Well this really puts them in the deep end of the market... They're going to either have to really compete with the Aligns and Gaui's on price and performance, or convince their BNF customers that they want something bigger from blade.

Likely to be the other way around based on current pricing

Originally Posted by indoorheli

Well that lost a lot of my interest...unless it is super cheap

Originally Posted by pilot_dragonfly

Yeah, i'm thinking multirotor myself. Brushless and collapsable out of the box would be sweet!

All of my aircraft are collapsible right out of the box!

Originally Posted by 1Pilgrim

All of my aircraft are collapsible right out of the box!

Nice! LOL

The 'new era' may also suggest they're changing their business model, i.e. going to kit form rather than BNF. That would help a lot keeping costs down if it is a larger model (which it definitely sounds/looks like).

Originally Posted by Znybar

The 'new era' may also suggest they're changing their business model, i.e. going to kit form rather than BNF. That would help a lot keeping costs down if it is a larger model (which it definitely sounds/looks like).

I doubt they're moving away from BNF altogether, they may just be adding a kit range above their BNF offerings. The micro BNF/RTF market is where their money comes from. I doubt they sell one 130X or 300X for every 10 MCP/MSR that they sell.

Unfortunately I think they're stepping into what's already a very competitive market where selling points are things like uniqueness and insane performance not ease of construction and middle of the roadness. They're going to have to price these things alongside their Align counterpart and be able to meet or exceed the Align's quality and performance because they can't compete on price with the cloners.

I don't think they'd ever think of kit micros. A larger 600-700 class heli though? It'd help them keep the prices down, get rid of an QC issues that so many people complain about (personally the three blade helis I own have never let me down, I think the 130x is the main reason for complaints and that's a design issue) and let them have a good kit. People who own the 300x or 450x rave about them, why couldn't blade produce a good higher-end model? Remember that for 600-class helis you're generally looking at over 1200 bucks for a complete align kit (in Aus that is), I don't think Blade will have issues staying around that price range (if they do go kit format).

Sounds like it might be all belt driven (ala Protos) to me.

Personally I am not interested in flying anything larger than a 200 sized helicopter so I will have no interest in this other than watching to see what is supposed to be so new and innovative. The last hype with the taxi was a big let down.
I have no desire to fly a RC helicopter capable of decapitating small children if it suddenly changes from a controlled flying object to an uncontrolled flying object. I am happy to fly my 130x which hopefully is only capable of inflicted minor damage or my sub 3 oz foam planes which are very safe to fly.

Funny that you mention all-belt drive, it was my first thought when I heard it. The start-up is remarkably quiet. Keeping with the larger blade helis, at the very least the tail will be belt-driven.

you can tell this isn't really peaking a lot of interest due to how slow this thread is moving. Its moved faster on helifreak, but not as fast as horizon would probably like.

Originally Posted by Znybar

The 'new era' may also suggest they're changing their business model, i.e. going to kit form rather than BNF. That would help a lot keeping costs down if it is a larger model (which it definitely sounds/looks like).

When their "are you unique" campaign turned out to be a $1200 transmitter, a lot of HH users were put off. If they are going to use a catchy "new era" phrase like that, it better have some general appeal to existing Blade users. Simply introducing kits is not enough, one would expect the kits to have some new design features that have not been seen before. One must also remember that there is a lot of snobbery at the high end. If they want to go into the high end, they should really introduce a new brand like what Toyota did with Lexus.

I completely agree that Blade do themselves a disservice by over-hyping certain products (cough taxi cough). If this is just a run-of-the-mill 600-700 with no particularly new features, Eflite are likely to see less and less interest in future marketing campaigns.

Blade 600 X that's my guess.

I'm guessing a 600 or 700X, yeah. Or something really big. The noise demo thing makes it sound HUGE



Dan

i'm still gonna go with it being a 500, in fact it sounds a lot like my 500 clone.