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| Falcon 3D |
Average Rating: 5 |
Jun 24, 2007
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Reviewed By: JasonJ
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Join Date: Jun 24, 2007
Location: North Idaho
Total Reviews: 4
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Rating: 5 out of 10
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If you read my Walkera 22e review, then you know I bought a Falcon 3D as well.
I am not swimming in money, and after reading as much as I could find, it was difficult to find a lot of bad things being said about this helicopter. The price ($300-ish to the door) was downright cheap for an RTF with brushless, lipo, HH gyro, and a bit bigger size than the Walkera. Size-wize it is in between the micro helis and the 400 class heli. It is 30 inches in length with a 24 3/4 inch rotor span, weighs 18.69 ounces.
Out of the box, the build quality seemed pretty good. It has a brushless motor, esc, 1300mah lipo, shaft drive tail, head holding gyro. It is not ccpm, it is mechanically mixed. I put on the included training gear and charging up the lipo with the supplied charger ( I immediately purchased a balance charger as the simple charger supplied is unhealthy for battery life). The head has some Z links in it that are eliminated with the aluminum upgrades.
I was able to achieve, after adjusting the swash level, adjusting the PIT/PLT on the tx and trimming it out, some degree of hovering ability despite my shear noobiness. With about four weeks of flying 1 or two battery charges four to six times a week, I am now hovering and controlling this helicopter with no training skids, and no crashing. The hover characteristics are very stable, almost hands free for a few seconds anyway. The few crashes I have had with this heli caused minimal damage. The only parts I have replaced are a tail rotor shaft (it broke when I tried to bend it back a second time), and a new set of blades.
I did have to add a mod to the tail fin to prevent the tail rotor from contacting the ground if the nose is up when too close to ground. This results in a bent tail rotor shaft. Another issue is the tail boom supports don't actually support. After some hard landings, some slop developed at the point where the tail boom is connected to the airframe. The boom can flex up and down, causing improper gear mesh. My solution, barbaric as it is, was to place tape around the boom just behind the boom support part that clamps to the boom. This has stopped the movement but this part should do a better job of clamping.
Parts and upgrades are available and inexpensive, and other radios can be used with this heli.
I would recommend this to any beginner to intermediate level pilot. I feel it has great value and provides good performance for what is spent. |
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• Price is decent for size and features
• Very stable hover, almost hands free when well trimmed and adjusted.
• Supplied tx is okay, heli responds very well to computer tx
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• Easy to have tail rotor ground strike when close to ground.
• Boom support does not support well.
• Z links in head assembly and servo linkage connections. It would seem that slop will develop over time.
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