There are two main types of helicopters: co-axial heli's, with two main rotors turning on a common axis, and single-rotor machines, which have one lifting rotor and a smaller rotor in the tail. Ready to Fly (RTF) models of both types come with a flight battery, a charger, and a transmitter (which usually needs eight AA batteries). Charge the flight battery and you are ready to fly.
Co-axial and Single-rotor Helicopters |
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V3 Lama - co-ax |
Blade CP Pro - single |
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Co-axial heli's (co-ax) are small, easy to fly, and cost less. In most cases a co-axial heli is your best bet for a first machine. People who visit you may be quite astonished when you take off, hover, fly around the room, and land the tiny helicopter on the spot you choose!
Single rotor designs are fast, highly maneuverable, and exciting to fly. Most beginning RC pilots find single rotor helicopters harder to control. As your skill and confidence grows the move to single-rotor flight offers endless challenges.
Whichever type of heli you decide to start with make sure it has at least four channels of radio. Less than four channels will not teach you everything you need to know to fly RC helicopters.
Stay away from the cheapies being spammed all over craigslist. It makes more sense to select a model for reliability and flight characteristics than lowest cost. In any case, the base price of a model is not the total amount you will spend. Heli's need spare parts on those occasions when mechanical adjustment or the pilot's control is less than perfect and a crash occurs. You will buy spare blades (for sure), main rotor shafts, spindle shafts that hold the blade grips together in the rotor head, the odd canopy, extra flight batteries, and special parts to make the helicopter fly better, look better, or both.
Your choice of model may be influenced by the stock in your local hobby shop (LHS), or how readily parts are available on-line. E-sky, makers of the V3 Lama and Honey Bee single rotor helicopters, sells exclusively on-line at low prices. E-flite, who makes the Blade CX and Blade CP series, sells through retail outlets for premium prices. You can get parts for your Blade CX or CP today if your LHS carries E-flite. If you are a Lama or Honey Bee flier you must order parts on the Internet, where you will pay noticeably less per item, but also pay for shipping. If you order on-line you can cut the cost-per-item if you anticipate future needs and order more parts than the one or two you need today. Even after shipping is applied on-line prices can fall well below retail.
Ready to Fly models are by no means the only kind of helicopter. There are Almost Ready to Fly (ARF) kits—completely assembled airframes that you can add electronics to, as well as kits you can build. The choices of radios, servos (to move control mechanisms), motors, and power sources is endless. On this web site we just describe a few RTF models that are known to fly well with readily available parts for those who want to get started. Over time you will become aware of many more heli's than are shown here!
When you know a thing or two about RC heli's, parts, and going prices, you may find some bargins for parts, even a complete model, from other helicopter nuts on the RC web sites. On-line transactions aren't the same as cash-in-hand or parts-in-hand, but the rewards of interacting with the RC community on-line can lead to friendships, great deals, and the satisfaction of giving someone else a deal on the parts s/he needs to get back in the air.