Slough Model Shop has me in a quandry!

[Janek]

I'm not going to recommend any particular model, others are best able to do that, but I will say one important thing.

DO NOT, under any circumstances, believe a word that Slough Radio Controlled Models tell you about anything, particularly Helicopters, as they know very little about these machines, and very little generally about modeling.

They are in it to get a sale, ANY sale will do.

I only use them myself if I know exactly what I want, and I can't get it anywhere else.

You have a Heli specialist shop only about 30 mins. away, at Skyline models, go there, if nothing else you'll get good advice and it'll get you away from Slough RC's stale pi$$ smell

[Gate88]

it'll get you away from slough rc's stale pi$$ smell

lol!!!

[Phil w]

Nice One Janek

[gramey]

I had a Blade 400 and I can only reiterate what others have said, hindsight is perfect, if I was in the same postion now I wouldn't touch one, go with a 450 you won't regret it.

[ripsaw]

Just brought and built a trex 450 sport my first proper heli and have learned so

much about the helicopter by getting my hands dirty and building it, also feel

conferdent that after crashing it i will now be able to rebuild it something i

wouldn't have been able to do if id had bought a rtf model

ps i love it



cheers andy

[Grant_beltcp]

As other have said, I would personally go the 450 sport route (the Pro is awesome but the TT proabably cause you more hasle than its worth as a beginner).
Building the heli from scratch is also a very worthwhile thng to do - it will teach you most things you need to know about the heli. With the help of Finless Bobs videos you'll have it built in no time.

Also echo whats been said about Slough - I only used them twice, and both occasions they tried to sell me more expensive things than i wanted to buy. They flat out refuse to give any discount even on an expensive sale and dont really seem to have much knowledge.
A trip to Skyline Models will be well worthwhile.... Very knowledgable and deffinatly dont try to sell you anything you dont need!

[cyberman]

Thanks for all the comments, I appreciate it.
I think I am back to my original plan of building something so I know how it goes together and have a better idea of how it works.

[dam74]

Either way is good. I crashed my Blade 400 quite significantly in the first month rebuilt it shortly after. I'm leaning towards a Trex 500 as my next heli as I want something that is reasonably stable outdoors. Depending on the venue the 500s can be flown indoors in the right hands.

[Dannoj1976]

As another Noob im still not sure trex or blade but as im prob going to use it as a lawn dart for a couple of times i thought blade plus i would get a dx6.
My plan is to eventually build an airwolf out of a t rex with retracts then use the blade to learn to do flash stuff

[xygax]

Just be a little careful with any thing that has a tourque tube tail. They are prone to shread gears if you are learning a belt is a lot more foregiving. The 450 sev2 and 500 both have belt tails there are upgrades available for a TT when you have learnt to fly...
If you go down the 450 route the SEV2 is better mechanicly than the sport and the batteries on 450's are a sight cheeper than 500 one's

Steve

[dam74]

As another Noob im still not sure trex or blade but as im prob going to use it as a lawn dart for a couple of times i thought blade plus i would get a dx6.
My plan is to eventually build an airwolf out of a t rex with retracts then use the blade to learn to do flash stuff

Hope you have a big lawn as you'll need one about a 1/4 - 1/2 the size of a football field to feel comfortable flying it in. It is quite twitchy and susceptable to wind so you'll be constantly putting in inputs to counter the effects.

[Mart61]

On buying my first CP heli I went for the 500 GF. It was fun to build, is reasonably stable and great to fly.

Whilst doing my research I compiled a table of the cost of the commonly damaged spares, copied below.

Whilst the 500 was the most expensive in a crash, I was advised I'd be far less likely to crash the 500 compared to the 400 and 450 due to its increased stability. Whilst I'm not known for pushing myself too hard and fast in my flights, the advice I got here may have been right. Thus far all I've damaged on the 500 is the tail drive belt which was only done a week ago.

If you do go for the 450, I'd advise the Sport due to the increased durability of the belt drive over the torque tube gears.

Just my two cents worth on which I'm sure may will disagree.

[unwind-protect]

I did a quick tally up the other day of differences between Blade 400 spares and 450 sport spares. The average difference is about 50p per part (with the Trex parts being more expensive).

It seems to me you'd have to crash an awful lot of times to make up the purchase price of a Blade if you're set on buying a Trex eventually anyway.

[BobJ]

Hi

As interesting as this table is it does't tell the whole story as different models tend to crash differently, a plastic model like the Blade 400 will break more for a given impact and the servo's are also a little weak so nearly every crash will take out the servo gears, factor in the extra broken parts and time spent rebuilding and all of a sudden the difference isn't so great.

Cheers
Bob

On buying my first CP heli I went for the 500 GF. It was fun to build, is reasonably stable and great to fly.

Whilst doing my research I compiled a table of the cost of the commonly damaged spares, copied below.

Whilst the 500 was the most expensive in a crash, I was advised I'd be far less likely to crash the 500 compared to the 400 and 450 due to its increased stability. Whilst I'm not known for pushing myself too hard and fast in my flights, the advice I got here may have been right. Thus far all I've damaged on the 500 is the tail drive belt which was only done a week ago.

If you do go for the 450, I'd advise the Sport due to the increased durability of the belt drive over the torque tube gears.

Just my two cents worth on which I'm sure may will disagree.

[Mart61]

A very fair comment Bob. I did this exercise just to try and compare the likely costs, in a "like for like" damage case.

As you say, no two crashes are the same.

Get the 500 Cybermanybabes! You know it makes sense!



One other thing, and again many may disagree, I bought a bunch of my electrics second hand:

DX6i = £40 (thanks to Squeaky Pete)
HS-5245MGs X 3 = £45 (thanks to Sesame)
GY401 = £45 (thanks to extreme3D)
S9254 = eBay as I recall but can't remember how much

If you buy good gear from trusted forum members, you can save a bit.