Vintage Kyosho 'Concept 30' RC Heli restoration and flights

I started with two partial Concept 30s and combined the good parts into this one. I replaced the cyclic and collective servos with slightly faster Hitec ones, and the tail servo with a much faster one, plus a GY401 gyro. It has a Spektrum radio system.
Other mods include the beefier tail control rod assembly, and using what I think are Nexus forks to support modern blades (Align 520mm) which have a 12mm root.
For the first few tanks It's tuned very rich as the engine breaks in. Since then I have started to lean it out and it has much more power than it needs and is capable of higher head speeds than I expected.

[@terence79chan]

Thanks! This brings back memories , I lost count of the times I would stare at this awesome machine outside the shop back in the day.

[@andymarcelin9578]

oh yes..i learned on this thing in ireland...each set of broaken blades cost me 30 bucks....great heli and i still have my original 45 year old one in the attic

[@Charitish89]

Looks sick as hell flying around 😎

[@Lance57H]

I remember my dad got me one of these back In 2008. I was only 12 at the time and had no business messing around with a model of this size. I remember spending hours with him just working up the guts to get it off the ground. We had to make some custom parts for it to even get it to work. The pitch slider for the tail rotor was broken and we had to do something for the collective pitch as well. I finally got it hovering one day when one of the blades all the sudden exploded about 5 feet off the ground. Luckily we didn't get hit by anything but needless to say it totally destroyed it. Somehow when the blade blew up the other one struck the tail boom and totally wrecked everything basically on the heli 😂. I've know built some helis and am getting back into the hobby all these years later. Still think about this thing all the time and wish my dad didn't throw it away. Would of been really fun to get it flying again and build it up with new parts. The new helis are night and day better but it would be fun to restore the heli that got me interested into the hobby to begin with.

[@goldenmanuever1176]

Wanted this thing since I was 11. Spent hundreds of hours looking at Tower catalog.

[@3DMOFO2020]

A very well done job on restoring and flying this classic R/C Heli my uncle learn how to hover with this same Concept 30 back in the early 90's really loved it a lot a friend of his gave him his brand new Concept 30 SR which he enjoyed a lot more then the DX especially in forward flight he retired the DX stayed with the SR throughout the 90's when he started training me in to helicopters the SR was the one he had me learn to hover on with the training sticks with the wiffle balls on the ends thankfully I picked up hovering quickly since I had a ton Real Flight sim time since I was already flying airplanes before helicopters. I manage to get my own R/C helicopter which was a Trex 450 CF I didn't the fly that SR of his for a good 3 years my uncle left it hang up on the ceiling during that time he had been flying a Trex 450 SE too untill one day a helicopter guy we knew at are field sold a hardly used Gy401 with digital servo the guy wanted to put a a more expensive gyro on his brand new Raptor 90 SE my uncle already had experience setting the Gy401 gyros with my&his Trex 450's so he decided to pull out his older Piezo gyro out of his Concept 30 SR and put the Gy401 in there with the included digital servo boy it made that helicopter fly miles better he actually let my fly forward flight with it and even let get away with some loops, rolls&inverted hover high up not as low as I was doing at the time with my Trex 450 LOL. Sadly my uncle ended up crashing it but at the very least.we both got to have a bunch of fun with it with that more up to date gyro at that time.😁

[@DavidJones-ny1xv]

Very nice. Brought back some good memories as the little Kyosho Concept 30 was my first 'Plastic Fantastic' and the first heli that I wasn't too scared to really learn to fly and throw around. Nice restoration. Thanks for sharing.

[@NightFlyyer]

Very nice. I love all my Kyosho helis.

[@TL_RC]

Did you use the old Kyosho wooden blades, or did you find newer carbon or fiberglass blades to use? Great job restoring a classic, wonderful to see it flying. I have to dig mine out and get it in the air as well.

[@chrismofer]

Great question, the concept came with foam core blades with I think an 8mm root. I use Align 520mm carbon blades, which have more like a 12mm root so I had to put on Kyosho Nexus 30 blade forks in order to run them. everything else about it is stock and original except I added ball joints to the tail pushrod and it has modern radio gear.