Remember the "virtually indestructible" MIA G10 Landing gear? Turns out, not so much. It looks pretty sitting on the shelf, but once I got a chance to fly a few battery packs through it, I was less than impressed. After a few relatively soft crashes onto carpet, this is what the MIA gear looked like:
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MIA Landing gear... save your money. |
The stock landing gear took a lot harder hits. It eventually took a fall onto concrete from about 80 feet to do the stock gear in. I decided I definitely wanted to keep the aluminum skids, but opted for plastic skids instead of carbon or G10. My next set of gear will be as flexible as possible, in the hopes that it will displace before it breaks.
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What's going on here? |
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That's stock gear for an Align TRex 250. It's a slightly larger bird, but the gear fits the 120 SR very nicely. Most people run small spacers to make the Align gear clear the drive gear on the 120, I opted for a more interesting route. Notice the blue surgical tube and springs?
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Align 250 gear, with shocks absorbers. |
I'm fairly certain that I have the only 120 SR with shock absorbers. And for good reason: it's pretty goofy looking. But hopefully it will cut down on landing gear and frame breaks until i learn how to fly a little better. There are CNC'd aluminum struts available for the TRex 250 that are now a bolt on swap since my 120 is modified for the Align gear. Once I'm more confident in the air, I'll swap to the CNC struts.
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As my 120 SR is being modded, I decided I needed a more beginner-friendly single rotor heli to practice with. One that I could fly inside easier, with cheaper replacement parts. I present the 120 SR's smaller brethren, the mSR. At about half the size of the 120 (7.0" vs. 12.5" rotor span), the mSR is strictly an indoor machine. Where the 120 SR could barely get enough altitude indoors to free itself from it's own rotor wash, the mSR zips around confidently with no issues. A more experienced pilot could probably easily fly the 120 inside, but for a noob like me, it's a recipe for broken parts. The mSR's lighter mass also makes it more resilient to crash damage, and parts are cheaper to boot. I've had some really gnarly crashes already with the mSR, and no damage other than a cracked canopy.
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mSR in front of 120 SR. |
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