Okay I’ve had chance to fly the Radix blades, not sure I have them tracking correctly as I’ve made some spacers from the stock woodie spacers, will try and get some bigger washers soon.
For the first five flights I used the kit woodie blades, while I was pleased with the overall setup progressing to the Als Zone glass fiber blades for £12.99 was a ten-fold improvement. Stability and control were improved somewhat and the sound was completely different. I can’t say I’ve noticed any improvement with the radix blades yet… but i’m not doing 3D stuff so i cant really give them a fair trial?
If I crash these blades I’ll probably go back to the Als Zone glass fiber blades as they offer top value for money.
Here’s the vid on you tube, hope it doesn’t bore you too much!
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June 2007
Okay first crash happened about 5 hovers in… I’d mastered hovering, or so i had thought, when a gust of wind took the model way up out of my limited eyesight range. I cut the throttle too much - it did the trick and brought the model down rather quickly. I tried to recover head speed but I had lost too much momentum, the model seemed to tip stall and hit the ground side on.
Shopping List:
New blade grips
New blades (als zone glass fiber - cheaper than the stock woodies)
Mixing lever set
Flybar
Main rotor shaft
This crash was caused by my impatience by flying in weather I shouldn’t have been flying in… but I was excited about my new model, it was summer after all - why did we have weather in June like it was November?
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October 2007
This crash was rather off putting as I had no control over the outcome what so ever. I was quite happily doing circuits and figure of eights when the main blades clashed with the tail boom. The heli came down quite fast and there was nowt I could do about it.
When I recovered the model I could have cried. From such a low height crash the model was a wreck.
Shopping List:
E325 Crash Kit
Tail Boom
Tail Blades
CY carbon blades
Tail Servo - Futaba 3154
Blade grips + various head components
Landing Gear & Lower Chassis
Main Rotor Shaft & new gears
All up the best part of a 100 notes… okay this wasn’t helped by going for the CY carbon blades - but hey they are cool!
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While the JP Twister Bell47 is a simple model compared to the Thunder Tiger Mini Titan it gave me a wealth of experience flying these hovering things we call helicopters.
- First rule to learn is cutting the throttle will bring you down very fast - no gliding here!
- Up & Down is not the same as a fixed wing up & down, its actually forward & back cyclic!
- Aileron (left & right cyclic) will not make the model fly round corners… this comes with many inputs from the transmitter all at once!
- Rudder is now called yaw
- Throttle is now mixed with blade pitch and makes the heli go up and down
So, flying fixed wing is very different to flying helicopters contra rotating or otherwise! As a fixed wing pilot for many years I had to re-train my hands to do very different things - hence the twister was a brilliant learning curve for someone like me to learn indoors by not embarrassing myself over the field when I couldn’t even take off without having a crash! Oh dear should I continue?
I’m sure the twister saved me shed loads of cash and brought me up to speed with the new controls and terminology - I’m truly grateful!