Well suffice to say in short yes, the G4 out of the box has been a pleasure to fly and because I personally don’t fly every week the time I do get to fly is very important that its spent in the air and not stuck on the ground getting fixed.

Thunder Tiger have done themselves proud on the G4, so much so a second in the plan for 2013.

In the 6 months the helicopter has seen battle with the sky’s on numerous occasions suffered one minor topple in a dodgy auto landing and a big smash up due to my dumb thumbs.

Now I’ve always had a rule of thumb that the size of helicopter is fairly proportional to the smash up costs on average. So a .30/.50 would be circa £150-£200 and a .90+ would be usually £300+ including blades. Baring in mind you can grab a set of 690′s from £70+.

This rule has been roughly the same for years for me.

So the first minor bump was a set of blades, tail fin, tail drive gear and a link that popped off fairly small in cost to repair. My second bump was far more brutal with the boom snapped off and legs broken a brand new set of Rails 696 blades demolished on there first outting . Serves me right for getting to carried away and I’ve always said to my fellow flyers that sooner or later the G4 was going to hit the deck as it was so predictable and fun to fly that the confidence it was giving me to fly much lower that the ground eventually was going to jump up and bat it one.

That time came on the 17th June.

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19 parts replaced 2 of which (Helical Main gear and Auto gear) I took the view that whilst more than usable since the G4 was now 6 months old and the gear damage to the big helical gear was only 1 tooth having a slight extra wear on it and was more capable of continuing its journey.

However being 6 months old the G4 deserved some maintenance so we changed most gears and the head dampner. The Rails blades weren’t in stock anywhere and I couldn’t find any RotorTech blades in the UK so I opted to import from the EU a set of RotorTechs.

So what did we replace.

So if I went back to my original assumption on repair costs for a .90 helicopter being around the £300+ mark the G4 faired very well as some of the costs wouldn’t have been included if I had not decided to take the opportunity while the G4 was in pieces to do some routine maintenance.

Even the canopy only suffered a minor knock.

So have we changed anything in the G4 from the stock version – YES

Following the first bump it came to light that should you wish to remove the rear tail gearbox you have to break the tail linkage and re-do your tail geometery when you re-attach the boom – this is a minor pain but a pain none the less. So I bought a ‘Quick UK’ boom mount for the old raptor 90 range as the boom diameter is the same from old and new. So following the last bump and fitted the boom mount.

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What else have we changed – the washout arms on the mast I found over a period of time developed some slop so I opted to remove the sleeve – reduce the bear inner size down to 3mm and use washer shims either side to lock it in place and still give enough movement to work fine.

Other than those elements thus far I’ve not looked to change anything else, maybe it’s got to do with the fact that there seems to be no aftermarket parts for the G4 yet though I don’t see much of a need for any. If anything the only thing I might be tempted to change simply to give it a more personal look is a different canopy so those canopy guys our there when your ready!!.

In summary I still give the G4 the thumbs up its performed flawlessly only the pilots fault for not keeping up….but I think also we get caught up in the spares prices working off what we feel are the likely costs so you have before you the costs of an actual crash not a fairly tale version and quite honestly its not as shocking as you think, infact the mast and feather I still have as they appear not to be bent but we need a proper machine to check out how true they are so for the sake of maintenance they were replaced also.