Have you been to the mall lately? I was in there a couple of months ago getting my haircut at Regis Salon. Outside of the salon is a kiosk called Kopter Krazy. I saw it, and as a man with a little boy inside I was immediately drawn to it. They had all sorts of RC helicopters on display. From little ones for $44 to the bigger for about $400. I was intrigued after watching him demonstrate the littlest one and listening to his excitement about them. I just had to have one.
I bought the Syma S-006 Alloy Shark for about $85. I rushed home immediately and opened up the package. This was actually kind of exciting. I put the ‘copter on the charger and let it charge for about 30 minutes. You should let it charge longer, but I was impatient. Soon, I was in the backyard flying my new toy helicopter. I didn’t get the hang of it right away. I never really got the hang of it. I actually crashed it pretty good. I had crashed it several times with no problems, but this time was bad. I retrieved it and put it back together. Just the body flew off but that went back on just fine. I flew it a few more times before I noticed it wasn’t flying quite right. Turns out I broke some part on the rotor shaft. I couldn’t fix it. Total flight time… about 30 minutes.
A couple days later I went back to the mall. I wanted to find out about parts. He told me to just google for RC helicopter parts or something close. While I was there I thought maybe I’ll get another one to play with until I can get the parts for my Alloy Shark. So I got the Double Horse 9087 for about $65. It is a little smaller but I figured I could fly it inside out of the wind. I’m sure the small breeze that was blowing had something to do with my first ‘copters crash.
I got home. Got her out of the box and charged up. I’m in my family room. It has carpet so I shouldn’t worry about crashing it too much. Within 10 minutes of lift off I had broken the rotor blade when it crashed from a height of 3 feet onto the CARPET. I was pissed. So, I got out the super glue and glued it back together. I waited roughly 10 minutes and reassembled it. 5 minutes later I had broken both rotor blades and there was no gluing this back together. So, there I sit with $150 dollars in RC helicopters and I can’t fly them.
I jump on the computer and start searching for parts. I am pretty good at finding what I want on the internet so believe me when I tell you the parts aren’t to be found for either helicopter. I spent about an hour total looking.
On Christmas day I’m talking to my brother and I found out that he got his son the same helicopter at Kopter Krazy. He got the Double Horse 9087 and was able to play with it for about 10 minutes before the inevitable happened. He also looked for parts and couldn’t find them.
I did discover something very interesting while I was searching. You can order these wholesale by the crate and pay about half the cost you did at Kopter Krazy. Go to lightinthebox.com and you will be able to purchase the double horse for $49.99 and the Alloy Shark for $39.99. these are wholesale so you might have to buy more than one.
Now. To the moral of the story. I went to Hobbytown to see if they had the parts I needed. I mentioned what I purchased and the clerk simply said “I’m sorry”. Yes, so was I. They didn’t have the parts I needed. He also said that alot of people have come in looking for parts for these helicopters purchased at the mall. While at Hobbytown I saw that they had some small RC Helicopters. The clerk said they had all the parts they needed right there in the store should it break. This was great, I thought. Yesterday I went down and purchased the Blade MCX. This is a great little helicopter. I’ve got about 4 hours of flight time in, crashed it numerous times and it is still flying. So… if you really want to enjoy the money you spend, spend it on quality.
EDIT TO ADD: I was notified in the below comment that parts are now available for the S-006 Alloy Shark. They can be found on this page: Spare Parts for Ally Shark