of ‘expo’ on the transmitter at this point. It was really touchy and even though I learned a lot from flying it I did crash almost all the time. True to its nature this little heli held up well and usually the worst I had to fix on it was re-snapping on a ball-link. I hit walls, furniture, couches, chairs and of course the ground. All this just trying to hover the thing. Now I think I would handle one of these better today and in fact when I destroyed my first one (finally) I bought another and upgraded it to the metal head parts! Still it is a micro handful and I don’t recommend this to someone who doesn’t have quite a bit of experience. One of the drawbacks of this Ready-To-Fly bird is that it is a complete system and you can’t modify the settings on the controller that much. They have now come out with a 2.4 Ghz version which should help the semi-wonky electronics (there were the rare random times where it lost the connection with my 72mhz version) and the ‘B’ version comes with the all-metal head which I highly recommend. And also there is a version with a programmable transmitter that would be handy to have .
One of the things I really loved about this was the way it sounded it was just so cool sounding. I had to replace blades a couple of times, the tail rotor motor once and tail blades twice. All in all a very sturdy machine but just very touchy and if you aren’t smooth on the sticks then it can be a handful. It is pretty fast and light. Here are some pics and the specs from the Walkera website. I got both of mine from www.xheli.com with no troubles
This little heli uses 2 servos on the swashplate that are 90 degrees apart. The battery tray is a bit of a tight fit but it is situated in such a way that you really don’t have to remove the canopy to install the battery. The transmitter uses 4 AA batteries. When you get one of these it is truly ready to fly 100% assembled. Just pop in the batteries in the Tx (transmitter) ,charge the heli battery and you are ready to go!. I would recommend that you pop in and see the Helifreak post : Walkera 4#3 Tips and Tricks As usual the guys over there have a world of knowledge that I have drawn from over and over. Alas I didn’t know of them until after I got into helis for a while.
Basic Specifications
1). Main Rotor Diameter: 202 mm
2). Tail Rotor Diameter: 48 mm
3). Overall Length: 213 mm
4). All-up Weight: 48g (Battery included)
5). Drive Motor: 1220(Strong magnet)
6). Tail Motor: N51 (Strong magnet)
7). Battery: 3.7V 400mAh Li-Po
8). Receiver: RX-2406
9). Gyro: Built-in
Where to Buy
I got mine from Xheli, but the following two places are good as well.