NOTAR 500 Light Utility Helicopter 1.0.1 Version 1.0.1

I get the impression this product is already very old and appears to not have been updated in a long time, so caveat emptor.

WE START WITH 5 STARS:

Model and texturing: Wow. Stunningly gorgeous, Worth every prim it uses to rez and definitely an eye-opener.

Flight model: Very graceful and smooth. Caveat: flying by keyboard is challenging at best, chaotic at worst; controls are TOO SENSITIVE ( more specifically: when turning (tap the left or right arrow) the nose turns and rolls and is WAY too slow to recover - one tap for more than 1/4 second spins the bird almost 180 degrees in NO LAG, 60FPS sim. NOT GOOD. Near impossible to land accurately (helipad). YAW control is stupidly sensitive for keyboard flying in SL. With a joystick it may be better, but unlikely.

Deduct one star for this.

Awkward process to pivot (Yaw-only); spinning the nose without moving forward, backward, or sideways: this helicopter is designed specifically to be flown in mouselook. Though the only way to pivot: exit mouselook and press the SHIFT key + arrow key. Does not work in mouse look = BUG, PLEASE FIX.

Benefit of doubt - no star deduction.

ZERO ABILITY to slide-slip (roll and slide sideways without moving forward, backward, or turning the nose). This function DOES NOT EXIST.

MINUS ONE STAR.

“Ground Effects (dust/water spray) are created by a REZZED OBJECT. Typical TO from helipad: ascend while simultaneously turning nose to heading and nose-down forward acceleration. The moment you cross out of airport sim into NO REZ (99% SL) you are instantly spammed with “Cannot rez” messages (toasts filling up the right side of your screen and chat filling up the left side).

Unacceptable. EVERY other vehicles creator aircraft, boat, car) has learned to create ground effects without resizing anything.

MINUS ONE STAR.

SUGGESTION:
SHIFT-Arrow key YAW-only
CTRL-arrow key ROLL-only
DUST option turned OFF by default or actually FIX it.
(I'll not hold my breath on these)

I probably should not have bought this without trying a demo.
But there is none, so I read the previous reviews which suggested it was a good craft.
So I bought it, OMG! it's expensive, took it to the same sim as the previous review, and it flew terrible, I have extremely fast computer, and internet connection, with good ping to SL, but this flew like a lead balloon, very unresponsive, it stalled at every sim boundary, and it kept saying 'Script trying to stop animations but PERMISSION_TRIGGER_ANIMATION permission not set in local chat.
At the time of writing, I had test flown the same day, other helicopters which were far easier to control, all had sounds equally as good, some were better textured, and one was free which was the equal to this one. If the creator would like to demo this helicopter in SL and show how it is at least as good as the rest I test flew, then I will update this review.
But until then my opinion is it was a waste of 4k $L