Slobberdog
Well-Known Member
As you guys are aware, I bought the 250 after getting frustrated with the amount of time I was putting into my 130x, I have now put approx 12 flights on this heli and thought it was time to share my thoughts on it.
The kit,
As usual with Align you get things packed pretty well within the box, you get the 3gx and elects boxes then a canopy packed with pretty much everything,
And as normal things are put together loosely and require stripping and rebuilding with thread lock.
You can see from my build thread how the heli went together so I won't go into that now, needless to say due to the size and the fact a lot of the screws go into plastic you do need to exercise care on assembly, in my opinion the screws could be slightly longer so as to have a bit more purchase into the plastic parts they attach, apart from that everything fitted together perfectly and went together quick.
The kit comes with DS415m cyclic servos and they seem up to the job and I have no worries with them yet, as it's still early days, I might change that view later down the line but I am good with them at the moment,
The motor does a pretty good job, I don't need bags of power for my style of flying so don't envisage a problem with it yet, that being said it is a quite heavy heli for its size mine is at 352 grams all up, and does as a result seem to have the pep that you would think to expect.
The Esc I got told has issues and when you look it up its well known for brown outs, I did not want to take that risk and got a Talon 15 instead and have to say its great for such a small unit,
Now probably the main gripe with the 250, not just me but most owners, the tail, but I must say the tail box slider assy is really nice, the only thing that lets it down is the blade grips, these are single bearing design and have way to much play for my likening and while the std kit servo DS425m is a reasonable unit, it's just not quick enough to get over this play, more to follow on this in the flight review,
Overall the kit is nice and easy to build, people say its a fiddle but hey after the 130x it was a doodle, I am a clean freak and like the wires as much out of sight if I can but believe me this is no easy task on this heli, it's tight on space,
First few flights,
I used my local school hall on a club night to set up the heli, I wanted to get the 3gx dialled in, in a wind free environment but experience and dumb luck I put it in the air and it felt great, had to tweak tail gains and just a bit of tweaking on the elevator gain and it was all good, but, after exiting a hard piro the tail would wag, so I turned the gain down to stop this, and that worked but then the tail did not give me to much confidence, especially outside in the wind it just felt loose,
I think there is a few mods out there at the moment to try to help with this issue, I plumped for the MKS ds95i servo, and a pre load kit to try, I failed installing the pre load kit, so went back to the std set up the MKS servo now feels very nice, more to follow on this tail sloppiness in my build thread as I challenge it,
My thoughts.............
I was expecting a twitchy unruly heli, but as I have this set up it feels very nice, stable yet agile, maybe even as good as my 450, but I would not recommend this for a beginner or nervous pilot, it can be tamed with the correct settings but they are very quick and can get away from you in no time,
Yet again another out of the box super combo that while it does what it says on the tin does not quite deliver to its full potential, the tail is its Achilles heal and will require a bit of money on a very good servo to remedy,
While I now have the heli just as I would like it, I would recommend if you can when you buy the kit get it without the esc and tail servo, buy these separate, the Esc for piece of mind and the servo for necessity,
Overall a nice heli but with little irritating flaws,
Hope this helps and you all enjoy.
The kit,
As usual with Align you get things packed pretty well within the box, you get the 3gx and elects boxes then a canopy packed with pretty much everything,
And as normal things are put together loosely and require stripping and rebuilding with thread lock.
You can see from my build thread how the heli went together so I won't go into that now, needless to say due to the size and the fact a lot of the screws go into plastic you do need to exercise care on assembly, in my opinion the screws could be slightly longer so as to have a bit more purchase into the plastic parts they attach, apart from that everything fitted together perfectly and went together quick.
The kit comes with DS415m cyclic servos and they seem up to the job and I have no worries with them yet, as it's still early days, I might change that view later down the line but I am good with them at the moment,
The motor does a pretty good job, I don't need bags of power for my style of flying so don't envisage a problem with it yet, that being said it is a quite heavy heli for its size mine is at 352 grams all up, and does as a result seem to have the pep that you would think to expect.
The Esc I got told has issues and when you look it up its well known for brown outs, I did not want to take that risk and got a Talon 15 instead and have to say its great for such a small unit,
Now probably the main gripe with the 250, not just me but most owners, the tail, but I must say the tail box slider assy is really nice, the only thing that lets it down is the blade grips, these are single bearing design and have way to much play for my likening and while the std kit servo DS425m is a reasonable unit, it's just not quick enough to get over this play, more to follow on this in the flight review,
Overall the kit is nice and easy to build, people say its a fiddle but hey after the 130x it was a doodle, I am a clean freak and like the wires as much out of sight if I can but believe me this is no easy task on this heli, it's tight on space,
First few flights,
I used my local school hall on a club night to set up the heli, I wanted to get the 3gx dialled in, in a wind free environment but experience and dumb luck I put it in the air and it felt great, had to tweak tail gains and just a bit of tweaking on the elevator gain and it was all good, but, after exiting a hard piro the tail would wag, so I turned the gain down to stop this, and that worked but then the tail did not give me to much confidence, especially outside in the wind it just felt loose,
I think there is a few mods out there at the moment to try to help with this issue, I plumped for the MKS ds95i servo, and a pre load kit to try, I failed installing the pre load kit, so went back to the std set up the MKS servo now feels very nice, more to follow on this tail sloppiness in my build thread as I challenge it,
My thoughts.............
I was expecting a twitchy unruly heli, but as I have this set up it feels very nice, stable yet agile, maybe even as good as my 450, but I would not recommend this for a beginner or nervous pilot, it can be tamed with the correct settings but they are very quick and can get away from you in no time,
Yet again another out of the box super combo that while it does what it says on the tin does not quite deliver to its full potential, the tail is its Achilles heal and will require a bit of money on a very good servo to remedy,
While I now have the heli just as I would like it, I would recommend if you can when you buy the kit get it without the esc and tail servo, buy these separate, the Esc for piece of mind and the servo for necessity,
Overall a nice heli but with little irritating flaws,
Hope this helps and you all enjoy.
