Introduction: We've finally got some of the new Snipers on this side of the pond. My intent with this article is not a full-on review, but only to give few build notes and some first photos. I've built this one and there will be a couple more built by others very soon. Ît's been a very long time since I've been so thrilled to open up a heli kit box! Mirror smooth carbon plate and tail boom. Blue bling galore! Blades are included as well as an 18 tooth and 15 tooth pinion. I've updated this review with some commentary inserted in the text as well as photos of newer parts and comments listed below.

Kit Specs - recommended & used:

Rotor Span: 1070 mm (470 mm blades) RTF weight: 1300-1500g (1535 g) Motor: AXI 2820/10 recommended. (Pletti Orbit 15-12 used) Battery: LiPO 3S-4S 2000 -4000 mah (FlightPower EVO 20 4S-3700mah used)

Rotor blades: LAHeli fiberglass 47 cm (included in kit) Cyclic servos: HS-81-MG Tail rotor servo: S-9254 Gyro used: FutabaGY401 Speed control: Kontronik Jazz 40-6-18

A word about these photos: In an effort to show contours in the black plastic, some photos were deliberately underexposed. Also, trying to accurately portray the colour of the anodized blue parts was very challenging. The actual blue colour is darker than shown in the photos And.... click on a photo to see a larger version of it.

Kit Contents:

Pictured above is most of the blue bling. I found more later on as I opened more bags:)		The carbon in this kit seems very nice. Well finished!

Build comments:

In the first step, inserting the bearings into the bearing blocks, I found it helpful to have a length of 2 x 2 lumber to press against. After the bearing was inserted, the bearing side was laid against the wood while the alu piece was pushed by the thumbs. Why all this? Well, doing this allows one to easily apply leverage to one side (using the outer parts of the mount) to help straighten the bearing when required, as it is pushed home.

Assembling the freewheel hub requires careful insertion of TWO one-way bearings. I find it very helpful to assemble the freewheel tube onto the main shaft and insert this into the bearing to use as a sighting guide to make sure the bearing is perfectly lined up as it is started. Simply observe whether or not the shaft is sitting exactly centered on the back side. Once I had both bearings well started (one from each side, I rested the assembly on a wooden bench and gently whacked the top with my piece of 2 x 2 lumber. Both bearings slid into place rather easily. When inserting the hub into the main gear, bear in mind that there's two different sides on the gear, i.e. on the bottom of the gear, the spokes are flush with the rim.

The tail drive pinion came glued in the proper position 4mm from the end of the tail drive shaft. The belt drive pinion has a square shapped recess to secure it to its alu end cap which has the set-screws to grip the drive shaft. One might as well leave off the Loctite for now, because the chances are that an adjustment will be necessary once this assembly is installed between two bearings.

Frame:

The lower frame and skid mounts assemble onto some beefy 5mm OD carbon tubing. As the skid legs are tightened, they clamp onto these tubes. The screws are left un-tightened during initial assmebly.

	...so as to keep me from a ham-fisted calamity. Each bearing block for the main shaft has TWO flanged bearings. Per the instructions, the screws were loctited only after both sides of the inner frame were assembled. "Less is more" with loctite, and I usually put a small amount on the first threads to enter the other part and let it flow up the rest of the screw as it is tightened. If any reaches the top of the screw, you are using too much :)
The frame cross pieces were bolted onto the nice carbon frame sides without any issues. But all the while I was saying "not too tight",

Head:

The first step involving assembling the brass balls to the "steering lever", leaves one unsure which end of the arm is which in the diagram. The brass ball with the longer base goes on the shorter end. The brass spacer is best started into one of the bearings while outside the lever. Then set the bearing into the lever and press the other one into place. The old piece of 2 x 2 lumber is good for pressing against. Truth be told, I found that resting the asssembly on the wood and then tapping it lightly with the end of the plastic handle of a Japan Industrial Screwdriver seemed to nicely do the job of getting the ends of the brass tube flush with the bearings. The brass insert in the compensator lever is done the same way.

I was just a little disappointed when I could only find 5 of 6 bearings for the blade grips. Ah hah! One of the bearings was already installed for some reason. It's interesting that there's no thrust bearings. Perhaps there's no need with a rotor head/blades this small. There's one bearing on the end of the blade grip closest to the rotor head and two bearings together in the part closest to the blades. It seems lke this extra bearing could be replaced by a thrust bearing in a hop-up effort. The digital caliper comes in handy for setting up all the links to the proper length. One thing - it seems like the threaded rods are just a bit too long, but if you keep pushing and twisting, you will get the links down to the prescribed lengths:)

This was my first flybar bridge using this design, which I've seen in many heli's. Here's one piece of urgent advice - do not force the screws really tight, because this will compress the ends of the alloy spacers enough to make the bridge to short to straddle the seesaw thingie. In my case I used one tiny washer in diagonally opposite corners to fix the problem. The "stabilizer bearing housing" is by far the nicest one I've encountered! The washer N0424 is tapered and the narrow end is meant to rest against the inner race of the bearing. A digital caliper is also handy for ensuring that the flybar is exactly centered. This is my first all-alu head, so forgive me for saying that I've never had a flybar that's so pricise, smooth, and free-moving. UPDATE: A one piece flybar bridge is now included

