HOWTO Wiki Switch from Blade CX to CP and Similar Helis

From Heli-Wiki

Starting this one as I am pretty new to CX to CP and a mini blog of my experience will follow.

Well let's see, to get this started a little history.

I've always wanted to fly helicopters since I saaw my first Airwolf show. I always thought flying heli's was way cooler than flying airplanes, because there no getting out if you wreck, ejection seats just don't work. (for obvious reasons)

Anyways, heli flying was always WAAAAY too expensive, until recently when a guy from work brought in one of those stupid Radio Shak Picco things. This was waaay cool. I thought if those are $35 then what could I get for $100-$200-$500 etc.

Well lets say I knew nothing about what I was supposed to do, I went to the hobby shop and saw the cheapest they had was the CX at $190. Well there's no way I'm paying $190if the next one up was $240 and it looked way neater with only 1 main rotor.

So I went on ebay and found a Lama 4 for ~$100, well I brought it to work, charged the motor and got it stuck up in the hung ceiling rails :). After finding out why you should have an OPEN area to fly helis, I ended up stripping the gears and killing all my sets of blades.

SO I go to the hobby shop, no parts, BOOOOOOOOO. I spent a few days looking around and settled on something else I saw in the Hobby Shop which was the Simulator. Again no freakin way I'm spending $200 when my heli was only $100 and I could get a "top of the line" CP Pro for that. So I asked a few friends that I knew did some RC stuff, and someone turned me on to Clearview RC Sim. This dude costs just $30 and it's pretty darn close to what you get for $200. Now some will say it's no where near but for my purposes $30 bucks to try out something saved me about oh $170 bucks. I had fun, but I decided I needed sticks to practice on. Same deal do some research and I settled on the ESKY ones on Ebay for like anothe $30.

UNDERLINE, UNDERLINE, UNDERLINE Best $60 I've spent in this hobby. UNDERLINE, UNDERLINE, UNDERLINE

So I go to ebay all confident in my abilities after I can flip the Blade CP and the Raptor. I decide I'm still not doing too hot with single rotors, so I go and get myself a CX (this was RIGHT as the CX2's were coming out so I got a pretty good deal, I think I ended up about $125 total.) Adde and most important bonus, my LHS carries CX/CP and Trex parts only.

So I fly the CX around, crash it a few times, break some blades, break the head as all people do. Upgrade it as much as possible, I spend about oh lets says triple the original cost.

After maybe 3 weeks (yeah took a while to get here sorry), I start deciding I can fly on the simulator, I can semi fly the CX, why not. Again I go on Ebay, sorry LHS, I'll get my parts from you but not the expensive stuff, unless you'll match.

Continued later, bedtime....DY 5/10/07

Still planning on editing guys please be patient, been busy lately... DY 5/30/07

OK going to add some so the natives don't get restless.6/2

I purchased a Blade CP from a guy selling his slightly used no crashes...It cost me about $125 plus shipping. Well let me tell you you'd think I had a firehose hooked up to the bank from that point on.

It started with the maiden flight. I took her outside, because I got bored with RADD(don't do this by the way) and decided I can do this. I can do it on the sim and I can fly the CX. Only problem with my thinking is the sim isn't real and I still crash it and the cx you really only have to worry about 3 things, up/down, left/right, forward/reverse. The rotors stays pretty level with the ground on the CX because of the counter rotating top blade and flybar which both want to level you off.

First issue? blade pitches all I see is the top of the rotor disk about 15 feet away as the tail goes into the ground and as I try to correct I break a landing skid. Slamming it into the ground much like I did the CX. But the CX can actually take a little abuse.

So I hit the LHS for skids, figured might as well get the aero kit and lipo battery. I also decided to try the dual tail as I had heard of tail issues. This is probably the best of the inexpensive updates as I have not burned up ANY tail motors since I modded this.

ugh darnit gotta go. Sorry will continue with the story later.