Dyehard
Veteran
Location: Cedar Bluff, Va.
| I'll throw in with Steve on this one. I''ve built and flown at least two of every 60 that Schluter/Robbe has made since the Heli-boy days except the Milli and Nova. The frame on the SE is simply another version of the parallel frame setup that was used on the Heli-boy, Superior, Champion, Scout, and Magic. I've done my share of repairs on all of them, they bend like any aluminum frame when they hit the ground. The Nova and Milli are stacked frames as used on quite a few helis now, and I know for a fact that the Nova has a many pieces as the X-cell SE to bend and break when it hits the ground, I counted them. While no two major crashed are the same, in most you get such items as the blades, flybar, spindle, mainshaft, and sometimes the landing gear, the tail boom and drive shaft and canopy, depending on what direction it hits. In the last MAJOR crash I had with my Graphite SE, it went in from over two hundred feet up, into a plowed field that had been baking in the sun for months. The damage, including blades, came to slightly under $300. Last year a friend updated his Graphite 60 with a bunch of SE99 parts, unfortunatly he didn't take out all the ball bearing spacer when he put in the split gear. At over 150 feet up the tail let go when it stripped the top track, the last 100 feet in went straight in on the nose on to a gravel road that has been driven on for over twenty years. He couldn't have hit any harder on concrete. That is with out dought the worst crash I have seen in quite a while, including some doozies at Hebron. The new graphite front end was a mess, he bought a front end kit to replace it. It got the fan and shroud, wiped out the landing gear, pretzeled the head and blew up the canopy. The blades were splinters. The total for the heli parts, including new blades, was $475. I know, I rebuilt the heli for him. If it had been a Robbe, the entire front end would have still been toast, the canopy would still have been gone, the head still would have been pretzeled, the gear would still have been torn off and the frames would probably have been bent. I have never seen a set of aluminum frames hit that hard and not bend. Aluminum, who ever it is made by, is still aluminum. It does not have the ability to bend, spring back and keep its shape. Graphite will, to a point. My friends SE only had one upper frame broken, despite the rest of the damage. Going with the prices posted on Ron's site, the cost would have been just as much if it had been a Futura SE. Robbe doesn't have a lock on designing good helis, theirs bend and break just like everone elses. How much it costs to repair one will depend on how it hits the ground, not the fact that it is made by Robbe. BTW, $475 is a long way from $800, for one of the worst MAJOR crashes of an X-cell SE that I have ever seen. Most are considerably less. |
