Vigor CS or Robbe Millennium? (Part II)
Simon Lockington

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In typical JR fashion, the instruction manual is extremely easy to read and understand. I would also take the time to download the CS manual from the Horizon Hobby website (if you haven't purchased your machine from them) as that can often clarify 'grey' areas.
The box said that there was a 1.44 inch floppy disk with the settings of Curtis' radio in the box, but neither the kit that was sent to me, or the other two kits I know of, came with it.

There was a lot of long hard thinking going on while the CS was with me. Each morning I'd walk past the box with it's pretty colour pictures. I found myself having to justify why I SHOULDN'T buy it, and to be honest, it was hard to come up with good reasons! After all, in MY opinion, the CS is one of THE current helicopters to have on the market at this time.

Aware that my inner voice is easily swayed by carbon fibre, CCPM and pretty pictures, I reviewed the details of the Millennium to keep myself grounded to make an informed decision.

One of the bigger selling points of the CS is the involvement that Curtis Youngblood had in designing it. What I was to find out later on is that one of Europe's top fliers, Bob Johnston, flies the Millennium. This again renewed my interest, figuring that if the Millie can keep Bob happy, I'm damn sure it will be good enough for me!

Meanwhile, the reps for both JR and Robbe were keen to see how I was progressing with my decision. My mate Darryll had pretty much decided that the Millie was for him and I was more and more convinced that you can't go wrong with either of the CS or the Millie. It was starting to come down to the money aspect.

I asked the JR rep to price up a couple of key parts for the CS to get an idea of how much the CS would cost to fix if I augered it into the ground. I must admit to being pleasantly surprised at the reasonable pricing. About $50 for a boom, approx $30 for a spindle shaft, approx $70 for the tail drive shaft. These figures were better than I was anticipating.

The Robbe dealer here is retailing Millies for NZ$2200, the JR dealer was selling the first batch of three CS's for NZ$2500. With close pricing like that, the CS is the hot contender.

However, the next batch of CS's are going to be up around the NZ$2700 mark. With a gap of around NZ$500 the question then becomes "Is the CS $500 better than the Millie?". It's a question that I cannot answer fairly as I have only seen the Vigor up close (and then it was in it's box - have yet to see one fully built up), and I have not yet seen either fly. All I can go on is the thoughts and opinions of the fliers of both machines.

So, having taken a couple of weeks to mull over the decision, it seems I'm going to become a Robbe pilot... My reasons? Mainly, Darryll is getting one and in general the two of us make a stock pile of parts for our common machines (Ergo 46's, Z230's etc) so that we can easily fix the machines, plus having two similar machines in the same area makes troubleshooting that much easier.

Like I've said previously, you'll not go wrong with either the CS or the Millennium. It's just up to you which one you want to go for.

John Knox, a top flier here in New Zealand purchased one of the batch of three CS's that was imported. John has been keeping me informed of the progress of building and initial flights of his CS and sent me pics of it ready to go. He's promised further pics of it in flight after it's next flights. I'll try and convince him to write an overview of his heli once he's put more time in on it.

My next article will discuss the goodies that I'm going to put in the Millie when it arrives.