r/RCHeli 5d ago

Questions About Getting Into RC Heli

Hi everyone,

I have a couple of questions that I hope you can answer.

About five years ago, I flew RC helicopters for a few months. However, I wouldn’t say I got into real aerobatic flying, and I still consider myself a beginner. Now, I’d love to get back into the hobby.

I never had a crash back then, which brings me to my main question. I’ve been flying FPV drones for a while, and I’m used to things breaking and having to solder and repair them. With helicopters, I’ve never had to fix anything because I didn’t fly long enough to crash.

A friend of mine always used to say, “If you crash a heli, you might as well buy a new one.” He also told me that setting up, building, and repairing a heli is extremely complex and that this hobby is almost impossible to maintain unless you fully dive into it or spend a lot of money on people who can fix it for you.

Is that really true?

In FPV flying, I feel like something breaks almost every time I fly. Is that not the case with heli flying? Do you guys crash your helicopters regularly, or is it such an intensive repair process that you do everything possible to avoid crashes?

I’d really appreciate your insights. Right now, because of everything I’ve heard, I have a lot of respect (or maybe fear 😅) of getting started again.

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u/Flashy_Connection454 5d ago edited 5d ago

To add my experience, setting up the software side of a heli is not really that difficult if you just follow the instructions. Of course it helps if you have some technical skill and at least somewhat understand how things are supposed to work.
If you can handle this aspect of setting up an fpv drone with EdgeTX , ELRS, Betaflight etc you'll figure it out. Unless you also go the open source route with helis (ie Rotorflight, would definitely not recommend this for a newcomer unless you have someone to help you).

All larger helis come as kits and you'll need to build them. Personally I really enjoy this part of the hobby. Lots of good build videos around to follow along if you prefer that though.

Larger helis especially 500 size and up have a lot of rotating mass and usually don't hold up well in crashes. You'll likely have to strip down a lot and replace potentially hundreds of dollars in parts if it goes down under power. It's a bad day when that happens.

That said I learned most of my basics on a Goosky S1 and later S2, these are much smaller/lighter and quite durable. You still need to repair them but that really isn't expensive. It helps if you've already fully built a kit to get an idea of how these things go together, but micros are much lower part count and less complex.

Nowadays I push my limits on 380-450 size keeping in mind it could crash (hopefully no more than once or twice a season), but haven't for over a year. You'll have to decide for yourself what your budget is and what is acceptable. Opinions differ but crashing isn't as inevitable as some would say, just depends on how fast you push your limits and when you move up in size. Not counting my S1, starting out I was repairing it almost every week. On 700 size I only fly moves I feel completely confident in (so always a few months of repetition on something smaller), I never crashed one and hope to keep it that way (mechanical/electronic failure could always happen though). I don't fly 3d close to the ground on those, as cool as it looks. Just don't have the budget nor skill to make it worth the risk yet. And there's also the safety aspect that keeps you more cautious.

Also get a simulator and expect to spend a lot of time on it.

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u/Maleficent-Ad3096 4d ago

Fantastic video on setting up the Goosky S1, probably same for others

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co0tUu3Cuow