DrLizardo

I was outside flying today and I noticed my blades were making an unusual sound. AfterI landed I examined them and they were full of air. The plastic coating was all puffed out on both blades. Neither blade has any damage or any obvious hole where air could get in. After it sat for a few minutes the puffiness went down, but the plastic isn't very tight against the wood. I was going to try to shrink the plastic with a heat gun, but I was wondering if anyone else has had this problem.

Druss

not me, but using a heat gun is the right idea. as a general rule too, not many beginners know this but those black plastic tabs on the blade root (where the bolt goes through on the blade grips) need to be glued down with CA. Make sure you do that to your blades and all your spares.

DrLizardo

Interesting. Do you glue them to the plastic or do you cut away some of the plastic covering and glue them directly to the wood? Also, I'm curious what does that help with? Thanks for the tip.

Druss

just glue them to the plastic. they are there to reinforce the blade roots and you don't want to use just the little screw to hold them on. some of the higher end blades will even come with instructions telling you to glue them on but esky seemed to have forgotten....

BladeCX2Two

I say dump the stock wood blades. I had nothing but problems with those dam things. Had several have the plastic peel off for no reason... Plus when you do hit the ground even lightly with the blade, mine seem to tear and that was about all she wrote... put a light coat of CA where the tear was but that was tedious.

I've since then went with the Align 315mm fiber blades. Not Carbon fiber.. these are just called Fiber (looks like a hardened white plastic)... these babies are awesome. I've skimmed mine on the blacktop driveway a couple of times and it barely puts any significant scratches on them. I will never go back to the stockers.

Druss

the white ones are probably FRP, fiber reinforced plastic

BladeCX2Two

These are the very ones that I have... i have tried both 325 & 315. I'm currently have the 315's on it. All that was needed was some spacers to make them work. I have 4 little nlyon washers that I got at the hardware store. That and you have to sand the root down a bit otherwise they won't collapse completely because it will hit on the feathershaft.

http://www.helidirect.com/product_in...oducts_id=1420

DrLizardo

Hey, thanks for the link. I'm definitely going to get some of them. For that price I can afford to get a spare set in case I have a bad crash. I did manage to shrink the plastic back down on my wood blades which solved another problem I was having. I wasn't getting much flight time out of my batteries. I've got a charger that shows how many mAh it puts back in the battery during a charge. I had been using about 225mAh per minute of flight just hovering. I couldn't figure out where all the electricity was going. After I fixed those blades my usage dropped to 160mAh per minute of flight. I bet those fiber blades cut through the air even better than the wood ones I fixed.

BladeCX2Two

No problem. You will love the Align blades. I just got in from flying as a matter of fact. Got 4" of snow yesterday. Had to launch her off the packed snow. Anyway, these white fiber blades can take so much more abuse. I've landed a bit sideways a few times and the tips of the blades have skimmed the ground in rotations and it just put very light scratches on the tips. That was a blacktop too!! The stock esky's would have been trash. I guess I don't see why anyone wouldn't run them.