Vigor CS or Robbe Millenium?
Simon Lockington

I'm in a bit of a tight spot at the moment, I've decided that I'm going to sell my beloved JR Z230 Gasser and get a good 60 size machine.

For the past month or so, I've been using my little Ergo 46 to dable in a bit of inverted flight and progress my learning for all the different types of orientations in preparation for getting into 3D. I'm really enjoying this kind of flying, and love the challenge it presents.

However, I'm too scared to do this with the Z230, after all, it's nearly a NZ$6000 machine. While it flies beautifully, it lacks a bit in the top end power. My mate Darryll who has also got a Z230 has brought a Hanson cylinder and piston kit and is still getting it tuned, but first impressions are that it hasn't done much for the engine. Darryll is determined that his Z230 will do aerobatics well and before he does that, he wants more power out of the engine, and as such, Bruce Hanson now has an order for one of his tuned pipes (when it arrives, I'll do a feature on it). I'm watching Darryll's experiences closely, with a view to maybe replicating it on my Z230.

However, a couple of weekends ago, I was at a fun fly and was watching the 60 size machines fly around and realised that I don't think the Z230 will probably ever fly like that. Before I go on, I acknowledge that there are people out there who ARE doing 3D with their Z230's (Hi Charles!), but I'm not sure I'm brave enough to do that.

So what do I do? Well a rep at the fun fly I was at was importing three JR Vigor CS's for sale, two of which were already sold, but the third one was available. I've always had a soft spot for Vigors, they look downright beautiful and word is that they fly like they're on rails. Plus, surely, since Curtis fly's them, they must make me fly like Curtis too???

I told myself that if I could sell the Z230, then the CS with one of new big engines (YS 80 or OS 90)was for me. That was until I met the new Robbe dealer in New Zealand at one of my club's helicopter get-togethers. He is very keen to get the Robbe brand out there in the skies of heli fields around the country.

At first, I wasn't really altogether interested, after all, I had my heart set on a CS (which of course would make me fly like Curtis, won't it?), but his enthusiasm and competitive prices made me have to consider Robbe as an option, so I began investigation of the Robbe helicopter line of products.

Knowing that Stewart Langenberg (moderator of the 'The Helipad' forum at RC Online) was having good success with a YS 80 in his Millenium, I talked to him about it and was pleasantly surprised to find that Stewart had very little in the way of negative things to say about the Millie. It should be noted that Stewart is a rep for Robbe in the US, so I decided to hunt out some other Robbe fliers for their opinions.

Meanwhile, Darryll had also joined in the investigation and had posted on RC Online for opinions on the Millenium and had recieved a whole heap of posts in reply. It was these posts that really stirred my enthusiasm for the Millie.

To get more detailed information, I emailed Ron Lund at Rick's R/C because like someone posted, he's the only guy I know of that owns both the CS and the Millie. I also emailed Ken Kammerer (a keen Millenium flier from RC Online) and asked for his thoughts and experiences with the Millenium. Ken emailed back with a comprehensive novel of an email answering everything I wanted to know and more. It was this, and Ron Lund's reply that got me seriously considering the Millie.

It was about this time that Rick Conkling, the proud owner of a Vigor CS emailed me a picture of his beautiful Vigor, which once again re-ignited my enthusiasm for the CS. What do you do? Ken Kammerer has a good amount of detailed pictures of the Millie on his website, so I asked if Rick could provide me with some detailed pictures of sections of his Vigor. Rick went to some trouble to cater to my request and within a couple of days, I had no less than 49 detailed pictures of his machine!

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