HeliDuce
Senior Heliman
Location: Nashville, TN
| I just recently completed building the new updated for 2007 Eco 8 Royal from Ikarus. This is my 4th Ikarus helicopter, the other three being a Piccolo Fun, (2), a Piccolo Pro and now the Eco 8 Royal. The build went fairly well but there were a few snags I should mention. First off the parts bags should be labeled and organized better. A new builder would probably be overwhelmed trying to figure out which bolt, nut or screw goes where even though they do show pictures of the various parts they are not shown to scale. The pictures of the various linkage rods are the same way, they give a measurement but they are not to scale. If they were to scale it would be easy to just place the linkage rods over the plans to get the correct length, how simple is that? There were two parts which did not have holes drilled in them where there should have been holes, the tail boom was missing a hole for a screw to hold the tail rotor assembly on and there were no holes in the horizontal wing on top of the boom. This is minor but it still should have been done. The instructions should be better, there were several misspelled words and a few areas where more details need to be addressed. The quality of the parts is fair but not on par with other E-helicopter makers, i.e., Align. There is no auto rotation gear included in the kit, you have to buy that extra and that just shouldn't be the case in 2007, shame on Ikarus for not including those in the kit!! You also have to purchase a blade holder if you want to fold the blades back for storage. The included stick-on decals are very attractive however they are a pain to get on without wrinkles and bubbles. I could have used water and a drop of soap but I wanted to assemble this bird as if I had never build one before because there will be lots of new fliers buying this helicopter. The layout of the electronics could probably be improved, i.e, the location for the receiver, gyro and speed controller. I had to add a 6" extension to get the speed controller lead to reach the receiver back on the tail boom. There really isn't enough space to mount the receiver and gyro on the platform on the front of the boom. A simple solution would have been to make the platform larger or place a flat on the bottom so the gyro could be placed on it upside down. The new frame is very rigid once it's assembled. It comes it two half's and locks together using 12 or so steel Allen socket headed screws. The landing gear interlock into the frame when the two half's are joined and hold the landing gear well. This design for the gear is good and bad, good in that it's simple and fairly strong, bad in that it may be very difficult to ever change the landing gear to another type since the stock gear has plastic keys that fit into the frame.
Flying---So far I've only had time to do a test hover to adjust tracking and check trims, that went well with just a little tracking adjustment needed. I am able to obtain +9-9 pitch using the recommended settings. You could obtain more by using slightly longer arms on the servos. Finally what do I think? I think Ikarus needs to include the auto-rotation hub and bearing, blade holders, hardened steel main shaft and tail shaft and get there parts pricing more in line with other manufacturers. Time will tell whether this will be a good flier or not, the original Eco 8 required extensive and expensive upgrades to fly well, I don't know about the new Eco 8 Royal yet it's too early to pass judgement. In my opinion it's a real shame because this truly is a beautiful helicopter, had Ikarus spent another few dollars on the auto-rotation gear, hardened steel main and tail blade shafts and a blade holder they would be far better off.
Here are the specs on it;
AXI Brushless 28/20/8 Motor 1500 RPM PV
19 Tooth 5mm pinion
Jeti Spin 44
Hitec HS-225 BB servos including tail
Art-Tech HH Gyro
Battery PolyQuest 20C 4350 3-Cell Lipoly
Hitec Electron 6 receiver
Gary Morris
  
Trex 600,Gazaur Mars 480, Trex SE V2, ESky 550 ESmart, Eco 8 Royal, Dragnous II, Falcon 3D, SE, |
Ooops! Sorry Gary.
I have been thinking of getting one but I have an eco8 that is in excellent condition and probably would not get much for it to finance the upgrade. Will the auto rotation hub fit it?? I guess I am trying to talk myself into buying this bird
