Review: XLPower Protos 380
By an absolutely independent user - Gábor Szalontay
Gábor just sent his review about the Protos 380. He is an independent pilot, he has no interest in selling or promoting this model. Different view, honest opinion, more views bigger aspect. This is is a much shorter brief than our well detailed review, but summarises his opinion.
It's a fairly light model with a responsive cyclic feel. It seems to favour a high rpm. With it being a full belt drive setup, it's a nice smooth setup, although it could do with a spacer on the autorotation gear to prevent the tail belt rubbing on the lip of the gear.
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The model tracks well and has a big helicopter feel when put through its paces. Due to the active cyclic I think it's nice for the advanced pilots out there, but for beginners I would recommend around 11.5° to 12° pitch, when you run head speed in the 3000 and over range. I also recommend a slightly lower rate for beginners as the cyclic is responsive.
Dislikes are the canopy that's dark and makes things harder in a overcast sky, and due to the canopy and frame design the canopy tends to tilt upwards in front during flight and that gives the model a odd presence in the sky. Also I'm not a fan of the old school style tail servo mount on the boom. And the 2 servos at the back of the model are hard to get to due to the flybarless mounting plate being in the way so should you need to work on them you have to remove everything that's in the way. And the model could have a better route for wiring things up, but overall it's not too bad.
