Actually it has been my new hobby since febuary 19th already, which was the day I received my Phoenix RC simulator. After practising for about half a year now, it was time to buy my first larger electric RC helicopter.





What you see in the pictures is a T-Rex 450 PRO V2. It is about 640 mm from nose to tail and has a rotor diameter of 710 mm. Except for the T-Rex 250, this is the smallest size RC helicopter you can get as a kit. I didn't want a RTF (ready-to-fly) machine for first professional object.

It is a CP (collective pitch) heli. That means that the swash plate doesn't just tilt the entire "one-piece-rotor" like on cheaper and easier to fly FP (fixed pitch) helis, but actually alters the pitch angle of the individual blades. As you want your heli to fly forwards, the angle of the blades will be altered in a cyclic way as they revolve. That means that this heli type works like real helicopters in principle. Since RC helicopters have a higher power to weight ratio, they can do much more than real helicopters though. This one is capable of all 3D flying you can wish for in a heli of this size. (Meaning crazy manouvers where you might think the heli is having a seizure as well as stationary inverted flight.)
These Helis are also called 6 channel helis. FP would be 4 channel. The channel refers to the possible movement:
4 = up/down ; hover left/hover right ; hover forward/hover backward ; turn left/turn right
on 6 channel helis you can assign pitch and throttle curves, making it possible to have full throttle and full negative pitch for gas stick at lowest position (rather than having 0 gas and 0 pitch here, like on FP helis). That enables inverted flying.

It also doesn't have the so called flybar, which RC helis had for a long time. A flybar gives more aerodynamic stability but as well makes a heli more smooth and therefore less agile. It's like a dampening. New RC heli technoligy features Flybarless (FBL) systems which counteract any unwanted movement detected by the 3-axes gyro. That makes for agile flying without the pilot having to counteract every slight unwanted movement. So the computer makes the flying stable.

Since this is my first kit it took me 2 weeks to assemble, inculding running back and forth to the local hobby store for questions and additional things.
A really experienced pro could build it in two hours and set up the electronics in a couple of hours.

Ofcourse a picture with helicopter cubes can't be missing:



Costs
The kit cost 420 €
for the first one equipment such as transmitter and battery charger are needed:
spectrum dx6i transmitter for bout 120€ and a good computerized charger (that is infact worth every cent) for about 90€
then a receiver is needed which is about 50€ in this case.

If I will ever buy another heli I will only need a receiver from the brand that my transmitter is from. It can save up to 10 models and is a good brand.

So yes, this is more expensive than collecting puzzles. At least in my case. I still have my Dogic though.

Simulators
And if anyone is wondering how I could buy an expensive RC simulator (160 € including the "controller" which is a real 4 channel transmitter as well) let me tell you, what any experienced person will: It is well worth it. As a matter of fact it's the best you can get for your money if you want to go into helis at least.
Phoenix is the best you can get for your money here. There are even more expensive simulators such as Real Flight. Phoenix features upgrades for free and is almost as real.
Also getting the controls in your head is more important for a sim than actually having a heli that moves 100% like the original version.

Why did I chose Spectrum?
For anyone interested: Using spectrum transmitter and equipment is conveinient since every LHS anywhere outside Asia will sell E-flite products. E-flite makes ready to fly helis and planes which have spectrum receivers. So once you have a spectrum transmitter you can buy all those "toys" if you want and fly them. I will later have to buy a MCPX from them, which is a palm size 6 channel heli. Really good product to practise on I was told by many pros online.


Even though I have been using this bolded headlines this doesn't nearly cover everything you will need to know about rc helicopter if you want to start on them. For any more information about number of channels, coax helis, gyros and FBL systems you can ask here or write me. Since I am new to this myself I won't know everything myself either though.

Actually this topic is just supposed to show my heli but once I started writing down some info about the subject I seem to find myself having written a lot already that will interest only few. But thankfully noone is forced to read my gibberish.
By the way, I think I am the first one to post some info about this subject into the forum. At least I wasn't able to find anything about rc helicopters via search function.

I've always admired those who could pilot an RC helicopter, bearing in mind how difficult they are to fly (especially before the days of computer aided gryo stability). And when you see what an expert can do

Good luck with your new hobby. I hope that you can post some videos of you flying.

Very cool. I too am in the RC hobby. I fly helis and airplanes. I also am using a Spektrum DX6i. My simulator is Realfight 6, and I use to fly a Blade 450 X, but I downsized to a 130 X because the 450 was too big for my liking. Here was a video of that: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dk7QlLwgYUA I don't have a video of me flying the 130 unfortunately.

On the plane side, I have had in the past a bunch of the UM/UMX aircraft. I sell them a lot after abuse though, so my fleet is usually pretty small. I currently have a UMX Mig, a Twisted Hobbys Crack Yak, and a 3DHS 40" EPP Edge that's in the build process. Here's the most recent video of the Crack Yak where I'm practicing rolling harriers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G13Z9Ob5NqY (processing)

Ben

I bought a moderately cheap one of these whilst "SHE" was away!

When she returned the news was received by a very long 'laser burning painful' stare and it was put away into storage very very quickly!!!
I won't ever be so stupid again! I will stick to puzzles (even if they work out more expensive in the long run!!) I have to use quiet puzzles when she is around but the heli sings to me from the attic!
Sigh!!!

Hey cool. The 450 X is one nice heli. I love flying it in phoenix. It has plenty of power. And wow you have Realflight. It's the best I read. But so expensive also.