450 Chase 360 - the best 450 class heli around?

[Smoggie]

A while ago i picked up a second hand Chase 360. The original owner had built it but realised he's bitten off more than he could chew so sold it on before it even turned a blade. His loss was my gain because I picked it up at a great price I found a few issues with the build that didn't give me a lot of confidence, so i stripped it and re-built it.

I was blown away by the quality of this little heli and the brilliance and uniqueness of it's design. From it's two stage belt reduction all belt drive to it's 'Goblin like' swash servo layout, to it's battery mechanism that allows battery change without removing the canopy, the design is outstanding. The quality of finish is also terrific, there is nothing you could want to upgrade, all the 'bling' comes as standard!. The early versions had a reputation for a few quality niggles but this one was the later version with all the teething problems sorted and other than putting right the original builders errors it was totally trouble free.

The spec of the build was very nice:

• Scorpion motor
• Hobbywing 50A V3 ESC
• Mini Vbar Pro
• Savox servos
• Edge blades
• Gens Ace 6s 1450mAh

So here is is the heli pretty much as I got it, the eagle eyed might spot one of the errors in the build:

The maiden flight went without any issues at all. With the all belt drive this is about the quietest smoothest running heli you could imagine. her's one of the early flight, no fancy flying but that's due to the limits of the pilot not the heli This heli restored my faith in smaller helis which previously I'd given up on.

 

[murankar]

Thus heli had tail issues early on. I hope that's been resolved. So far the best thing I like about it is the belt driven main gear. That makes for one quiet bird. I had a orotos mini that had a single belt from motor to tail. This thing was smooth and quiet. I wish I still had it.

 

[Smoggie]

The tail is rock solid, no issues at all. I was expecting some problems after reading reports of various issues but nothing could have been further from the truth, if flew perfectly right from the first spool-up. Mine has had maybe 30 flights now, all trouble free and I've not had to do any maintenance or tweaking at all other than adjusting tail gain on the first few flights. KDS appear to have fully resolved all of the early teething troubles.

 

[Lee]

It's a nice looking bird, but I still think, the Warp 360 takes the win in this class.
I have had mine since they were launched. Absolutely bulletproof.

 

[Smoggie]

I've also looked at the Warp.. it's a nice heli for sure. What really decided me on the KDS Chase was that I got it at a great price but once I got it i was very pleasantly surprised at just what a nice heli it is. Same of the thoughtful design features like the quick release battery that comes out without removing the canopy are just brilliant.