This is a recently released kit, and is being distributed in Australia by Soxos Australia. They are a new business that has been formed to distribute the brand, and it's also run by two good friends.

Like most people I was not keen on buying sight unseen, but I was lucky enough to get a close look at the range at the heligods fun fly. I will say that I did like the look of it, enough that I thought it would replace the dear old raptor e700 in my fleet... its always good to change things up every now and then.

Setup
Cyclic : Futaba BLS172
Tail : Futaba BLS276
FBL : Brain2
Motor : Scorpion 4530-450
ESC : HobbyWing 160
RX : 7008sb
Main Blades: Rail 696
Tail Blades : Rail 106

The Manual
The manual, in my opinion is the weakest point of the kit. It reminds me of an old align manual, or infact the raptor manual. Just really a bunch of cad drawings with little explanation, but the diagrams are detailed enough to get the job done. But compare it to the Synergy 766/Goblin/MSH Protos Max manuals, it needs a lot of work...

The Kit
Everything in the kit was packed nicely and well protected. There were no missing parts, and it takes a leaf out of Aligns book, it includes Velcro tap, zip ties etc... All the bags are labelled, and line up nicely with the manual, which makes it easy.


The only thing to keep in mind, is that it does not come with blades or a pinion.

The Build
The build was simple enough, tho I did get a stumped in a spot or two, and I would say that was mainly me rather than the manual. The parts are all quality machined, and the carbon look very high quality. Not really much to say.. its a build.. enjoy...


Impressions
It looks like it borrows a lot from other models.. it has the tray and nose of an align.. the lower frames and boom/tail of a raptor. The centre part seems very goblinish, and the head reminds me of a Gaui. Everything seems as close as possible to the main shaft, trying to get CG as close to the centre point. The head looks great, and the heli seems short... here is a pick of it in front of an Agile 7.2


One of the main things it does different is the tail push rod, or in its case.,. a Torque Tube, for lack of a better word. This just bolts onto the servo and turns.. no pushing.. this gives is pretty much 0 mechanical gain, and in fact, it is the highest I have ever had the tail gain on a brain because of this. However the tail was very tight, the links causing the stiffness. This created a wag for the first flight.. but I let it go, oiled the tail shaft, and it loosed up by the end of the flight, to where there was no tail wag on the second flight.

The other interesting note, is that it has only 1 swash follower arm. I hear that this is to save weight, but from the design I am not sure. It does however by make that one arm super stiff, and I would not be surprised if has less movement than the standard design, as the arm is supported on both sides..

I also love how the canopy has no external visible signs of how it is mounted... this could make repairing the canopy after a crash harder, but I love the way you can see no canopy mounts.

Flight
well I have only had a few, and in windy conditions so it is hard to tell. The heli seems very aggressive off centre, both in cyclic and tail, I will end up tuning this down.. only a little... it however moves in the air, and with only 696 main blades. I am keen to try some 716's on it, and see how it goes. Running either 4400's or 5000's doesn't seem to make a large different like it can on some models... but I will continue testing and see..

Overall
Its a nice quality heli. Except for the tail control there is nothing super innovative about it.. but then again, no brand makes large innovative changes on a regular basis. It flies well, but I have yet to tune and really give it a go, so keeping my opinions to myself on that one for now...

Overall its a very nice heli, that I am looking forward to see how it goes once she and I have become friends...