As luck would have it, the new E-flite Blade 400 3D I talked about in my last blog may have been a victim of a bad radio despite the fact my transmitter wasn't on the Spektrum DX6i recall.

It didn't take more than a few flights by me and my friend Manny to learn that this bird was unflyable. Manny's description, by the way. Anyone privileged enough to fly some T-Rex 450s for Twentieth Century Fox should know what "unflyable" means.

Stubborn me went to fly it anyway.

I put it in a seemingly stable hover, hit the idle up and the thing went into an immediate and very fast hard left turn right into the ground. This happened too fast for me to react right away, so what was left of the main rotor continue to turn under power for a moment. That moment was enough to cause the li-po to vent and begin to burn...!

To make a long story short, I told my tale of woe to the nice folks at Horizon Hobby who asked me to send the wreck to them.

Their response?

One brand new Blade.

Here's the sweet part: It came with the transmitter batteries already installed, a new but discharged li-po (I got to keep the original because of shipping concerns and it wasn't the one which vented), their updated and recommended radio settings already set...and I think they may have even removed the back of the transmitter to check the pots since the charge jack was rattling around inside. Unless it had come like that from the factory, the only way it could have come loose was by removing the back. The jack is held in place by the two halves of the transmitter case.

In short, these great folks tested the model before they shipped it.

It flies like a dream and it's going up in the morning yet again. I can't get enough of the thing.