BunnMan
Heliman
Location: Pasadena, Maryland
| New guyI am a former fixed wing RC pilot of about 12 years experience in sport and scale modeling. I left the hobby when I was about 21 to chase other things  . She finally slowed enough to let me catch her thank God. Now my daughters are getting interested in RC. My grandpop has been active in the hobby (fixed wing) through my enitre 13 year absence. Anyway, upon a rekindled interest in RC flight I began eyeing up the nitro helis. A quick comparison of price tags and bank balances removed that option. I figured on getting a RC flight sim so I could mess with helis on there to prepare for an eventual purchase until I saw a micro heli at the LHS.
I bought the Blade yesterday as my first heli, cheaper than a flight sim and able to fly in the house...gotta love that. I tried to rush out of the box and into a hover since I have all this marvelous fixed wing experience it would be a sinch right? WRONG! First dumb mistake was not reading the manual all the way through. I thought the "idle up" was a necessary step to lift off and quickly busted the tail support off when I engaged it on the grass. I then proceeded to whomp the crap out of the poor little bird by chopping the "throttle" everytime I got in trouble, which was about 3 secs after the skids cleared the grass after every lift off. How was I to know that I was throwing negative pitch at the poor little thing and slamming it helplessly into the ground? Oh...that's right...it's in the manual! She took the abuse quite well believe it or not. At the first dead battery I sat down with the manual and said out loud, "oh, wow, no kidding" at least five times. I went through the checks and tests then tracked my blades and built some training gear out of 1/8" dowel and four ping pong balls (found yellow ones, they actually look OK). Five battery charges and one set of blades later (coffee table strike, I swear it moved) I'm getting the hang of hovering. All flights except for the initial abuse have been in the house under controlled conditions. It has been a handful learning set up, trim, heli theory, and hovering all at the same time but has also been a TON of fun. It's very rewarding to hold that little bird in a hover in my living room...it's still a little shaky but improving every flight, I can't wait to chase the cats! I think I'm ready to try some forward flight outside once I find a nice calm day. Only thing is...I'm scared to take my training gear off. Will it fly with the gear on there you think?
Note to the beginner: I know the claim is this thing is ready to go right out of the box, and it probably is, but you're not. So read the book through first there's some really good stuff in there. Only problem with the manual I've found is that it says to screw the links "in" on the blades to lift the low blade but I had to screw "out" to increase blade pitch. It is possible to learn with this heli, I seem to be getting a grasp. Training gear is a must for the newbie! It is soooo much easier for the bird to live through your mistakes that way. If you have a local heli expert...seek their help. I don't know of one but am seeking.
Question for the experienced: Should the blades be level when properly tracked or is it ok if they are a little higher at the tips than in the center. Both are in track, that is they follow the same path but they are "dished" a little when up to speed.
I am very pleased with the BCP and frankly am amazed at the low price for such a cool model. Hopefully this thing will prepare me for a 30-50 sized nitro heli down the road. That's why I went with this CCPM micro versus the other fixed pitch micros I saw on the net. I love the small size and protability of this little bird...what a blast!
God bless,
-BunnMan |
We have had a plentiful supply of many spares in stock since the release of the very first BCP heli (we know how important spare parts availability for helis is) but many shops simply have not stocked up. This may be due in part to the fact that many shops wanted to see how well the heli would perform before supporting it fully with spares, or maybe for other reasons altogether, but either way they probably dont have much of an excuse any more 
