E-flite Blade CX3 MD 520N overview

The Blade CX3 (now discontinued...) electric coaxial rc helicopter follows hot on the heels of E-flite's hugely successful Blade CX2, widely regarded as one of the best beginner rc helicopters when it was originally released.

Shop for the Blade CX3 rc helicopter.

Although fundamentally based on the CX2, the Blade CX3 has some noticeable improvements not least of which is the scale fuselage of the MD 520N helicopter, in police colour scheme.
The McDonnell Douglas 520N is a popular helicopter used by police forces all around the world. The 'N' stands for NOTAR, an abbreviation for 'no tail rotor'. On the full size 520N air is blown out of the rear of the tail boom to control yaw and the air is controlled by the pilot's feet on pedals in the same way that the thrust from a conventional tail rotor is.
A NOTAR helicopter has massive safety benefits over a conventional tail rotor helicopter, one NOTAR promotional video I remember seeing showed such a helicopter being reversed into a hedge! Try doing that with a tail rotor and things would get very messy very quickly!

Good scale detail in the Blade CX3 E-flite have done a great job of reproducing the MD 520N in the Blade CX3.
Apart from the obvious non-scale element of the dual rotors, everything else is there, even down to the steps on the landing skid legs and the antennas at the tail. And for more realism there is the navigation lights kit, an optional upgrade that will complete your helicopter with all the right red, green and white nav lights of the real MD 520N.

When it comes to flying, the E-flite Blade CX3 MD 520N is about as stable as any electric rc helicopter will ever be, right out the box. The radio system supplied with the helicopter is the solid 2.4GHz DSM2 spread spectrum technology for interference-free flying and immediate and precise control response.
And being fully RTF, there is nothing for you to do other than install the radio gear batteries in to the transmitter. Indeed, each helicopter is test flown at the factory before dispatch so you should have few problems, although reading the instruction manual thoroughly before flying the helicopter is of paramount importance if you are new to the hobby.

The stability of the helicopter comes from the coaxial design.
Even though the CX3 MD 520N has no tail rotor because the real 520N doesn't, coaxial rc helicopters never do anyway. The two sets of main rotors spin in opposite directions to each other thus cancelling out each others' torque, the rotational force that makes a tail rotor necessary on conventional single rotor helicopters. This strong rotational force is a major contributing reason to why such helicopters are so difficult to control in your early days of training.

As well as the inherent coaxial stability, the Blade CX3 is also equipped with a heading hold gyro (HHG) as an integral part of the 3-in-1 unit, in place of the standard yaw rate gyro found on many RTF electric rc helicopters. HHGs work harder to maintain a constant heading i.e. they stop the nose of the helicopter from yawing left or right as a result of causes other than transmitter input (wind gusts, for example), while still giving you full control of desired directional movement.
The combination of coaxial main rotors and a heading hold gyro really do make the CX3 about as stable as can be!

Here's the promo vid for the E-flite Blade CX3...