A Beginner’s Review of the Walkera 4#3B

I’ve been playing with my new Walkera 4#3B heli for around 6 days now, and I thought it would be useful to review it as a beginner. Later I will review it again when I have some experience.

So far, I am very happy with it. It’s extremely responsive. I expect a micro to be twitchy. However, the Walkera really does do exactly what I tell it; I can’t fly it very well, but it’s not the helicopter’s fault.

One note worth making though: the tail rotor is not designed to take the force of attempting to adjust orientation while the helicopter is grounded. The tail rotor spins, and fights against the friction of the skids on the ground, attempting to turn the craft. In my case, the rotor immediately escaped its friction mount and the tail rotor mount disassembled itself, spraying tiiiny gears and pins all over the place. About an hour later, when I had found all the bits and pieces, I added a blob of glue to the end of the main pin to obstruct any further escape attempts, and things have been golden ever since.

I spent the first three days of practice just holding the orientation of the tail while adjusting the throttle. I have tried to follow the “Radd School of Flight” suggestions as best I can, given that that they aren’t intended for a micro. I can now hold the tail orientation fairly well, and also practised adjusting the direction of the heli while keeping it on the floor.

As you increase the throttle, the craft attempts to pull to the left. This is because the tail rotor is blowing air to the right. If you are on a smooth floor, the craft starts sliding to the left. If you are on a carpet, the craft tips over to the left and falls over. To counter this you need to apply cyclic to the right.

I can now increase the throttle to the point where the heli takes off. At that point, the amount of cyclic required to maintain position changes dramatically, and you have to adjust everything to keep a stationary helicopter. I am trying to do a slow, controlled take-off, which is a very difficult thing to do. I can now succeed about 25% of the time. IF I succeed in a controlled lift off, I then try to hover. At best, I can hover for maybe ten seconds before I lose control and crash the craft. If I don’t succeed in a controlled lift off, I usually end up crashing right away.

The heli arrived ready to fly, and I am very pleased with the way it responds. It doesn’t hover by itself, but it doesn’t have a mind of its own either.

I have crashed this aircraft maybe once every 20 seconds since I started lifting the heli off the ground (which was several days ago). So far, it has accepted all of my abuse without complaint. The rotor blades haven’t shown any signs of distress, and they don’t do much damage to anything they hit either. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that they don’t even cut skin. I was unpleasantly surprised to find out that this matters.

The main motor heats up a lot over the course of a flight, and from reading around, it appears that some motors last forever, and some last only twenty flights or so. The motor getting hot is usually a sign of a limited lifetime motor. I expect to need to replace it soon, but so far there have been no actual signs of it giving in. With good care, a motor lasts much longer. I have the necessary lubricants on order. We’ll see if they get here in time.

Perhaps my greatest quibble with this machine is the tiny skids it comes with: they catch in the carpet. This can be dangerous for the heli, as the skids jam into the carpet during a crash and prevent the heli from moving freely. This is a problem when the main rotor is still being driven, as the blades are forced to thrash the carpet. It is also difficult to take off from carpet, as the skids will catch and pull the heli over during takeoff. I have been using a mouse pad as a target pad for controlled takeoffs and landings, and that does work. Still, less “pokey” skids would be nice.

So far, the Walkera 4#3B has survived everything I have thrown at it, and I am very happy with my purchase.

(In between writing the above and uploading it, I have found out how to tweak the helicopter to be even more stable, and although this will be old news to veterans out there, the tweaking made it much easier to hover, so that I can now hold a hover for tens of seconds and make a (mostly) controlled landing. My next post will be on those tweaks.)