Starting Out Advice

[shotage]

Hi all,

I recently got bought a Dragonfly RC helicopter, very very basic but enjoyed messing about with it.

Well I was lucky enough to be given a used Twister Bell 47 by my father-in-law, although I'm still in the early stages of learning (many broken rotars and various other parts!), I'm really enjoying the control it has.

I have a couple of questions. One, the battery life seems to be very short, like 5 minutes maximum. Do you think a new battery would be in order and is there an upgrade battery to last longer?

Are the uprated parts for this heli worth the money, ie. will they mean I won't have to buy spares so often?

My next question is that a friend is selling a SmarTech Aerohawk. Is this a better heli than the Twister Bell 47?

A lot of questions, I know.
Any help would be gratefully appreciated.

Cheers.
Andy

[jboweruk]

I wouldn't advise fitting anything like an Ally swashplate, although I don't have that particular heli, see below, I found the ally swash on my own coax had so little play it caused issues, and I'm not the only one on this forum to have suffered it. Most coax's are similar in many respects, ie fairly easy to control, stable in the hover and recover fairly easily from mistakes.

Lipo batteries do vary, lasting anything from 5 to 10 minutes, so that's probably about right for a 7.4V lipo. Mine vary from 5 mins to up to 6 or 7. I've never yet got the advertised 8 minutes out of one. Also strangely a new Lipo will not last as long as one that's had a couple of cycles, they seem to 'bed' in a bit.

I'll have to let somebody else answer the query about the Aerohawk, as to be honest I've not even heard of it... Is it a Coax? Or a normal style heli (tail rotor and single main rotor)?

[cambs flyer]

I agree with JB, I once had the alloy Swash and TBH it's a 99% looks cool rather than 1% improvement in flight, these little Contras really haven't the raw power to cause the plastic parts to buckle under the pressure, and they fly so well out of the box if I was to spend some money I'd buy more Batts.

As said 5 minutes and anything above that is a bonus, it all depends how you fly, so I wouldn't worry to much about that, but you can't have enough batts in this game.

If your starting off with your Bell 47 by the sounds of it your in the breaking blades every five minutes stage (figure of speech) so just lift her up about 12" and practice hovering by using the rudder only, if she drifts forward trim her back a couple of clicks, and also remember as you fly longer the air turbulence increases so you will get buffered about a little, and when flying over furniture the differing ground heights cause unstable air currents, again this will cause your heli to go off in all manner of directions, this is something your learn and counter react, and when you reach that point flying becomes really enjoyable.

Good luck mate.

[shotage]

Thanks guys, really appreciate your help.

I had a couple of flights today, no broken rotars and had a good fly around, really getting used to things now. I will certainly take your advice and get another couple of batteries.

What is the next step up from this, basically something very similar, a touch more power to fly in slight wind and more flying/battery time?

Cheers.
Andy