Another Thunder Tiger Raptor? Well, yes, but this one is a little different. It is the first Raptor 60 in Guernsey. And it's mine. After spending 8 months learning to fly with the Morley Maverick last summer, I decided that if my heli flying skills were going to get better I would need a new Machine. But what to get? I eventually decided on this...Good Choice!
It has a TT 70H Motor inside with a Zimmerman Muffler...a very powerful combination. Fitted with only wooden blades supplied in the kit, it has a very good turn of speed and with a decent set of carbons should go even quicker as well as being capable of full 3D aerobatics. Which TT say it is capable of. As standard.
As you can see, I have already tried nose-in hovering with it. (What is the big deal with nose-in hovering...so many people make a big deal of it, but my first pirouette was nose-in to nose-in, the first time I ever tried nose-in!) With a little more running in (it has only run about 3 tanks of fuel) and a little more practice getting used to it, I think this helicopter is going to be brilliant.
Being just about the cheapest 60 size heli on the market today, if you are after a decent big heli, but without the cost incurrence of an X-cell or a Hirobo Freya, then give the Raptor 60 a go.
Well, I have flown it a little more now and it rolls surprisingly easily, even with the wooden kit blades. Although I haven't tried it yet, it should loop well too because in a stall turn, the amount of height it gains before it stops is phenominal.
Well, it has already has its first mishap. One day whilst hovering, it started spinning uncontrollably and hit the ground quite hard. As, you may be able to see in the picture below, both the blades broke and the tail fin broke. Not visible is the rest of the damage which included one the undercarriage skids, the fan casing, the canopy clip, and the gears which drive the tail drive shaft from the front of the boom (which caused the crash in the first place. £40-50 later excluding blades and it should be enough to sort it, although, I am still waiting for a few bits to arrive.
Well, this page hasn't been updated for a while now, but here are a few photos taken in January 2003 on a freezing cold afternoon. Since the mishap above, it has been upgraded even more. It has 3D fins, the main blades are 68cm Razors (Carbon, obviously), it has SAB carbon tail blades (left overs from my smashed up Xcell Pro), and a CSM 400 Gyro.
It has also done quite alot of flying, including some fairly daring stuff. Backwards aerobatics, inverted hovering, death spirals, even pirouetting flips. One of the scariest moments was when (whilst pulling out of a death spiral, it went a bit wobbly, and the cyclic didn't work any more! Some choice words went through my head, far too nasty to write here, so I won't. So, there was I, hovering at 200 feet, with no control, and nowhere near a runway, and the sea didn't look too inviting. What to do??? Moving the controls to full movement caused the heli to wobble in the direction of the control input. Brings a whole new meaning to the word "Jellycopter". so I wobbled it away from the sea, and my only choice was to land it in the field next to the flying site, and out of my sight, so I had to get to where I could see the field and then try and land the Raptor with hardly any control. Suffice to say, I got it down OK, and one of the pins holding the washout arm to the swashplate had gone, hence no control. A little steel pin 1 cm long could have destroyed an entire helicopter!!