Introduction

I first saw one of these flying at a club meeting and thought it looked like an amazing piece of kit. So small but also very controllable.  I’m not much of a heli person really, normally sticking to aircraft, but the temptation to grab a BnF version of this and pair it up with my new DX8 transmitter was too much.

I found a second hand, but undamaged one going on ebay for a fair price, so a quick bid later and it was mine!

Links

• Eflite product page.
• RC Helicopter Fun review.
• RCGroups.com review.
• RCGroups.com example DX8 config.
• Horizon Hobby promo video.
• CrazyHeliDude Guide Part 1.
• CrazyHeliDude Guide Part 2.
• CrazyHeliDude Guide Part 3.
• CrazyHeliDude Guide Part 4.

May 2011

This is the first helicopter I’ve ever owned, having only flown on various simulators over the years. My first flights were pretty short! Thankfully due to my laziness the grass in the garden is nice and long which gives it something soft to land (crash) onto. Over the last week or so I’ve gotten pretty adapt at keeping it in a hover close by me, this might not sound like much but compared to my first few flights it is an achievement!  I need to improve my coordination when it is facing me, but that’ll hopefully come with practice.

19 May 2011

I broke it :(

June 2011

Finally the replacement 5in1 board arrived, one quick installation later and the heli is back in the air. My wife shot the video below of the first test flight after the crash, keeping something so small in the frame is quite hard! And we have never figured out why the Panasonic keeps loosing focus while shooting video, oh well, at least I can fly it again!

 January 2012

In part due to the new arrival in the family (Edward now has a baby sister, Nuala) and partly because I’m not flying it anymore I’ve decided to sell the 120SR. It is a fantastic little heli, the first I ever owned and indeed flew. I learnt to fly helis with this bird, I had a few crashes on the way, but with the exception of the broken 5in1 board none cost more than a few pounds to fix. I’ve lost track of how many flights I had, but as an indication I wore out 3 EFlite batteries, 1 Overlander battery and a tail rotor motor on the way, so I think it is pretty safe to assume I had a LOG of flights!

As an indication of how well my ability to fly a heli improved from those first tentative hops across our patio. I recently paid Dave at FLyin Fish for a lesson on one of his Raptor 60s as a precursor to flying my Blade 450. I’d never flown a collective pitch bird before, but within the hour I was doing nose in and side on hovers, and a few  slightly wonky circuits. If anybody says you can’t learn to fly helis on a fixed pitch style bird; don’t believe them! A lot of the experience is directly portable to CP birds.

It sold on ebay for £80 which I think is a fair price for a BnF version with a few spares. I think I paid £120 for it back in May, so I make that 40 quid depreciation, plus probably 60 quid in spares (mostly that damn 5in1) over the time. So call it £100 for my introduction into RC helps and 8 months or so of great fun flying. I call that a bargain!

So whats next, I’ve sold the MSR I only owned for a few months and now the 120, that just leaves me with the 450, I’ve yet to properly fly that, but now the evenings are getting lighter I hope to get some proper fights in soon. As for small birds like the 120, I still love the size and I have to say I’m hoping EFlite will launch a full CP and possibly even Flybarless version of the 120 soon, I think that would tempt me back into this size of heli!

Gallery

Below is a little gallery of the pics I took when I listed it on eBay.