I waited a while before buying this helicopter as I was perfectly happy with my Blade mSR plus I already had a HoneyBee and a T-Rex 450 clone. Still, it’s a very impressive piece of kit and I knew I would have to get one eventually.
The mCPX is a bit larger than the Blade mSR, although it uses the same tail rotor and presumably, the same motor. The tail boom is longer, and that provides a bit more leverage I’m guessing. The similarities however, end there. the machine is essentially a full collective pitch helicopter with no flybar. That means that it has two blades up top and nothing else. Collective pitch helicopters have historically been very expensive to crash; with the smaller scale however comes less mass and less RPM. I’ve crashed it a handful of times and it has taken the pounding well.
Flight Characteristics:
This helicopter flies exactly like my big 450. It has the same responsive cyclic controls and even in a moderate breeze, it will maintain it’s attitude and won’t get tossed about. If you’ve flown the Blade mSR before you should be able to handle it, but it’s a lot more intense. You have been warned.
Having said the above however, it doesn’t suffer from some of the idiosyncrasies of the mSR. When taking off for example, you can simply lift the collective and it will jump off the ground (just like a larger collective pitch helicopter). If you try that with the mSR it will either spin upwards with no control or veer to the left as it lifts off. The main point I’m making is that the mCPX is razor-sharp.
LiPo Cell & Charger:
I bought the bind-n-fly version, so the only other piece of kit it came with was the LiPo cells and charger. It uses a 200mah LiPo, so it wont fit your other micro Blade helicopters. The charger is an interesting device as it’s got settings on it and looks to be from a different model and requires an adapter (a two or three inch long cable). The charging lead coming out of it is very thin and feels like it could snap if you’re not careful.
Somehow I feel like the charger does not meet the high level of quality that Blade helicopters have. The sad part is that I think they could have remedied that by simply toughening up the charger a bit or not requiring a special adapter to charge the batteries. On the other hand, without the adapter, the charger can be used to charge your other batteries such as the ones that the mSR and mCX use.
Final Thoughts:
The mCPX is an amazing helicopter and a blast to fly. I’m sure that once I get some more practice I’ll attempt some aerobatic stunts with it, but for now I’m happy to have a big brother for my mSR and it won’t be frustrating to fly when there’s an ever so gentle breeze outside.