d_wheel
Senior Heliman
Location: Deep in the heart of Texas.
| I had the pleasure of assisting a local MA rep set up for, and make his first flight on his new Ion. The first flights were very impressive and demonstrated the potential for this design. It has plenty of power and the pilot put it through its paces flawlessly. After some thought, I placed one on order. However, in the following 2 weeks, a few bugs began to show up. First, the first reduction gear off of the motor has stripped 3 times. Secondly, the motor and batteries continually get hotter than recommended maximum temps. Third, on the last flight I witnessed, there was a high pitched whine that sounded like one of the motor bearing might be going out. After this, I promptly cancelled my order.
In my humble opinion, even though this is a very impressive design, which has the potential to set the standards for high performance electric helicopters, it has a few design bugs that need to be worked out. My order including the helicopter, 2 sets of batteries, and blades came to around $3000.00 including tax. Including digital servos, paddles, chargers, power supply, duralites, etc., I would have had around $4000.00 in the project. For this much initial investment, I expect to get a product that is thoroughly de-bugged.
Later;
D.W.
Gettin old aint for sissies! |
