majorsmackdown
Heliman
Location: Portland, OR
| This is my second fuel heli. I've had a handful of micros and started with the blade cp about 3 months ago. Needless to say I'm as hooked as anyone on heli flying. My imac plane stares at me with a sad look and wonders why she's not getting any dates anymore. My first fuel heli was/is the sceadu evo 50 - and in being fair to hirobo, it's an excellent heli. The manual is excellent, the assembly went very smoothly, and there is a little bonus of the manual going into some detail on setup of different radios was a huge bonus for a first time builder/flyer. I'm glad I had this experience already before going into the tiger 50. So why the tiger 50. I got psyched out. I put together the sceadu 50 at the same time as a buddy of mine, and we spent some serious bucks on these aircraft, and we went off flying like crazy. Bummer has it for my buddy (taps rings in my ear) - he was the first to lose his battle with gravity. The repair cost for the sceadu evo was a bit staggering. So I thought it might be wise to get together a cheaper chopper. I put it together for half of what I've got in the evo. The evo was no expense spared, the tiger was - how can I pinch my pennies - but wisely. I got the tiger together with a pcm receiver, 3151 servos, a 9252 (a bit overkill maybe), on the governor'd throttle (csm revlock), and a 9254 TR servo with a 401, and an os 50sxh (non hyper). At first I had to struggle a little with the ARF heli needing some adjustments making it slightly less ARF than I was expecting. I needed a couple parts and Audacity sent them qicker than shizzle. I put in the heavy dampers, and the 3d seesaw in "agility" mode. I had one growing pain and that was the servo horns - with the 3151's don't make the servo horns longer to the swash than recommended in the book - erroring on the short side is the way to go if you must error at all. I had too long of arms and I believe this over leveraged the servos and I had some issues with my roll. After getting it back in order that problem went away. Flying the birds.... The big bucks sceadu evo flys awesome - feels like it's on rails and has capabilites well beyond mine (understatement). And the point of this story - the budget tiger 50, after employing some important setup technique and taking a few minutes to take advantage of the build addendums and appreciating them rather than despising them - this baby rocks - I like it every bit as much as the bigger bucks evo. Part of the reason must be psychological. Knowing the potential $$ for crash damage and repairs is quite a bit lower is quite liberating. I had no trouble experimenting with my first autoroations on the first day of flying the tiger for example. Normally I don't advertise/advocate unless there's something in it for me - but I'm realizing there is - if people can use the forums to get familiar with quality products and help others make some informed buying decisions then what goes around comes around. I'd like to say this budget heli flys great, she's smooth, she's got agility and precision and is easy to fly. I've shelved the sceadu and almost regret buying it. Don't let the notion you get what you pay for break your back and budget. I went cheap on this one and there's nothing to regret and several things to gain. Customer service is clear to me to be very important to the audacity gang. The heli is well built and makes a noob like me look very good. Ongoing product development is clearly part of the audacity mission. They're backing their product. These things are important to me and the bonus is the kit or arf is quite affordable for a .50 heli. Don't hesitate to add a tiger to your fleet. |