The compensator core (slider) is postioned with the extra brass section facing upward. When I got to the diagram showing the installation of the compensator lever, I wondered why they were advising the use of loctite on a bolt threaded into plastic. Then I realized that the renderings were showing precise locations along the screws for application of threadlocker. It seems they weere suggesting using it on the sections of thread that rest insde the brass sleeves. This seems like a good plan top prevent slop developing as the threads on the screws wear down over time. At least that's what I think is going on:)

A good deal of "link squeezing" was used to get the links almost loose enough for my liking - a good starting point. The paddles were threaded on all the way until they started to bottom out. Having previously ensured thet the flybar was exactly centered, I wound up with the paddles being a small fraction of a mm off being exactly the same distance out from the hub on my first try. And on the second try when I realized that I'd installed the ball bolts backwards (ball should be to the inside) and had to remove the paddles to reverse them. Once the head was assembled, I balanced it using a high point balancer. A small piece of clear tape was needed on one paddle to make it perfect.

In my kit the swashplate required assembly and what a surprise I got when I took a good look at it! Check out the inner swash in the photo on the right. Two of the balls are mounted to the side of the arm instead of the end. This gives a needed offset to the pushrod. When I was done, and again given the caveat that I've never owned an all aluminum head before, I was holding the smoothest, most precise heli head I've ever owned (with apologies to my beloved LOGO's, hehe). There is a bit of slop in the rotor head in the area of the mixing hub's fit onto the main shaft, but I'll guess that there might be a good upgrade part soon enough. Update: the mixing hub was replaced with a new one that had a better fit.

Tail:

The bearings were a really tight fit into the slider ring. Once again my JIS screwdriver set came to the rescue. Their tips are just a little smaller than the ID of many bearings I need to install. The shaft that the tip joins to is just a little bigger. So the bearing can be inserted on the tip and the screwdriver used to aim and push the bearing into place thanks to this variation in shaft diameter. When doing the second side this same tip acts as a guide to line up that bearing exactly straight in. I cannot convey the tremendous value this "feature" has been over the years! The bearing's fit was tight enough that I gave the ring a blast from my heat gun to expand it a bit.

I had a concern in the step where the two ball links are screwed to the slider because the diagram shows loctite being used in the plastic links. As I contemplated using CA instead, I figured that I better follow the instructions and change techniques later:) The slider lever is a double sided affair supported by a ball bearing on each side. Zero slop is forecast here:) it took a light sanding with #400 emery cloth to get the bearing over the end of steering shaft with the dimple for a set screw. Better to sand for a few minutes than use a ton of force.

The tail grips use double ball bearings that are loctited to both the hub and the inside of the grips..

The tail box went together fairly easily. The tail pitch slider MUST work smoothly, so a few obvious steps need to be followed. Make sure the slider works smoothly on the shaft with nothing attached to it,. Then install the bearings to tie the dual slider levers to the pitch assembly. This is where I spent a bit of time freeing things up. The bearings that run in the slots seemed to bottom out in the groove at the closest point, so I scraped away a bit of material to prevent this. Then I noticed the dragging that was occurring was actually related to then pressing on the sides of the grooves, as well as the bottom. It seems that the alignment of these parts must be perfect because of the zero-slop fit, There was one side where each bearing seemed to be binding, so I CAREFULLY scraped a way a bit of material to allow more freedom of movement.

Update: the flexing tail pitch slider has been replaced with a hinged unit shown on the right and installing it with unmodified arms (those modified above) has eliiminated the issue mentioned above.

The instruction's rendering of the tail rotor hub installation shows some shaft protruding past the outside of the hub. Since this usually isn't done, I didn't do it, but then I had to go back and change it so that about 2.5 mm of shaft protruded. This gave a nice neutral position with a little bit of tail pitch to counteract hover torque from the main blades.

So, when all was said and done, I was holding a very nice, slop-free tail rotor/box assembly. Very nice! But for attaching the tail control arm, the directions said to use Loctite in plastic, which I don't like doing. But I plunged ahead and did this anyway, and as I drove the shouldered grub screw home, there was little feeling of "snugging up", if any. I felt that I might have started stripping the threads. However the grub screw rests in an indent provided for it in the shaft, and therefore should not be a problem. I added a drop of CA on the end of the steel shaft to help secure it. So far, this is the one item on the heli that I'd like to see changed. I think a metal insert to give better grip on the threads would be better but then again, maybe this is one of the designed-in failure points to protect the rest of the mechanics in a crash. Update: a metal tail lever is now offered.

The tail rotor blades appear to be white nylon. I bolted them together, leading edge up and in a slight V-shape to balance them on a high point balancer. They were pretty well perfect. I shaved a miniscule amount of flashing off one blade and that was it! Here's a suggestion for after reaching this point. Hold the tail box in a manner that allows you to steady the lever and also adjust

pitch with the pitch lever and sight along the blade to get zero pitch. As you hold things very steady, swing the tail around to sight along the other blade. It's easy to see if the blade's tracking is off. I simply removed one of the ball links from the slider and filed it a tiny bit shorter to get the two blades very close to identical pitch. Update: This last step is not necessary with the new tail pitch slider.

