Walkera 22E Remote Controlled RC Helicopter- Review
Having spent a long time wondering which RC Helicopter I should get in order to learn and master the art of RC/Radio Controller Helicopter flight I turned to the forums at RC Universe for advise, i was then totally swamped with options and ideas. I could not decide whether to go with an Align T-Rex 450 RC Helicopter with its good looks and quality pats, that i would no doubt destroy or for a cheaper and smaller option which was the Walkera 22E where everything comes in the box including batteries, transmitter/ receiver/motor and the RC Helicopter kit its self. I was on a budget so the answer was the Walkera 22E for me.
On receiving the Walkera 22E RC Helicopter all boxed up, I opened it up and was amazed to see... well how breakable it looked.
Maiden flight - .1 seconds
I took the little RC Helicopter to the New Forrest which is about an hour from where i lived, there was a slight breeze, but really it was nothing and I thought that turning back home just for a puff of wind was a bad idea.
Note to all:
A puff of wind to us, is like a Tornado to a Walkera 22E RC Helicopter, so as i slowly upped the throttle, the wind came under the front of the rotors and back flipped the RC Helicopter as it tried to hack off the tail with the main blades.
The great thing about this RC Helicopter is the cheap price of parts on eBay, particularly if you buy the most common things you break in bulk. Most of the gear will come from Hong Kong, if you are in doubt as to which guys from that location are good to deal with go to http://www.align-trex-parts.com/Top-Trex-eBay-Sellers as they are all people i have personally dealt with.
Flight No 2 - 3.5 seconds
Due to me trying to hover to close to the ground as opposed to getting a bit of height before i got disorientated, i ended up trying to dig a hole with the main blades very quickly. New parts from eBay.... I also upgraded to a metal head to keep the cost down over time.
I then moved to New Zealand where it was winter, so I waited until perfect conditions allowed me to destroy my Walkera 22E RC Helicopter once again. On this occasion the tail motor gave up ...... eBay.
For my last attempt in controlling the Walkera 22E I somehow inadvertently started doing some 3d flight which really did a good job of managing to bend everything that was originally straight... eBay and rebuilt.
I left my Walkera 22E Remote Controlled Helicopter alone for a while after that as i felt i was jinxed with it. I came back to it some months later only to find that it would spin up but could no longer get of the ground, I went to the RC Universe forum but there were no answers to find.
That was it for me, I ordered a Walker 60B RC Helicopter as the size was a bit bigger and i thought i should be able to control it better. I gave the Walkera 22E RC helicopter to a friend so that he could tinker around with it and maybe get it going. A couple of weeks went by and I asked him how he had gotten on with it. He said it was still the same and showed me the video on his camera of the pitch of the blades going up and down. It then struck me what was wrong, I had unfortunately put the main blades on back to front :)
The Walkera 22E enjoyed some high flights with my friend until the spare parts ran dry and then it met its death in an underground car park in the CBD of Auckland.
Recommendations: None, no one should be subjected to this kind of torture.
