RC Helicopters

Thread resurrection.

MSR X now binded to a DX6i. Let the fun commence!

Also a little late sBoyer03, but damn...that is one massive heli. I can imagine if that goes down it's digging a hole to China.

 

They get bigger than that....



Is this thread open to plane guys too or just helis?... the other R/C thread looked like all car stuff.

New guy here waiting on my Taco to be my new plane&heli hauler. Might need a bed extender

 

got 3 quadcopters varying in level of complexity, but been looking at helis for a while now. i really like the scale looking ones. that's the only thing that my quads leave to be desired; incredibly usefull for photos and videos, and very fun to fly, but they look plain retarded floating around in the sky.

 

If you like scale check this out... last weekend at our club airfield one of the guys showed up to maiden flight an electric power scale AH-1W Cobra. 800mm(!) blades. HUGE and very cool... even made my gas job seem small I think I want one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4grNQmnjHjI

 

That's cool. i'm definmitely looking at electric, and probably not that big to start
Got my eye on a 1000mm scale boat though, but those don't shatter when you crash

I really like the red bull copter. unfortunately it's pretty small at 130, so it'll need very calm days, but it'd be a fun one to start with.

 

A small decent 4ch one is like $40. I have one and once I'm good at flying it I'm going to a 4 motor drone they can be bought now for less than $100

 

Yeah crashes are not fun, but helicopters are not as bad as planes in that regard. One day I had the clutch slip in flight and the resulting shock on the driveline shattered a tail gearbox gear and I botched the emergency landing.



Looks bad but it was under $100 in parts and a couple evenings work to fix. Similar crash on a large R/C plane could be a total loss

(disregard the Ranger, its my buddies 'rig )

Lots of guys start with the Blade micros... they become a gateway drug and if you like it you will probably quickly find yourself wanting to move up to 450s, 500s, 600s etc. I went from a blade coaxial to a T-Rex 450 collective pitch electric (smallest size I find reasonable for outdoor flying) and then right to a 700 flybarless gas. I would not recommend making jumps like that on your own, in my case I had 15 years of prior experience in airplane R/C and an experience gas heli mentor to teach me.


If you are seriously interested there are some great heli forums to check out. Particularly www.helifreak.com


BTW, love the RedBull color scheme... would be cool to do that on a big R/C... same reason I did my plane as a RB.

 

At least the ranger is speedway blue(ish)

I've been into RCs for abotu half my life, so i'm aware of the progression of toys and frequency of grabbing for the wallet

RC trucks, boats, multirotors........I've always started out small and then gone bigger, better, and badder with them. Some folks say if i know that's what's going to happen, why not just buy big the first time. Sure i could go out and do that, but i've found that my operating skills are a lot better when i build confidence on a machine that is 1) cheap to fix, and 2) won't kill anyone if i crash it into myself or someone else. the 30 lb truck that does 50 mph, and 3 foot boat that does 40 mph could cause some very serious harm, same as an 800mm rotor attached to a brushless motor the size of a soda can.

So long story short, while i will start out small, i'm going into it with the full expectation of graduating to a large scale chopper with a third zero on the price tag at some point in time.

 

I hear ya man. I cringe when a new guy shows up at our flying club iwth a multi thousand dollar high performance giant scale plane and then ask us to "help learn how to fly it" (its happened once or twice,... one guy showed up with a 6 foot prop jet F14 tomcat as a first R/C - didnt end well). I love helping new members but I usually try and steer them toward a training plane first.

10-15 years ago, we didnt have the variety of choice we do today but i think there where less safety incidents because built it yourself kits where the only widely avalable option in r/c planes so people where forced to start small and work their way up as skill progressed. This day of instant everything anybody with a high credit card limit can buy a large high performance airplane or heli practically ready to go out of the box and get in over their head waaay to easy.

 

Do quads count? I have one of those Alias ones. Pretty damn cool... got it to mount a camera too

 

yep. a lot of hobbies, or even areas just different areas of the RC world are seeing that.

build it, hell build it a couple times. mess up a few times, buy the wrong parts. do it all and be hands on. sure it costs more inthe end, but the knowledge you get from doing it yourself and messing up before the concequinces are dangerous is the way to go.

and there's a reason i don't use a credit card for any of my hobbies. talk about easy to get into a hole

 

we have a different thread for quads/multirotors

Edit: I feel like you've even posted in it?

 

Hahahaha I think Im going to fit in well around here! R/C planes and helis are dangerous... easy to get into 4 zeros as you start collecting many. Ive been to contests and seen builds that where 4 zeros for a single plane or heli (think Jets). Im just glad I had most of htem before I got married and my wife doesnt ask

Man oh man I cant wait for my new taco to get here... A month reading this board and I know Im in trouble arain... so many ideas for things to do to it and I'm not even driving it yet. Already got ides about outing in a dual battery with a 6 or 8 guage dedicated line to a 12v bed outlet to run field chargers for the RC.

 

Check this thing out. I built it a couple months ago. did not originally intend for it to be used as such, but it actually works great for charging up RC batteries in the field when you are away from your vehicle or an AC plug.

http://www.tacomaworld.com/forum/lighting/322666-ultimate-off-road-utility-light-power-station.html

 

Neat build! Those look like the little 7Ah agm's? ... I have a couple of those for my nitro field box... OK for charging packs for micros but if you ever decide to get a big heli I'll warn you now you will want more. Ive found that I can charge the pack for a 450 size heli 3x max on one of those before its dead. The big electrics I see other guys fly take huge packs (6-12 cell lithiums as big as 5000mAh) and those guys use generators or multiple 100+Ah deep cells to run their chargers. My thinking on the dual battery setup was to future proof in case I ever go for one of those, as Ive already got the 1,000watt charger for it.

 

I just use it for my truck, boat, and quadcopter batteries. largest of those are 5200 mah, 7.2V. They are the 7ah units. these ones are from a company that makes them for deer cams. you could easily stack 12 of them in the next size up box and still have it be easily portable. automotive or marine deep cycle may be a little less expensive at that point, but this is convenient because of how portable it is, and the fact that the terminals aren't exposed. ever dropped a wrench on battery terminals

 

Thats exactly what i am slowely piecing together!

 

Oh... maybe I have. I have a ton of subs.... havnt seen it pop up on my list

 

Yeah thats the differnece... Some helicopters Ive seen run on 44 volt 5000mAh batteries. Takes monster power to charge those. Part of why I still run gas


If you build a bigger setup down the road but dont want to go all the way to marine batteries there are lots of intermediate sizes. Universal Battery Group is one inexpensive supplier that makes them in sizes from 1Ah all the way to 250Ah - see a chart of their larger sizes here but you can buy them all over the web. A single 35Ah battery is ~ $60, a lot cheaper than 5 of the 7Ah jobs @ $20 a pop and then you dont need to worry about keeping them all equally charged either

 

Planks and Quads are totally welcome here. I just wanted something away from the regular RC thread since it's 99.9% truggy stuff.

Got a 130X enroute now (Same thing as that Red Bull you posted, but typical RC look to it, not scale.), so I'm looking forward to going back to square one with regards to flying since it's a CP heli.

And yes, after being on HeliFreak, I've come to notice that they can get massively huge (770-800 size).