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HELI TALK

189

Helicopter Design Choices: Making Sense of the Features These days, electric helicopter manufacturers give you lots of choices for mechanics. The Thunder Tiger Raptor E550 features 135° swash geometry, push/pull bellcrank cyclic control and a belt-drive tail. As demo'ed here by Nick Maxwell, the performance is outstanding for a relatively low-cost machine. Modern electric helicopters are beautiful creations: CNC-machined carbon-fiber and aluminum, molded carbon rotor blades, all topped off by a perfectly airbrushed canopy. But...

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