Helicopter Ikarus Eco 8

My newest member in my model collection - a second hand Ikarus Eco 8. Its a electric powered helicopter with a blade diameter of 1m. As power source I use a 3 cell lithium polymer battery with 4000mAh. With this battery its possible to fly 12-15min.

After the first flights I am really happy with the Ikarus Eco 8. Its handy, and even if the brushless controller is not build for Lipo the batteries do not suffer. I meassured the voltage of the cells during the flight to see if they will be overloaded which didn't occur.

I started to fly this helicopter by hovering in front of me. Because of many hours with the simulation software Aerofly Professional Deluxe I felt very save from the beginning. I had to trim the model just a little bit and to correct the gain of the gyro but after this it hovered very stable in front of me.

The next step was to hover in front of the nose. Its not the way books recommend, but because of my simulation experience I was quite sure about it. I case of emergency I kept in mind to give full pitch and recatch the helicopter up in the air. But this was never neccessary.

On the third day I started my first real flights around in the sky.  I trained flying eights to get used to turns in both sides. But also there its important to fly eights in both directions otherwise you will get troubles when you need to turn other than usual.