G5 Shark & Canomod Canopies

Written by Ashley Davis Thursday, 23 April 2009 17:55

Welcome to the comparison / review of the two newest canopies for the G5. These canopies are both upgrade canopies and not available as part of an Outrage kit. The point of this comparison is to compare what you get from a premium airbrush company like Canomod versus what Outrage can produce themselves as an upgrade but more costs concious canopy.

 

I'll start by laying out the Canomod canopy and discuss the merits of it's finish and paint scheme as an upgrade canopy.

One thing that strikes you about the Canomod canopy is that it does have a lovely laquer finish and all of the paint lines are pretty sharp. There is a predominance of black in the canopy and I'd have liked there to be less of this from a visibility perspective. This canopy is the only G5 canopy that has a proper painted screen like you see on most other helicopters, rather than the usual block of colour on the stock G5 canopies and infact the Shark canopy featured below. This does give the canopy a more traditional feel. Also the black is done in a metalic or paint fleck finish which is particularly appealing.

Other things to note are that the underside of the canopy is painted orange/yellow and this makes it very easy to see the G5 in inverted flight. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for upright flight where the predominance of black can make the canopy silhouette very easily.

The Shark canopy is done in the more unusual way the stock canopies are done in the G5 kits. However, this paint scheme has more flare to it and also uses less blocks of single colour than the stock ones. I still much prefer canopies that have a screen painted on them but this is a personal preference. The paint finish is fairly good in some places to very good in others. My canopy has one or two small places where the laquer has not fully covered and the Outrage lettering can be clearly seen as a sticker that has been laquered over when you get up very close - something that is far less obvious on the Canomod canopy. However, these small items aside it is still a very nice paint scheme and has been finished professionally.

Moving on to visibility and we get almost the exact opposite of the Canomod canopy. In upright flight this canopy has great visibility, the best I think of all the stock canopies. Once you flip inverted you are presented with the white underside of the canopy and in cloudy conditions this makes visibility really quite poor. A yellow on the underside would have been more user friendly but also quite hard to integrate with the black/white chequer effect on the sides.

Conclusion

I like both of these canopies but inevitably one has to be a better all round deal than the other. In this comparison I believe the Shark canopy offers more. Whilst the Canomod is very pretty the predominance of black in the scheme makes it pretty to look at on a shelf but less practical in the air......unless you happen to fly inverted all the time. The Shark provides a slightly lower quality finish but overall visibility is better and it's around half the price. Given that 450s tend to be training machines and will therefore be in the ground more frequently than their bigger counterparts the Shark makes more sense overall. Therefore the comparison winner is the Shark.

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