Finishing up:

Before gluing the plastic caps on the boom supports, make sure they are the same length and file them if necessary. Likewise, make sure when gluing the caps on. Having these ends for the tubing slide OVER the tubing ends instead of pushing inside the tubing as is done on the MaxiR 3-D pushrod ends is a WAY better. The anti-rotation pin guide bolts between the frames and the bolt holding the guide pin to the swash must be assembled into the bracket - it cannot be "persuaded" past the head of the bolt later on.

Installing the HS-81MG servos caused a bit of anguish :) I normally don't use the rubber servo mounts in my heli's and I couldn't tell what to do from the renderings. Without the rubber mounts the elevator servo arm would hit the mainshaft and the aileron servo arms would hit the frame, so that settled it:) At first I thought a couple of 2.5mm servo mounting screws were missing from the kit, but I'd previously used them where the two screws packaged with the vertical fin were meant to be used on the tail box. Lastly, while taking a ruler to the rendering of the attachment of the brass balls to the servo arm showed conclusively that the inner holes were meant to be used, I didn't like the appearance of angled pushrods, especially on the elevator, So I changed to the outer holes later on.

The tail rotor servo holders, horizontal fin mount and tail box clamp were threaded onto the boom before the tail boom was assembled, First the tail boom was lid into the boom holders and the front tail drive pinion installed. Once the top bearing plate was installed, it was evident that the spacing of the parts on the shaft needed to be increased a little. This can easily be done without removing it from the frame. Now that the heli is completely assembled, I can say that there wasn't a single missing part and that all pits fit well and showed thoughtful design.

One thing - it seems to me that the 385 gram weight of the 4S-3700 battery used is just about right for proper balance point on the heli. A lighter one might be a problem....   Note the antenna tube in the photo on the left.

After a long cold winter, preoocupation with building a Hangar 9 Spitfire, crashing the Sniper on it's first hop off the ground (never done that before and don't know what stupid thing I did - wrong model in transmitter perhaps?), I've finally got some flights. And, uh,,, some crash test results too:)

One important improvement for those of us with high power setups is the availability of brass pinions. I have burned out a plastic pinion in flight and after installing another one, had it show enough wear after 3 flights that I was afraid to use it anymore. Mind you, this is with the small 12T pinion, where the gear contact area is reduced compared to a larger pinion. Update: I've used the brass pinion for many flights now and now it's a smooth, reliable machine.

One thing that all of us "early adopters" knew was needed was an aluminum tail pitch lever. The set screw in plastic seemed pretty "iffy", even if it did mate up with a recess in the shaft it was afixed to.

Here's a photo of the shaft drive upgrade for the tail boom.

Flight characteristics: the heli is very nimble - pretty easy to fly in a small field. It's "light on its feet" and flips are done effortlessly with the only problem being that I needed to cut back on pitch during the maneuver or it would start climbing out :) Flight times of 10 minutes used about 3000 mah of the 3700 mah 4-S packs. It's nice and stable and has the presence of a larger heli. While winds caused it to zoom up on me sometimes, I found myself flying it in fairly high winds without worry.

Maintenance: the heli is generally pretty easy to work on and doing so is a pleasant experience. Replacing the main gear requires removing one of the small front frame sides and then removing the auto hub while inside the frames. Replacing the boom can be done by loosening the top screws on the two boom mounts, the tail servo mounts, the horixontal fin mount, disassembling the tail box and sliding the boom out from all this and leaving the belt behind with the heli. It's very easy to replace the main shaft and spindle.

Crash tests: I've dorked the heli a few times by stripping pinions or doing a loop while in normal flight mode. Just like with the Maxir, the staged destruction helps reduce damage. the lower frame traingles and skid legs are cheap sacrificial parts for crash energy absorbtion. The hardest crash was from a very poor auto (tried re-starting the motor by raising "pitch stick", in case I'd left it in normal flight mode) resulted in basically a freefall from 20 feet onto its skids. Both frame triangles broke, the smaller carbon outer frame pieces bent at the joint with the landing gear legs (easily repairable with CA), one skid leg broke, and the main shaft, flybar, and spindle bent. The cost for all those parts was only $27.50 plus $22.00 for the frame sides if replaced rather than repairing them. Apparently the last 3 items on the list are easily straightened.

RPM limits: There's a mysterious, violent tail vibration that occurs at about 2200 rpm. It seems like a resonance setup by gearing choice and a very light carbon tail boom, but this is just a guess. Since the heli flies great at sub-2000 headspeeds, this hasn't been that much of an isuue for me. I know, folks who are used to winding up over-weight,

"under-bladed" small heli's to 3000 rpm will find this smooth, lightweight ballerina (stole this from my LOGO 10 review, hehe) to be a stark contrast to their screaming machines and judge it deficient? I hope not :) Update: The carbon tail boom has been relaced with an aluminum one to fix this issue.