Category:
Hobby or Toy
Product:
Honey Bee (Hobby Bee) EK1H-E004
Price:
$111.00 on eBay
Manufacturer Description:
The ESKY Honey Bee Series RC helicopter features good performance for superior strength, stability, controllable flight and durability, which are favored by the fun fliers all over the world.Honey Bee helicopter is designed with beginner in mind, has been completely assembled in factory,you can enjoy the flying pleasure after fixing the battery. CCPM (collective cyclic pitch mixing) system can ensure the helicopter do various skyways flight perfectly.
Manufacturer website:
http://www.twf-sz.com/english/index.asp
Source of Product:
eBay - But it now! Auction
First Thoughts:
After flying the Havoc Heli mini helicopter I wanted more. I was terribly disappointed with the controllability of the Havoc and thought that a three or four channel helicopter would be a good progression. I researched four or five different RC helicopters and narrowed my choices down to two because of price, a three channel helicopter with counter rotating blades which I couldn't find ANY information and the Honey Bee. I contacted a few previous buyers of the other helicopter and they did not give very good reviews, on said that the battery caught on fire. This left me with the honey bee.
I spent about $20 more than I needed to so that I could have a USB connector to connect to the transmitter and a flight simulator which the eBay auction claimed as a $25 value. I suppose the USB connector might be worth $25, but the simulator is available for free on the manufacturer's website. I've tried playing around with it a bit using my keyboard and is seems rather ungainly. I think I'll need the controller to make it really work well. I got the flight simulator cable in the hopes of avoiding (expensive) crashes...
Also, the software is available from its home page: Flying-Model-Simulator FMS 2.0
The 'manual' for the helicopter on the manufacturer's website looks like a spare parts list. With a little digging around I found a manual HERE. It worries a little when reading the manual, its a little hard to understand. Maybe I will get a revised version, like this is an old version maybe? I am interested to see how the simulator works so I scanned down to that part and is says, "1. using soft dog to connect with 4CH simulator port and connect the computer with the RS232 port, then following the instruction which in our website and operate it correctly. 2. using the simulator to connect with your computer directly, then fly with out 8 " AA " battery operate as per the instruction." Wow, and I thought I was reading the manual... this has me a little worried.
I read a few reviews claiming this is a good starter helicopter, most of which have direct links to sites to buy the thing. I also read a couple of extremely bad reviews by people (much like myself) probably have no business writing an RC helicopter review. Both of the bad reviews came from people who who had never flown an RC helicopter, took the remote and helicopter out of the box, charged up the battery took it outside and gave it full throttle... well one didn't even bother to go outside. As much as I would like, I don't know a single person who flies RC helicopters so I must avoid the plights of uninitiated by reading and practicing on the computer simulation.
I'm eagerly awaiting for my package to arrive and found what I think is a good resource for this helicopter. I Don't think it was written specifically for the model which I purchased, but it's close enough. All fixed pitch Honey Bees should be covered? I'm not as worried about the badly translated manual now. It also looks like there are some good ideas for mods which I will be interested in reading more about. I'm particularly interested in running a LiPo battery for increased flight time.
Neat Honey Bee Wiki - Honey Bee FP EFlightWiki
Update - Jan. 8th 2008
The helicopter arrived today, I'll post pictures of the packaging once I find some time to do it, so perhaps tomorrow morning before work. There is no exact model number listed on the box, so be wary if you are buying one of these. Everything seems to be present as far as I can tell.
I don't plan on flying the helicopter until this weekend at the very soonest so this review is going to be a long one, or I hope it's going to be a long review and I don't smash the model into a thousand pieces the first time I try to fly it.
I pulled the controller and USB connector out of the box eagerly wanting to dive into computer simulated practice since I already have the software installed. I went through the joystick calibration in FMS and tried to fly in the simulation. What a disappointment... either I'm a horrible pilot or the controls need to be configured for correct flight with the simulation. I found the throttle was on the left stick Left-Right and was able to do a few simulated bunny hops and noting more. Nothing is stated in the manual about how to correctly configure the software to work with the controller so I apparently need to pound this out on my own.
Some of this probably belongs in the review section... I'll back up a bit when I add the pictures.
Review:
Final Thoughts:
