JCadwell
Key Veteran
Location: Richland WA/ Morro Bay, CA
My Posts This: Topic Forum | I have a Hawk IV. I also have a sceadu 50, and a fury 91 (which isn't quite up). The Hawk is not a bad machine. I don't think it is a great machine either. It is stable, solid, and cheap. It is easy to fix, and easy to set up for both docile beginner flying and advancing into 3D with minimal mods. The kit is easy to put togethor, and the instructions are great.
The Hawk gets sloppy quickly. For what you pay for it, not a surprise. The plastic struts are pretty weak in my experience, and break. You won't break frames, but bounce one auto... The feathering spindles are like putty. They are also like 4 bucks a piece. But still putty like. The wire drive system is sloppy stock. When you get it out of the box, take the female drive adapter with the tail drive gear, and the male driveshaft, and stick them togethor. Then squeeze the hell out of the coupler so that the slop in the system is minimized. The tail is not very smooth as it has plastic balls and a plastic arm. The fins break more easily than other helis I have crashed, mostly because of the hollow areas. The stock tail linkage is sticky. There is no head button molded on, and the aftermarket part is so-so and has to be threaded in, which is difficult.
Most of the above issues have problems that you can throw money at. You can buy metal parts, additional bearings, antirotation kits, tail mounted servo kits, bigger feathering spindles, tail upgrades, tuff struts, yadda yadda. By the time you add all that up, you have a lot of money into a cheap kit.
Starting as a beginner, I would buy a Hawk, and plan to crash it. Don't pimp it out with expensive parts, or expect it to last forever. Learn, and buy a better bird. I am flying helicopters that are increasingly higher performance and higher quality. I notice what I don't like about the Hawk more and more. But it served its purpose very very well when I needed it to. I appreciate my Sceadu 50 even more for it.
Thanks, John Cadwell |
and cheap too.
