This is a heli I bought some time ago, probably year and a half ago. I got it on Ebay and at the time I was familiar with the brand name but didn't know much about the company. The seller lead me to believe parts were readily avialable and after I got it I quickly discovered this was not the case. He also told a couple other fibs as well and in the end we settled with him giving me a partial refund for the misleading listing.

So I think, if memory serves, I have about £380.00 into it (came with wood blades and basic servos). In retrospect I probably should have rammed it back down his throat and made him take it back and refund me, but at the same time I liked the look of it and was curious to see if I could get it going.

At the very least it is a good example of this particular model (Kalt GS Alpha, circa 1992) and would seem to have very low hours for a heli that is potentially 18 + years old!

Shortly after I got it I started the engine just to make sure it runs and it started very easily and ran well. But I didn't want to try to fly it until I could source some spares and I did also consider the possibility of letting it go to a collector but I never tried to sell it.

Anyway, I eventually networked with some other Kalt owners, found lots of info, gathered up some spares here and there and now I am ready to try to get this old bird in the air.

I have it basically ready to fly now and although I don't have spares for everything I think it will be OK. I don't have a spare clutch but could probably mod something else. It has a piano wire tail drive which I don't have a spare for but there are ways to convert it to belt drive or mod a Raptor 60 tail etc. So only a few things that might really ground it.

I started it yesterday and even after not having touched it for probably a year it fired right up on a few pulls and ran very well. But then it started to rain

So anyway, that's the story so far. I have networked a bit with a few people still flying these helis and they love them. It has a Kalt 'KG22' engine which I believe is basically a rebranded Zenoah G23. The peculiar feature of the Kalts is that the swash does not go up or down, it tilts for cyclic but collective pitch is controlled via a bit of wire that rides in a small slot in the main rotor shaft, so there is zero interaction between collective and cyclics and it makes the linkage very simple.

As soon as the weather behaves a bit I'll take it back out for a short hover and adjust the trim a bit, dail in the gyro etc. and then if all that is successful it will get a proper flight in the near future.