The E-Flite Blade 400 RTF is a very nice introduction to the hobby. You get a potent 400/450 size helicopter and a very nice radio system, the Spectrum DX6i with AR6100e receiver and four E-Flite DS75 servos, which are adequate but not exactly outstanding. The only blemish is that the supplied charger for the 3 cell 1800 mAh LiPo only accepts 12V input, so you need a battery or a power supply to get going. Both the heli and the radio comes with pretty good manuals, but they are not integrated, so it is quite a task to locate all the relevant info. The manual has very little info on rebuilding and setting up the helicopter, which is a huge minus, because this info becomes essential sooner or later, so you need to find it on the internet, in magazines or elsewhere.
The Blade 400 is fast, agile and lively, to the extend that it is quite a handful for a novice pilot. It is supposedly ready-to-fly out of the box but, in my case anyway, this claim was a bit of an exaggeration. The problem was, as I discovered through hard study (and a few crashes), that the rotorhead was set up with way too much pitch. With the throttle stick in centre position it would have +5 degrees, and with zero throttle hardly any negative pitch. This means that the heli is very keen to get off the ground, but doesn’t want to come back down, especially when there is a bit of wind. The headspeed is quite low for the same reason, so stability and response is worse than necessary. You simply must adjust the relevant linkages to obtain a better (lower) pitch at centre stick.
The design is very nice and thoughtful – a big improvement (on paper anyway) over older designs such as the Align T-Rex 450XL and clones. Servo placement is fine with aileron and rudder servos placed symmetrical on top of each other with good spacing to the main gear, so there is no chance of binding. The motor is top mounted on a very heavy duty mount and gets maximum cooling air flow. The battery tray is the top part of the frame, so it is very sturdy and the battery straps are fixed and won’t fall off. The frame itself is sturdy moulded plastic and you don’t need to loosen a myriad of screws to replace parts. So, what’s not to like?
Well, I unfortunately suffered some pretty bad tail vibrations (or rather my Blade 400 did), that I simply couldn’t get rid of. I balanced main and tail rotor blades and the complete assembled rotorhead, changed the tail tube (which was bent), changed the main gear, lubricated all and every part including the belt to no avail. The heli would fly ok, but the entire tail was “a blur” due to very rapid vibrations. Eventually I gave up and bought 3 cheap HK-450 kits from HobbyKing and a lot of spare parts including some very nice metal components. I moved most of the components to the HK-450 and it was a blast; easy to set up, very stable and responsive to fly.
As with the mSR, I have some issues with the pricing policy of E-Flite. Its great to be able to buy a helicopter with a very nice transmitter, LiPo, charger, etc.; but why are the spare parts so expensive? I wanted a spare plastic rotor head for the Blade 400, ready to pop-in in case of a crash, to save time and to enjoy putting it together. But building it from spare parts is ridiculously expensive; I stopped counting at $150! And it can’t be bought separately. The same goes for the rest of the components; if you want an extra LiPo to avoid having to wait two hours while charging between flights, it is $100! A similar no-name battery can be bought for $10-20 from HobbyKing and other retailers. And the quality is just as good as the E-Flite stuff, after all, everything comes from China anyway, probably even from the same factories in Shenzhen. The only difference is the branding and the marketing. But I think that it is remarkable, that none of my LHS (local hobby shops) carry spare E-Flite LiPos. That, to me, is a clear indication that the mark up is way off….
So, in conclusion, a good buy, a good way to get into the hobby, but not unproblematic and not really suited for beginners.
PS
I almost forgot the most annoying detail about the Blade 400: The canopy is a very tight fit and to put it on is similar to trying to get toothpaste back into the tube. Really annoying; but the procedure can be made less strenuous by fitting some third party canopy holders.
