After flying my Trex 450 SEV2 for a while I started to feel the need for a bit more power. As my skills improve, and I try more taxing maneuvers, I’m finding that the heli is bogging a bit with the stock 430XL motor. While I’ll admit that my collective management skills aren’t perfect, I do strive to use only as much collective as I need rather than just stick banging.

I decided to replace the motor and started to look around. I’ve heard good things about Scorpion motors and ESCs, and I met Lucien Miller, the owner of Scorpion’s U.S. distributor, Innov8tive Designs, Inc. at IRCHA and he impressed me with his willingness to answer questions about his products. From this, I decided to go with a Scorpion motor for my upgrade.

A popular motor among the Trex 450 pilots (and other helis of the same class) is the Scorpion HK-2221-6. The dash 6 is an extremely powerful motor with a very high KV rating, and as such would be pretty much “un-boggable” but at the cost of flight time. Currently, with my Air Thunder 2200 mAh battery packs, I get flights of almost exactly 6 minutes. This isn’t really a long time, and I couldn’t really see cutting that in half (which was likely to be the case). After some looking and a bunch of research, I decided that the HKII-2221-8 (or “-8 V2″) with a 13-tooth pinion would fit my needs. It would give me a decent increase in headspeed, and not make too much of an impact on my flight time (hopefully). Since the dash 8 is a bit less KV than even the 430XL motor (3595 vs 3700), the new pinion is necessary and should give me more torque to help a bit with the head bogging as well (again, hopefully).

The stock Align ESCs have been successfully used by folks upgrading to Scorpion motors, but upon review of the ratings, I learned that the Scorpion motor I’d selected had a max amperage draw of 45A, which was 10 amps more than the stock Align ESC was rated for. I’m not really fond of pushing electronics (especially OEM stuff) that far past specs, so a new ESC was in order. The answer was, of course, the Scorpion Commander 45A ESC, but in accordance with my luck (the Luck O’ The Polish) they were sold out everywhere (Innov8tive Designs had some of the older ones on stock, but I wanted one of their new “V2″ units). After some more consideration, I decided I’d go ahead and go for their 55A ESC. Besides, an extra 10A of capacity couldn’t hurt.

Along with the motor and ESC, I ordered a set of pinions – one 12 and one 13 tooth, and a bottle of Scorpion’s recommended bearing lube, which the manufacturer recommends be applied a drop at a time, every 5-10 flights or so. It’s very reasonably priced, and you get a generous amount.

About an hour after placing my order, I received a phone call from Lucien at Innov8tive Designs. After speaking with him, I learned that the 55A ESC was physically a bit too big to fit comfortably on the Trex 450. Lucien suggested that I would be happier and better served by their new 60A “heli version” controller. since it was only 5 dollars more, I told him to go ahead and ship the 60A version. The 60A ESC was, Lucien explained, basically two 30A ESCs stacked on each other, with special helicopter-oriented soft-start, and governor software, and a 6v BEC (the older non-heli specific versions had 5v BECs) that would bump my HS65 servos up a tiny bit in speed. As it turns out, the 60A Commander V2 Heli ESC is actually a little smaller than the 45A Commander ESC, though just a bit thicker.

One other cool feature of the Scorpion ESC line is that all of their new V2 ESCs ship complete with the programming card necessary to configure the device. But these are not your ordinary run-of-the-mill ESC programming cards of the past. The Scorpion Commander programmers consist of an inline-mounted infrared receiver board that mounts on the heli and a nifty little handheld IR remote control. Yes, an infrared remote control.

The items shipped out that day and two days later, I had my stuff (you gotta love Priority Mail).

Next: What’s in the box