I’ll admit it - I have been skeptical of the micro helicopters for some time. I ordered what was, at the time, an inexpensive Chinese made r/c helicopter from eBay a couple of years ago. Never could get it to fly, but it made plenty of noise. That experience is probably what made me skeptical about micro airplanes too. Anyhow, I have stayed away from the helicopters ever since.
For Christmas this year, I gave my son a Mini XPV. Unfortunately, we received what some are saying was the most snow in Denver history (that fell on Christmas Day that is). No flying for us. To my total surprise, my mother and my mother in law both gave our family a set of Air Hogs Havoc Helicopters, in the form of the Heli Laser Battle set. All of a sudden we had 4 helicopters, and we had never asked for any! Very strange occurrence, but a very good one!
With all of the festivities winding down and 3 of us searching for something to do, we opened up the helo’s, popped in some batteries, and started charging them. Getting them dialed in was a bit time consuming. I would much prefer to see a dial for trim adjustments as oppsed to the push button method. But you deal with what you have, and we finally had them flying reasonably well.
While these are definitely designed to fly indoors, they do require some space. They seem to want to fly in clockwise circles more than anything (a function of torque I am sure), and if they get next to the wall or ceiling, they seem to be held there as if by magnets.
After each crash (and there will be plenty), make sure to check the tail rotor for any fibers it may have picked up. At one point one of ours was flying pretty strangely. Upon closer inspection we discovered a dog hair had been wrapped around the tail rotor shaft.
Overall I am pretty impressed with these helicopters, and would comfortably recommend them to anyone. They take some getting used to, but the foam they are made of is very durable, and we have yet to break a rotor (extra tail blades were included). Once I get good at flying this, I will be anxious to try something with a little more control, possibly a 3 channel model.
