First Impression

I particularly like the new Blade CX2 fuselage more than old Blade CX1 fuselage – it looks more realistic than Blade CX1. It has little wings on the side which make the helicopter look great in pictures.

I know E-flight always does a great job with the owner manual so there was no surprise for that. I scanned through the owner manual and yes the owner manual looked well-written with pictures and everything a new pilot should know was in there.

The new DSM 5-channel 2.4GHx transmitter only requires 4 “AA” batteries. Unlike a typical 72MHz transmitter requires 8 “AA” batteries to work properly. This would save me 4 packs of batteries when I have to buy the battery replacement. The transmitter has a digital power gauge LCD which tells you how much voltage you have when you turn on the transmitter. 

Another good thing I like about the transmitter is the short antenna. Because Blade CX2 is an indoor helicopter and most of the time you fly it indoor where there is no much room, the short antenna is perfect.

The receiver antenna is also short comparing to the regular 72 MHz FM receiver antenna. It is about an inch long on the top and bottom of the receiver! You don’t have to worry about routing them to the tail and make your helicopter look ugly. Blade CX2 looks great without having the receiver antenna hanging around.  

The instructional CD provides a quick overview of the helicopter and basic flying tips. It is good for people who don’t like reading like me. However, you still have to read the owner manual in order to know about the helicopter and flying Blade CX2.

This is truly a Ready To fly (RTF) helicopter – you don’t need anything else to fly this coaxial helicopter (well….training gear is not included and you need it if you are a beginner) including transmitter batteries which I find most manufactures do not include them with their RTF RC helicopter kits. There was nothing that I would complaint about the Blade CX2 kit I received; therefore, my first impression was great and it pretty much met my expectations.

Initial Set Up

Since this is my wife’s helicopter, I had to make sure that it was well trimmed, balanced and ready to go for her to start her first flight as I did not want to make her first flying helicopter experience a bad one or she would quit.

Charging the Li Po battery pack:

The provided Li Po balance charger is basically a 2 or 3 cell Li Po battery charger. If you plan to upgrade to a Blade CP later on, you don’t have to buy a new Li Po charger when you upgrade your stock Ni-MH battery to a 3 cell Li-Po pack. It also comes with alligator clips for charging from a DC power source such as a 12V car battery. Included with the kit is the AC to DC adaptor which can be used to charge your Li-Po battery packs with your house AC power outlet.

The provided Li-Po battery is a 2 cell (7.4 V) 800mAh Li-Po battery pack. It comes with a JST and balance charge connectors. It only took me about 30 minutes to charge the pack for the first time, as it came partially charged from the factory. If the pack got discharged close to 6V (don’t discharge the pack to less than 6V. it will damage your Li Po battery), it may require about 1 to 1 hour and a half to fully charge the pack.  Once your pack is fully charged, the green light will go out. Make sure you don’t disconnect the battery from the charger by pulling the wire. If it is hard to disconnect, just use a pair of long-nose pliers to hold the connector and pull gently. 

Use the “hook” and “loop” provided with the kit to hold the battery from sliding out during flight. The owner manual provides good instruction and pro and con of attaching the “loop” material to either end of the battery. Insert the battery through the opening at the bottom of the Blade CX2 fuselage.

After installing the battery, I now could begin to test the CG (Center of Gravity) and make sure that Blade CX2 was well balanced – front and back.

Next was to install the provided 4 “AA” battery in the transmitter. I could see how much power I had for the transmitter on the digital power gauge LCD once the power switch was turned to on. Sweet! The transmitter will alarm if the voltage indicated on the LCD falls to 4.5V or less. Once the transmitter was loaded with batteries and turned on, I then followed the instructions in the manual step by step to test the servos, linkages and swashplate movements, etc. There was no surprise whatsoever found during testing. Everything worked exactly the way they should. 

It did not take me long to trim Blade CX2. It was kind of tail heavy. Most of the time I had to fly it with the front canopy on and with aileron trim more than 50% above. I checked to see if I needed to adjust the tips of the top blades but didn’t find the blades out of track. So everything was ready to go.

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