The kit is amazing quality for the money and it needs to be judged for what it is. The kit was designed to be a practice machine for hardcore 3D pilots that could be crashed and fixed quickly and for less money than other brands. That being said, the parts quality, fitment, and hardware are amazing. The canopy is very nice too, the quick connect/magnet system should be the standard with every manufacturer these days. Top quality materials are used. The company is able to deliver these kits at such a good price point because they are saving money elsewhere. You don’t get fancy packaging and a great manual like SAB kits. There aren’t as many complicated design features like a belt tensioning system, turnbuckles for each cyclic servo, or any cool little free tools. What you get is a well designed, easy to maintain, simple to build and fix machine that is designed to shred. It’s a baby sister to the Specter V2 and flies like it, giving you a familiar feel and visual experience. I would recommend XGuard magic dampers (as with any rigid head POM dampened system) to rid the machine of any low RPM vibrations during spool up/spool down. I haven’t don’t any autorations on the machine yet, but there are a few videos on YouTube. To me, it looks like the best autorotating 550 size machine yet.
Pros- machine quality, hardware quality, simplified design, PARTS COST, ease of build, flight performance, ability to run up to 580mm main blades, rigid frame, large battery compartment able to fit up to 8s packs, inexpensive 650 stretch kit available, hang time on autorations (stellar for the 550 class), nice canopy with magnets and quick connect. Let’s not forget the 1:1 ratio for the head geometry! You get a nice, precise, predictable/natural feel that’s easy to adapt to, especially with Azure Power blades.
Cons- digital manual (does ANYBODY like those?!) instead of nice quality paper manual. The manual is pretty vague; if this was your first kit build you would be left guessing on a few details. The canopy for both the nitro and the electric are the same, so there is a hole for the starter wand on the electric model. This doesn’t actually bother me, I think it’s a clever cost-reducing tactic, but some may not like it. There is only one option for head dampening included in the kit, and the POM dampeners needed a tiny bit of de-burring to remove some plastic left over from manufacturing. The main gear and tail belt may be mechanically sound, but I prefer the beefy look of thicker main gears and wider tail belts found on other models. There is only one battery tray included and you don’t get real battery straps that have a buckle to leverage the strap through, instead you get a wider version of their hook a loop tape roll to secure the packs to the battery tray. The Velcro that’s included for mounting batteries to the trays is not awesome. Just buy real, heavy duty Velcro brand tape. No turnbuckles for cyclic servos, although the swash-to-blade grip turnbuckles seem like they would work fine if you were to buy more and use those. Ironically, they are not that inexpensive at $10 for the set of two, meaning you would need two sets to get the 3 turnbuckles you need for the servos.
My biggest gripe is that the tail boom is not keyed for alignment. This would be such an easy feature to incorporate- just cut a slot
In the boom that aligns with the tail fin mounting holes and add a small block of material to inside of one of the boom mounts. It would make belt tensioning so much easier- I hate trying to square up a boom while pulling on it to get the correct belt tension, and simultaneously needing a magical third hand to tighten the hardware.
If XLPower would address these small issues, the kit would be even more amazing. Overall I would highly recommend the kit. If you’re aspiring to be a competition pilot (or just crash a lot learning or pushing the limits) or just want a really solid modern machine with great value in parts cost and parts availability, I would say this is kit to get.
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