I'm sitting here vibrating with exitement on December 22, waiting for Christmas to come.
My wife went out and bought me a Night Ranger 3d, and she's so good at keeping secrets that she told me about it, in fact, she even emailed me the manual at work.
I've seen some good and crappy reviews about the night ranger, I'm guessing that's not the 3D model. Anyone have any feedback about this model?
Also, being a fixed wing power junkie, I was wondering if anyone has made the brushless/lipo upgrade? What are your thoughts here?

Im in the same posistion as you man,lol it sucks. You will be very pleased with the Switch to CP. The Model is what you make of it.If you take care of it,it will take care of you. Go with a Thunder Power 3cell 900mah Lipoly.Good weight Saver,and very good power.

If you wanna go brushless,you need to do some work first. You could Get the BCP Control board,and Wire a Brushless ESC into the Channel 3 Of the RX in the BCP Board,and Splice the Power Supply of the 4-in-1 and the ESC Together.You now have a working Brushless Setup with bearly nothing changed.

Here is the link to it.
http://runryder.com/helicopter/t216550p1/

Randori,

I am waiting for mine too. I did get a pretty good look at one at a hobby store last week, and it looks pretty good. The quality of the plastic/composite castings looks very good, and the rotor hub appears to be anodized aluminum as opposed to plastic.

I am not sure, but I think that it is a Maxir knock-off. I am not familiar enough with the Maxir to know. The radio (from downloading and reading the instructions) seems more sofisticated than the Blade CP or the Honeybee CP2 Radio, as it has trim knobs for both throttle and pitch.

I have had very good luck with the Venom Outback Rescue and find it to be better constucted than the Blade BCX (my opion from owning and flying both) so I am hopeful that this will be a good helicopter.

I will compare it with the Blade CP and the Honeybee CP2 when it arrives.

Good luck to you and please let us all know what you think of it.

actually the brushless upgrade for the venom is built in, all thats needed is a brushless motor, esc, and y connector..... they provide a plug in the 4 in 1 for a esc, easier setup than Blade/HB CP2'S (no soldering or taking the 4 in 1 case apart)....... I downloaded the manual to take a look at the head parts to see if maybe they could be used on a Blade CP

I am going to correct a previous comment. The head design and general outline of the Venom Night Ranger 3d appears to be that of a Hornet. This is from downloading drawings from the instructions for the Hornet. The Hornet appears to have a gear driven tail, as opposed to the Venom's tail motor design.

Mine arrived today, but I cannot open it until Christmas...

Hey guys, I've been looking around for a nice heli with which to enter the hobby and these two (ranger 3d and Esky cp2) are my top picks so far. From what I can tell, the night ranger is better quality, but at the same time the parts availability may be better for the cp2. Has anyone here perhaps... flown both...?

-GO

EDIT: another thing, I was planning to buy the ducted fan tail system (i saw it on helihobby.com) for whichever heli I end up buying. I know the tail is one of the easiest things to break on these helis and I also keep hearing about fried tail motors. Obviously the ducted fan will help save the rotor itself, but how's the burn-out record for it?

Originally Posted by AKAKillaz

From what I can tell, the night ranger is better quality, but at the same time the parts availability may be better for the cp2.

The ranger is made by Walkera so there are lots of parts for it. Venom has done a great job with the manual. Its very clear.

Rick.

Its not walkera

From what I can tell the Night Ranger II is the Walkera while the Night Ranger 3D is completely different. Symetric Blades, fully variable Bell-Hillier head and a lot of other things. They don't even look the same to a casual observer.

I got mine for Christmas and have crashed it already (my fault, not the heli) and the local LHS had the spares in stock, so after AUD60 of spares all fixed and running again today (with home made trainer gear). Still adjusting and not ready to make an opinion as to whether it is any good or not.

The NRII battery life was supposedly around 1 minute but I am getting 5 to 6 from the NR3D.

When I read the threads about whats wrong with the NR's they seem to mainly be referring to the NRII.

well, I got my 3D and in my preliminary trim setup crashed it into the bird of paradise in the back garden. Unfortunately, one of the balls from the ball/socket connectors that control blade pitch broke off. CA won't hold it, so I checked the manual for a part number to order a spare.
Much to my horror, the part isn't listed in the spares. not only that, the spare flybar see saw that came with the kit matches the one in the manual, but not the one that came with my chopper.
What The Sassafrass is going on!!!
Did Venom decide on a new actuator design between building my heli and writing the manual?!
The exploded view doesn't even contain the part that broke!
I've emailed Venom asking for help with no response yet (not that I'm surprised though, it is Christmas after all.) I expect they'll get back to me early in the new year.
I'll keep you all posted.

My Manual had an addendum that detailed the different see-saw arrangement. The spare see-saw is from an NRII. The part number you are after is VENF-7715 as this is the part number on the card from the one I bought today.

BTW the addendum listed the part number as VENF-7714 which is incorrect.

Anyone know where I can get this addendum online?

Not really, but here it is anyway.

Sweet! Thanks for that Buzzard, this is the elusive answer to my question, which leads to this next one.
Why would they sell a product without double checking to make sure their customers would have the necessary resources to enjoy it.
That's it. I'm writing a letter...

So... any comments then about the NR3d compared to the cp2?

Oh, and I hear so many bad things about walkera products; I assume esky helis are better then?