Caveat: The following opinions are solely mine - no one with any experience has seen my heli, and I'm a hovering-only beginner at this point.
It went together well (precisely as shown in the Trex 450SEV2 manual). I would say it came 70% assembled - all the little fiddly parts already done.
I didn't strip any screw heads, having read all the comments about how weak they seem to be. The screws in most of the pre-assembled parts had NO thread lock.
By the way, this model has the newer 4mm feathering shaft.
Components were all from HK: Turnigy Typhoon. Turnigy 9e servos all round. HK 501 gyro. Towerpro ESC.
All seem to work well for me.
I've crashed it 3 times, and now have some Align parts - main shaft, feathering shaft, main rotor gear, tail shaft. New servos - HXT900 from HK.
I found the HK main and feathering shafts to be pretty weak (soft). (But, when you hit something solid with the rotor, the Align shaft will bend, too!)
The shaft of the Typhoon motor broke in one of the crashes. Also stripped the plastic gears on two of the servos. But they are so inexpensive as to be almost disposable items.
How does it fly? Well, I don't really know! I think it flies pretty well, as much as I can tell by my very limited experience and watching some learner videos.
Some day, I hope to get to a flying field where a real pilot can try it out and give me an evaluation...
I would not hesitate to recommend HK as a source. Just read the customer comments about the items you are considering, and consider that when you make your choices. Ignore the fact that EVERY item in their inventory is rated 5 crowns!!
HK seems to be getting more and more popular, bigger, and busier. This means things go out of stock frequently, and can take weeks to become available again. (I waited 6 weeks for my Turnigy 9X radio - but, hey, didn't Bruce say it was cheap??
(I like it a lot.) Be aware that "warranty" means you ship it (2-3 weeks) back to them at your (non-trivial) expense, and IF they consider your claim valid they eventually(weeks? months?) ship you (another 2-3 weeks) a replacement. Usually, it is cheaper, faster and less aggravating to simply buy a replacement. Face it: a certain amount of QC fallout is just part of buying things at very low cost!
I like my HK450GT.
