GMP Cricket Connection

the

CONNECTION

This Website covers the GMP Cricket / Hughes 300C / Rebel line of vintage R/C Helicopters

Click here for GMP Competitor / Cobra / Legend

May all GMP Crickets fly again!

The first non scratch-built radio control helicopters flew in the early 1970's. By about 1974 or 1975 we had helicopters that were fairly flyable by today’s standards. However, helicopters remained an obscure part of the radio-control hobby.

In 1980, John A. Gorham, an aviation engineer by trade, and avid aeromodeler was chosen by the producers of the film All Night Long to create a flying model helicopter for one of the film's planned scenes. Of course, the producers wanted extra helicopters made, in case one should break. There were, according to Mr. Gorham, six original Cricket helicopters made for the film.

Click picture to watch original prototype Cricket test flight!

After the production of the film was complete, Mr. Gorham retained the rights to the Cricket design and tooling. He, along with his soon to be wife Louise, showed three of these intriguing little helicopters at the Long Beach hobby show that year. They wound up selling 55 kits on the spot, and taking orders for 500 more, as Dieter Schluter looked on from the next booth!

The rest, as they say, was history! The Gorhams founded Gorham Model Products (GMP) later that year, as the Cricket was an instant hit, receiving positive press reviews, television coverage, and widespread advertising.

LA newscast covering GMP and the Cricket - push play to watch

Being an extremely simple fixed-pitch helicopter intended as a reliable beginner’s training model, the Cricket arrived in a neatly organized shipping box, with a very comprehensive instruction manual, setup and trim instructions, plus ongoing update bulletins sent to existing owners.

excerpt of original GMP promotional video - push play to watch

The Cricket was very good little machine for its day. It was in some ways very similar to the earlier Micro-Mold Lark helicopter (circa 1976):

Design Inspiration for the Cricket: the Micro-Mold Lark

The overriding design mantra of the Cricket was absolute simplicity and light weight. In fact, the Cricket even eschewed an engine-driven cooling fan, because it simply was not necessary, it added weight, and robbed power from the drive train. Although Cricket owners could order extra accessories such as the cooling fan, floats for landing on water, a gyro and training gear, Mr. Gorham's enduring focus to "KISS" - Keep it Simple Stupid (and light) won out over all attempts over the years to "improve" the Cricket's design.

Rather than changing the Cricket itself, GMP went on to produce three other variants of this highly successful helicopter: the special Gold "Super Custom" Cricket, a scale version of the full sized Hughes 300 helicopter, and then the Rebel which was essentially a larger version of the Cricket.

new Crickets ready for distribution hanging on the wall of the GMP factory

The company also expanded its offerings and went on to sell a separate line of larger, high-performance collective-pitch helicopters based on Hirobo mechanicals, the Competitor, Cobra, and Legend.

However, the Cricket remains the best known and remembered helicopter of this very early era of the hobby. Approximately 16,000 Cricket kits were produced. Driven largely by the widespread success of the Cricket, with 10 employees, and revenues of $795,000, GMP was awarded the INC 500 award in 1983 as recognition for one of the fastest growing privately held companies in the United States.

Perhaps envious of the success enjoyed by the GMP, Hirobo, the large Japanese radio control manufacturer soon produced a competing model called the Ministar, which was essentially a copy of the Cricket but with a more advanced rotor head design featuring Bell-Hiller mixing:

Hirobo's take on the Cricket: the Ministar

Much to the dismay of its many fans and customers, GMP suddenly and quite unexpectedly closed its doors in 1989, never to be heard of again. The company became embroiled in a major business dispute with Hirobo, which lead to the termination of GMP's Mitsui Bank business financing. It is unknown how many Crickets survive today, much less airworthy examples. Despite the difficulties in obtaining parts, there are a growing number of modern experienced radio control helicopter pilots who either actually fly a Cricket today or keep a one on display in their shop, either out of a sense of nostalgia, or perhaps from a desire for a simpler back-to basics design.

a GMP Cricket takes to the skies in 2007 - push play to watch

There are even a few very dedicated enthusiasts who trade original parts and also manufacture and sell reproduction parts for the Cricket today on the internet. Although these models are enjoying a resurgence in popularity, GMP Crickets are candidly not the best beginner helicopter to learn on today. Model helicopter technology has greatly improved since the 1980's, plus Cricket parts are fairly hard to come by these days. Crickets are great fun, and with an experienced pilot, can even perform loops and rolls! With the manufacture of reproduction parts, such as reproduction canopies and the sharing of helpful hints and information regarding these historically important collector's models, the GMP Cricket is gaining popularity with modern experienced R/C helicopter pilots returning to the "First Love" found again!

