Thats right, I bit the bullet and got a little Electric Heli.   I’ve tried my hand at this before, 2 times in fact, both times failures.

The first two times I went the cheap-0 route and bought an electric helicopter from “China Seller” on eBay.  The first time was back in 2004 with a small Fixed Pitch model made by Exceed which ended up with me selling it on eBay for a large loss.  The next time was in 2007 when I tried to go right to a Brushless, Controllable Pitch bird made by Walkera.  That one ended with me crashing and rebuilding the heli and then selling it to a neighbor… again at a large loss.

This time I did my research though!  While at Nexgen Hobby in Hagerstown, MD the owner demonstrated one of the “ultra-micro” helis he had for sale in the store, an E-flite MSR.    It was a nice bird, seemed fairly stable and easy to fly, so I did some research and came to the conclusion that I was going to get one!

Well, I didn’t get the MSR, I ended up getting a Heli-Max (Great Planes) Novus FP.  Nearly the same size as the MSR, but this bird comes with a full CNC Aluminum Rotorhead, Swashplate and a larger battery.  Not to mention it was 20 bucks cheaper!

Right out of the box, I was impressed with the quality of the little bird, this was not surprising seeing as Heli-Max is a Great Planes company, and they don’t mess around.  The bird came with a 2.4ghz transmitter, 110v wall charger, extra set of main blades and a plastic adjustment tool for the gyro.  The manual is concise and very thorough.  I was able to get an extra battery for free with this package so It worked out well for me!

First impressions of the little Novus is WOW this thing is small!   I immediately started charging one of the batteries and went upstairs to grab a bite to eat.  After about 20mins I checked and the charger’s LED was green, meaning the battery was fully charged.

Following the instructions, I plugged the charged lipo battery into the bird, then turned on the transmitter.  After about 10 seconds the servos (sub-micro digital) twitched indicating a good link with the 2.4ghz tx.

Ok so here we go, me being the nut job that I am dives right into flying this thing.  I’m all over the place and start crashing into things right off the bat.  Luckily I am in my basement where there are lots of soft things to bounce off of like couches, lazyboys and carpet.  After about 10 attempts at hovering I am beginning to get a bit flustered and negative.  What do I do?  I decide to trudge on.  By about the last 2-3 mins of the first battery, I start getting into a decent controlled 10-12 sec hover.  Feeling good now!

While I was flying (trying to) on the first lipo pack, I had the other one charging and was getting pretty pumped up!   The second pack went MUCH better, I was hovering for 20-30 seconds at a time now, getting a nice feel for the bird and noticing that small corrections make a huge difference with such a small heli.  By the end of the second pack I was VERY confident and began meneuvering around my basement.

When the battery is starting to go dead, it’s a pretty deliberate effect, I noticed it was taking almost full throttle to hover and the tail rotor was sluggish, then all of the sudden you arent even lifting off anymore.

Anyway, here are some pics of the little bird.  I’m off to fly some more!