R/C Tech Forums - SYMA heli?

I ordered 8 of these (various Syma models) as Christmas gifts this year for all the guys and they were a hit with everyone. I've never seen so many people have so much fun for such a long period of time with such an inexpensive toy. I figured they'd all be broken within a matter of minutes but they actually held up very well. One of them (Coast Guard 111) was defective out of the box; wouldnt move forward because of an issue with the tail motor (could move backward). Items that were broken over the course of the day were a couple tail rotors, a main rotor head, and some misc parts (ie canopies, side pods from a 108, etc). I was going to return the 111 but decided to just order another and we canabalized the 111 for the parts to repair the broken rotor head on the 108. Of the models purchased, the 108 seems to be the most aggressive in terms of flight characteristics. The 109 (Apache) seems to be the most stable of the lot and was very easy and predictable to flight in tight spaces. The 102 (Black Hawk) seemed to have the most lift out of the bunch but also had the touchiest throttle (tough to hover without throttle input where the rest of them seemed to hover without as much throttle manipulation). We've only flown 4 of the 8 and of those 4, 1 was defective out of the box. I'll update after this weekend (rest of them will be given out) and report on how they're doing.

I cant believe how durable they have been though; none of the recipients had flown helis before with the exception of myself (limited experience) and it showed. I cant count how many times these things have hit the concrete from 8-10' off the ground. None of the main blades have broken yet but we did have the one head failure late Christmas night. Of the 3 that were operational all day, the 108 consistantly had the longest run time of the bunch and usually last 2 minutes longer than the 102 and 109. The 102 and 109 had very similar runtime to one another; perhaps the 108 we got just had a very good battery (2 more 108s will be used this weekend so I'll report if there is a pattern with the longer runtimes).

We were able to fly 3 of them at the same time. I'd read that while the 108 had 3 channel selections, only 2 seemed to work. The 108s remote wouldnt bind to any of the other helis. We put the 102 on channel B, the 109 on channel A, and used channel B on the 108 (which reportedly didnt work from other reviews I've read) and were able to fly interference free all afternoon. The remote from the 108 is a bit different from the others and has 3 channel selections vice the 2 that are available on the other 2 models. I guess channel may be a bit confusing here, the remote and heli is a 3 channel unit providing throttle, rudder, and forward/backward motion. There are also the channels (pretty sure that was how it was labeled in the manual) that can be used to separate your remotes from the others so you can fly simultaneously around other helis.