Honey Bee HeliAfter the inaugural indoor meeting I decided I wanted to upgrade from my Twister concentric helicopter to a 'real' helicopter of the fixed pitch variety, this being not quite a full blown collective pitch machine. My significant other (wife) jumped the gun and ordered a Belt CP for a surprise Christmas present, this being a collective pitch machine; I decided not to risk the belt and to see if I could get a cheap fixed pitch machine on the internet. I scoured various sites and came across the Honey Bee on E-Bay; I put in my best bid and subsequently was rewarded with a successful bid.
The Honey Bee comes in a
number of guises from the standard fixed pitch model as depicted here to an extreme 3D
machine. Spare parts and upgrades are widely available, you need to be careful or you could
upgrade at greater expense than just buying the next model up. The Honey Bee is a good size
machine for indoors, not the living room though, or in the park in calm weather.
The Honey Bee has an integrated controller consisting of a receiver, main and tail rotor
mixer, the tail rotor is directly driven by a small motor, and speed controller, there is also
2 servos to drive the rotor head. The battery as supplied is an 8.4 volt Nimh which I found
marginal, I replaced this with a 2s LiPo for now, while a lower terminal voltage the lighter
weight gave a better lift. Using the LiPo needs you mean to relocate it further forward to
retain the C of G, I relocated it under the controller with some Velcro tape. 
My Honey came with the trainer kit consisting of 4 rods with a ping pong ball on the end, the idea being to give the heli a very wide base and stop the rotor blades catching the floor during the inevitable wild gyrations that occurs during the early days. To date I have only skittered the Honey Bee around the back kitchen floor, the garden being under a foot of snow. Watch this space.