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I'm relatively new to the hobby. It all started at the local Frye Electronics store last summer (July '08) when they
had a pallet of $35 rtf rc helicopters near the computers. I thought - what the heck.
The little thing lasted 2 "flights", if you would dare to call them that. Totally uncontrollable, like a spastic sparrow
here and there, up and down, randomly flying into things and crashing. But I thought it was pretty cool.
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I looked online and found rc helis ranging from $150 to over $1000. And while nobody said *YES* go buy that cheap machine,
only one guy (that I could find) dared to suggest that it's a good idea for a beginner to be prepared to spend the $1000, so I figured - how bad can
it possibly be? And I ordered an ESky Honey Bee King 2. And I was totally stoked when it came. And it crashed on the second flight.
And I placed my first order for replacement parts the day it came. When I say second flight, I mean the second time it left the
ground, not after having used up a battery, no. The second time it left the ground.
This was the beginning of a 4-month love/hate relationship with the little machine.
Much soul searching, and somewhere in the vicinity of $600 additional spent. To
be fair, I bought Real Flight - a very nice flight simulator which I really appreciate
and have used extensively. I also bought a good radio - a Futaba, so these purchases
were not totally throw-away expenditures. but the other $200 went into the same
deep dark pit as the money for the initial little machine. That money was part replacements,
part upgrade parts, thinking that better stuff would make it work better.
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After more than sufficient hours trying to master the little thing, I finally was desperate enough to ask for advice from a local guy who
is a pretty good rc heli pilot. His comment about me flying the little machine was "if you can fly that, you can fly anything", which
I took to be a hint.
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During the 4 months I spent a total of 14 hours flying, and 173 hours at the simulator (yes, I have the logs to prove it). I also accumulated
some info about the durability of the servos in the Honey Bee machine (there are 4, and each of them failed in the 14 hrs).
When I say "flying" here, what I really mean is trying to get the
thing to be actually airborne without the certain knowledge that it was going to smash itself into whatever was within about a 10' radius.
This is something I never actually achieved. I could, occasionally, have it airborne for as long as 2 seconds before it would go berserk,
and if I didn't get it to the ground *immediately*, it was another parts order. Needless to say, it was never very far from the ground.
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So, between the hint and a growing realization that my little machine would likely never fly reasonably, I went ahead and snagged a used
Thunder Tiger Raptor E600 machine. It took over a month to get everything together to the point that it would actually fly. And I learned from past
experience - I asked a guy to come out and help me with the final setup and initial flight checkout (I'm so proud of myself for this).
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(5dec08) I flew the e600 for about 3 weeks. This was just awesome. The machine is *sooo* much better to fly - well, actually, I dont feel that I ever
was able to *fly* the Honey Bee, but the e600, quite quickly was able to have it airborne for relatively long periods (only about a week and I
was able to keep it aloft for a whole battery without incident!), and was actually able to
meaningfully work on some flight skills. During this time I took some little research breaks to try to learn more about the machine and about
the kinds of things I can adjust and how they impact me and my ability to fly. Then finally had my first real crash, so more learning for your
benefit.
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