Eury
rrProfessor
Location: Ankeny, IA, USA.
| I've now built a couple Predators, a Spectra, and a QWW 20cc, and have a lot of flight time on the Spectra and Predator. Both the Pred and Spectra are great helis, and fly well.
The Spectra is simpler to get all setup and aligned, it's just the nature of the stacked frames on the Pred that it adds some difficulty. I did find myself fiddling with the Pred pretty much constantly because things would shift and wear, and require adjustment, as well as bits coming loose. Still an awesome heli, but it required constant upkeep.
The Spectra pretty much fell together after deciphering the tiny diagrams in the manual (the stages where you put the frames together are ridiculous, 40 screws on a tiny diagram with lines going everywhere.), and has been rock solid since. It's actually kinda boring, I don't have anything to mess with on it, fuel and fly, that's it. I check screw tightness and meshes etc, and nothing has come loose, nothing has gone out of alignment, it's still just like the day I built it, and I don't baby the thing, I fly it pretty hard. Flying wise, it flies a lot closer to a glow heli than my Pred did. With the pred I constantly felt the weight in the air, the Spectra feels like a 90 in the air, albeit one without as much power.
I wouldn't say that one is "so much better than the other", but in my experience, the Spectra is superior for what I'm doing (which is sport and 3d flying). It has the ability to be stretched so you can run the huge blades like a Pred Condor, and can do all the same things as the Pred, at a lower price. Parts cost are less on the Pred, but availability can be a problem for those parts from Century, and honestly, if you are crashing often enough to worry about parts cost, you probably shouldn't be flying a gasser. If you are into scale helis, the Pred is a better choice, the Spectra is really tall, and I think it'd be tough to stuff it into most scale fuses, where the Pred is shorter and fatter, so it seems like an easier scale platform, although both pale compared to the Varios in that regard.
Nick Crego
Still wanted by the government, I survive as a soldier of fortune. |