Flying a Cricket 25 Years Later

It is early 2007, some 25+ years after the introduction of the Cricket. We just had to have a go and try to fly one of these intriguing little helicopters once again to compare it with modern offerings. Unfortunately, these helicopters have not been sold since 1989. Parts today are extremely rare and hard to come by. Most Crickets that are still intact today are hanging from hobby shop ceilings. After a few months, we had acquired two (almost) complete Crickets, plus a good supply of spare parts. To my surprise, one of the boxes of miscellaneous Cricket parts that arrived at my doorstep even included the mythical .28 sized Mac's HeloBall Muffler! Not only that but thankfully, there is a fellow selling brand-new, reproduction Cricket canopies on the internet! What's more using the internet, I also found a very rare, original, never run O.S. Max .28 F-H helicopter engine. We even found an un-filled GMP Cricket registration card for Cricket kit # 11020, which will be our claimed "chassis" number for this project! What a world we live in today!

The build took longer than expected (maybe about a week of spare time in the evenings) because we had to disassemble everything and pick the best parts out of the whole lot. We not only had to use a lot of de-greasing solvents to clean many of the old parts up, but we also had to do some light polishing to bring back that factory new shine. The original CNC aluminum components are beautiful, and look great once restored! We stripped off the old main rotor blade covering, re-painted the blade roots and tips, then applied a new covering of trim MonoKote before doing a precision two-way balance of the rotor blades. We completely disassembled two tail rotor gearboxes and put one together from the best components after de-greasing and re-packing with mobil-1 synthetic grease. Every nut and bolt checked, and torqued with blue loctite to help prevent loosening from the severe vibration that was sure to occur in flight. Out of a bit of additional caution, we bought some new piano wire from the local hobby store for the tail drive shaft, and a new drive belt from McMaster-Carr. Continuing the same theme of keeping the bird original, yet more importantly, reliable and flyable, we did not want to trust a 25+ year old radio control system, so instead we opted for a Spektrum DX7 radio, Futaba GY401 gyro, and modern digital servos, all state of the art in 2007:

Interestingly, all of these electronics are so much lighter than what was available in 1982, that we had to duct tape a large steel bolt to the battery pack for ballast so that the heli would not be tail heavy! In GMP's defense however, the Cricket instruction manual does say that some ballast will be needed up in the nose because the Cricket was designed so that you could install a little pilot figure there in the cockpit! The real reason is that the tail rotor gearbox is quite heavy, containing solid steel internals, and a two-part cast casing. It is a very nicely made piece however. Too expensive to mass-produce today I suspect. So many of today's modern helicopters rely on plastic pieces for these critical components. In any case, we got everything all finished, charged up the batteries, and packed up for the local expert flyer's house to get the Cricket "maidened" and trimmed out. After some initial trials and errors getting the engine started, then some more work tracking the main blades by taking a crescent wrench to the blade grips and bending up or down slightly to add or reduce pitch on that blade, we finally had liftoff!

Wow! 25 years old (or just a few days old, depending on how you want to look at it), and she flies!

April Cricket Update

OK, well, we bought a bunch more Cricket parts off the internet (why is it that we can't stop this strange sickness??). Anyway, one of the lots included some of the major components of the "Super Cricket" that has the gold anodized rotor head, and black anodized frame. As it turns out, the Gold rotor head actually is a better design (slightly) than the regular aluminum head. See our hints page for details. So, of course, what did we do??? Well, naturally, we built another Cricket! When will this madness end!!!!????!

You might notice that besides the gold rotor head, and black anodized frame, this new "version 2" Cricket Connection Cricket has a slightly different paint scheme, and red rotor blades instead of the usual white or black blades. This is because we built this one of look like the old Cricket we had "back in the day". Take a look at this vintage 1980's picture of the original:

Guess we were not too good with striping tape and canopy paint back then. Rather than repeating that particular nightmare, we painted our new V2 canopy in the standard "yellow and red trim" scheme of the GMP factory-built Crickets. Anyway, we are having good luck flying the new V2 cricket with the modern radio equipment that we had originally installed and flew in the V1 Cricket. We are probably going to be selling the V1 Cricket flying in the video above shortly, as well as the remaining parts inventory that we reasonably cant see a need for anytime in the near future, as V2 Cricket will be going up on the ceiling soon (I am sure we will still fly it every one and again).

So.....you may be wondering, after all of this work and effort, how does the Cricket actually fly? Well, she does OK. She does not suffer from a lack of power as was originally expected. The originally spec'ed .28 has enough power to get you out of trouble with room to spare if you find your descent is too fast. There is really no need to go with a modern .30 or .32 as has been suggested recently by another Cricket enthusiast. With the modern heading hold gyro, the tail keeps pretty well behaved, but not as "locked in" as modern helis of today. What really keeps you awake is the constant cyclic wondering, and overall lack of stability. So much of the pilot's effort is used up in just trying to keep the Cricket in one place. Even with the most modern radio and servos, there is a noticeable delay between your input at the sticks, and when the model actually moves. This is not to say the Cricket is not a fun model to fly. Quite the contrary, all this work makes her a bit more of a challenge, and requires that much more concentration to fly, making just basic flight more rewarding in a sense than modern helicopters.

Click on the Play button to watch the Cricket fly!

Mission Accomplished! This project was a lot of fun....not only in hunting down all the parts, but also building and flying the Cricket!

She is all cleaned up now, and hanging from the ceiling in a completely ready to fly state.