When I was at the r/c expo, I noticed many companies selling small electric helicopters. Does anyone have one? How hard are they to fly? How long does a charge last?

I was watching them fly those things and thought I gotta get one; sure enough later that day I went to Al's and bought a Hummingbird V3. Man, these things are hard to fly! I honestly think it will be a few more months before I can actually hover around. A charge will last about 7-10mins constant flying, but since I can only do little "hops", it lasts about 15mins. So far I've broken landing gear, battery holder, and blade mount. But parts are relatively cheap.

After the show, I went and purchased the Realflight Simulator.
I'm not the type of person that has patience or can take things in
little steps. I figured that I would do all my damage on the
simulator instead of the real thing. I can tell you this: It's really
hard to fly a helicopter. A lot harder than I thought. I am
getting better at it, though. I'll probably be ready for the
real thing by next summer.

TRC

After seeing Jack flying his helicopter around in my garage, I knew I had to get one. Sure enough, the next day, I bought a Piccolo.

These things are hard as hell to fly around. Mine currently has some vibration issues I need to sort out, also, the main rotor like to pop off during flight...

I had that thing about 5 feet in the air, and the rotor popped off causing the helicopter to crash into the ground and my friends running for cover as the rotor went flying into the air.

What, no video????? lol... Hope noone was hurt.

Jack & John, do your helicopters have controls for the main blades? I saw some that cost more money, but they have more control of the rotor blades. Jack, just how fast where you going when you broke those parts? Or is it from bumping into things that is causing it to break?

yeah I have been eyeballin a few electric helis lately, probably wait for next tax return time to get one though. Nothing too serious just something small, and cheap to fix. I may get a good deal on a airplane a co-worker of mine built in Japan. He is moving and wants to unload it. Have to see how much he wants for it first.

thought aobut a heli but yeah.. no.. not for me. just too many controls and such to master to get decent and flying it. Real hard to fly.

Nitro heli is the way to go. Pick up a good gyro and you'll see a huge difference in rudder control.
I'm saving up for my 3rd nitro heli. Gonna pick up a Raptor 50 V2 with a 401 gyro. I practice alot on the sim.

I have enough trouble keeping my nitro truck running, I don't think I want to jump into nitro helis.

Tech, How about you burn a copy of that for me

Mine and Tune's are fixed pitch helis, nothing special really.... they are more like novelty toys. It seems though that a lot of people say the micro helis are harder to fly than say a 30 size. I broke parts mainly from loosing control about 4 feet in the air and killing the throttle right away. I bumped quite a bit of things but it seems the blades are taking the abuse so far

I was at Venture Hobbies this weekend and they were flying a small electric heli around the store. The guys behind the counter said that they were waiting for the first shipment to come in, so Im guessing it was a relatively new heli. It was a small dual prop, no tail rotor. The body of the heli looked like one of those bubble cabin things, like at the beginning of M*A*S*H* (am I showing my age here?).

They said it was an indoor heli? It had foam props on it so it wouldnt break anything if you flew it into something in the house.

I thought about putting my name down for one, but when they said it was like $250.00 for just the heli, no controller, I changed my mind.

Yeah it seems like indoor mini heli's are a new thing. I've never seen one with foam tho. So far the few that I have looked at have been in the 200 to 300 dollar range with everything. By the way, I like M*A*S*H* so don't feel bad!

Wow, that is pretty expensive for just the heli itself. How much are the controllers(TX/RX)? Friend of mine flies airplanes and his controller(TX only) was almost $1000 dollars. I love to have a heli so that I can fly it around my house(if I can control it well enough so that I don't chop somebody's head off).

Heres some more info on the heli they were flying at Venture Hobbies.

manufactured by HIROBO

Click on the X.R.B. link on the left side. The one they had in the store was the X.R.B.S.R. which I cant find a link for, but it is not wired to the controller like the X.R.B. is.

i have a shogun 400. the rest of the parts finaly came in! i started on a mini dragonfly. if you can fly one of those rtr mini chopers than you can fly almost anything above that. the 401 gyro keeps them perfectly still. and a li.po. bat will fly for 15-20 min. all together i have over $1000 into it. and that was with a deal on the radio.