RC Heli recommendation for a newbie?

Helis are hard to fly; I’d recommend trying RC foamies first or starting with a smaller, cheaper heli (you are going to crash it at least a few times—everyone does when they get started). Actually now that I think of it quadcopters would be a good place to start. They are much more stable than regular helis.

A couple sites you might find helpful:
* http://www.rcgroups.com/
* http://diydrones.com/ (disclaimer, I’m a moderator of this site)

Gyros make things expensive but they can be really great when tuned just right. Are you an engineer by background?

Not commercially available, but the hexacopter is totally badass and looks dead simple for a rotocraft.

Yeah the Mikrokopter guys have made an impressive craft but it’s definitely out of most people’s price range to build something like that (it’s also beyond most people to build the hardware and software for that—finding gyros that work with vibration and writing non-linear attitude estimation filters, etc).

This is probably a more economical device (I believe you can get a developer kit for $1200 with the final consumer price being ~$500): http://ardrone.parrot.com/parrot-ar-drone/en

That said if you just want to do RC flying and not mess with autopilots it will be much cheaper.

Thanks for all the replies, guys. I had been waiting for an email alert, but must not have configured my account correctly, ‘cuz I just logged in to fluther and found your responses.

I toyed with a micro coaxial that my son got for Christmas. Definitely crashed a lot and went through a set of blades.

RealFlight crashes have been frequent, but lately I’ve been able to get up, loop around the control tower and then land back on the big “H” routinely, so figured I might be ready for real world stuff.

timtrueman: I’ll check the forums, thanks. Based on my simming, I expect the flight characteristics for the quadcopters would be a lot different than a straight single blade bird, yes? And, if so, if there a re-learning curve that would be appreciable between the two such that it might just be better to jump in with a “regular” (what do you call the non-coaxial, non-quad units?) setup but with some training wheels?

robmandu: Nice, I’ve seen this video somewhere. I was thinking of strapping a camera on the unit (8–10 megapixel-not VGA video), so would need some lift capability. Don’t see a spec on the hexacopter for that. Definitely cool AND pricey though (if my Euro conversions were correct :-)

Thank you, again, for the info, links, and ideas.

-Dave