ImRich
Veteran
Location: Derry, NH USA
| I saw one of these Blade's and couldn't resist one, it's cute and well engineered.
I fly nitro and gas (LMH-100, R50V2 and X-Cell gasser). My flight skills are ok, I can roll, loop, flip, and hold inverted forward flight until I need to turn! 
I've helped others learn to fly (I'm one of the instructors at my club) and help others to properly setup their heli.
My first impression on flying the Blade was, wow, this is going to be a handful for a beginner to learn on. Don't get me wrong, it flies nice! I can't compare it to other electric helis' as this is my first. But since it's so light, it not as stable as a larger heli. It sort of flits around in comparison.
As I thought about it more, I feel that most beginners have no hope in setting up any heli to fly easily. Most of the time they would have an easier learning to fly experience if the heli was setup correctly. They have a much easier time of learing after someone with some heli setup skills sets up their heli for a beginner to learn to fly. But then they get lost if the instructor is not around to help them to keep their glow engine properly tuned.
The Blade is setup to fly out of the box, so I feel that outweighs the setup issues of other helis. Also there is no fuel mixture nor programable radio to get lost in setting up pitch curves, throttle curves, etc. So that makes it much simpler to setup and adjust when needed.
That being said, I have mixed feelings about the blade as an entry level beginner's heli because of it's not as stable as a larger heli, but it is fun to fly! I feel if a beginner learns to fly a Blade, he can probably handle anything after he's learned to setup a fuel heli properly.
Here is my list of findings on the e-Flight Blade after having it for just one day:
Positives
- It does fly out of the box.
- It withstands soft dumps into the ground with out harm. (Found out when the battery gets soft and you're not close to the ground).
- The shipping box makes a great carrying case.
Negatives:
- It's not as stable as a beginner may need to stay out of trouble or not get too frustrated learning to hover.
- Landing gear easily break if hit on the side. Buy a crash kit with your heli, don't wait!
- There is no rev up/down adjustment, so getting the tail to hold out of a hover is a challenge for a beginner.
- The collective/throttle control should be smooth not ratcheted!! It's an easy fix, take off the back of the case and flip over (top for bottom) the ratchet spring. This solves the problem perfectly.
Wishes
- A Heading Hold gyro without the weight penalty of doing it with separate components.
- A brushless motor option along with the required controller.
- The foam in the box should have extra cutouts to hold extra blades, and spare parts since the box makes a great carrying case.
- Carbon blades. They will track better and hold tracking longer.
- Rev up/down compensation. I suppose I'll have to try my 9C or 9Z on this heli to see if it can help. Heck, just give us a Heading Hold Gyro! How much more cost would it have been to have Heading Hold right from the start!
As to my 'wishes' list. Wouldn't it be great if e-Flight came up with an optional controller that had both a heading hold gyro and could run brushless motors? I like their integrated 4-in-1 design, it saves a lot of weight.
I'll form some more opinions from a rank beginner's perspective in a couple of days. One of my fixed wing students also purchased a Blade and he's going to try it out.
If you are a beginner, don't forget to purchase the 'training gear' (Part number EFLH1128). Unfortunately most hobby shops only seem to stock the Blade, the crash kit and the Aerobatic upgrade kit. It seems that Marketing forgot to tell them to order some Training gear sets right from the start.
As an experienced pilot, I was a little setback by purchasing the Blade with it's radio. I figured I would never use it so why waste money on it. This may be the case later, but for now the included transmitter is working well once the 'stick ratchet' is modified as I mentioned. Take note that the transmitter does have a charge jack as well as a socket for a training cord! Unfortunately the training cord seems to use an "S-Video" type of connector. If I get together with the student who purchased one of these, maybe I'll try out the training cord. Or perhaps I'll put together a diagram on how to make a Blade to Futaba or Blade to JR training cord.
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Rich |
I can tell you that this is being corrected for future shipments.
I'm going to have to look into a way to be sure that rubber 'keeper' (aka: Fuel tubing) holds tail blade on. I like the idea that it can release and save the tail motor, tail blade so I don't want to comprimise that! I'm not completely sure, but I think the rubber tubing slipped a bit and the tail rotor started to free wheel. I'm not sure if it came completly off before it hit the ground. All I know is that all the parts were laying where the heli stopped, but at that time I couldn't locate the rubber keeper. 
