Review of Parkzone Micros (Vapor, Ember, Centurion

[sam]

Hello, I had a chance to fly all three of these airplanes today and have some reports. I ran them all thru their paces and I must say I was a little surprised.



1. Cessna Centurion

Good:
- Looks great
- Cool charger that doubles as a stand

Bad:
- Requires far more speed than the others to fly properly.
- Requires far more space
- Not very manouverable
- Requires constant attention even when trimmed properly
- Very noisy engine. (Maybe a bad batch?)
- Extremely delicate tail surfaces and wing. Broken after a few flights and hard landings. Tape repairs worked okay.

2. Ember

Good:
- Flies relatively slowly and doesn't require a lot of space
- Decent manouverability

Bad:
- Another very noisy engine. Hmm....?
- Have to pull landing gear off to store back in box
- Tail surface EXTREMELY fragile. Broken in half right away!
- Tail skid fell off first taxi

3. Vapour

Good:
- VERY slow flight. Perfect for indoors.
- Extremely manouverable
- Dead quiet
- Very durable. After I flew I let the some others fly it and the thing crashed hard probably 2 dozen times and no damage whatsoever.

Bad:
- Unless you don't like the look I haven't found any faults yet.


Summary: In my opinion the Ember and Centurion are a total waste of time and money. The tail surfaces are made of foam so brittle that even the slightest mishandling or crash causes damage. Very lame in my opinion. I assume all of these aircraft have the same engine but these two engines were very noisy. In my mind the most important thing for an indoor flyer is something that flies slowly. That means more versatility and places to fly. I was flying in a large aircraft hangar and the Centurion ate up the space quickly. You would need a very large area to fly this thing comfortably. The Ember was much better in this regard but couldn't touch the Vapor in terms of how slow it could fly. The Vapor can almost hover.

For my money the best of the three is the Vapor. HANDS DOWN!!!

Cheers

[gagallagher04401]

Nice writeup/info, it is nice to know about some of the planes out there so that people do not make the mistake of buying junk.

George

[cjg]

I've had the centurion for a year and find it a very enjoyable yard flyer. You do have to lubricate the motor shaft or it squeels. It flies slowly with throttle management. I have flown it inside a high school gym.

Contrary to what was said above, once trimmed, in no wind, I can fly mine hands off.

While not underpowered, you do have to start a loop in a shallow dive.

[duck9191]

i have a citabria, and it flys surprisingly slow. like said above the gb does need some maintenance to keep it quite. i could get an easy 20min flight just putting around the gym. heck trim in some rudder and you could go to the bath room and come back an it would still be flying in circles lol. and if you jam the rudder and some elevator it would do a nice and quick 180/

i also have a koyosho piper Cherokee, the 4 channel micro. while its a blast to fly around it needs alot more air speed and takes some getting used too.

[sam]

Have you guys flown the Vapor? It might redefine your idea of slow and manouverable.