goodbeer: The 8T pinion will give you a little longer flight times due to less amperage draw, at the expense of higher performance. You won't get the rotor head speeds you can get with a 9T pinion, but you will have longer flight times too, not to mention a cooler running motor. I recommend it for those who are still learning to fly but went to LiPo's (if you know how to treat LiPo's I'd reccommend going for it right after you get the Blade. Makes it a totally different bird and a joy to fly). I used the 8T for when I was still learning to hover, and I used it for some basic forward flight. Now I switched to a 9T and I'm going to see how it works out. Hovering definately works at a lower throttle setting with my 9T pinion though, my heli will hover at about 55-60% throttle. But of course I dd a bunch of stuff to it so it's not stock. Oh, and nice pic! Don't hit the chandelier! Maybe soon you'll make a landing pad out of those lego blocks behind you and try rescue missions

I think (and hope) that Eflite gets smart and starts distributing the Blade CP with a LiPo pack and basic charger instead of the NiMh pack. Micro heli's and LiPo's go together like peanut butter and jelly. Not to mention the increased stability and longer flight times that go with switching to LiPo.

Esky makes a Hummingbird (I believe that's the knockoff of the Blade? Either that or they're VERY simliar) that ships with a 1300mah 3S LiPo I believe. You can find it on helihobby.com . Eflite needs to meet that deal with one of their own I think.

Well Blade rebuild #3 is complete and ready to rock!

I started balancing my rotor blades for the first time, because I was getting a lot of bad wobbling. While performing a range check I was pacing back from the heli and had my back to this (word of advice to ALL of you, DON'T DO THIS!) and I got eventually too far with the radio antenna collapsed so interference made the blades spin up and it tipped. My brand new set of carbon blades had a few smacks against the pavement so now the material at the bottom of the tips is partially chewed off. Fortunately the carbon blades are quite robust so I CA'd the grinded spot, filed it a bit to smooth it out, and then put a small piece of tape over it and they're working fine. Balancing the blades was simple with a razor blade stuck vertically in a vice grip, then placing the rotor blades on top of the razor one at a time and measuring CG and marking the spot with a little tick mark. Sure enough, the discrepancy between the CG's was about 1.5cm, enough to really have a negative effect with rotor blades that are so small and light. So I added some small pieces of tape at the end of the rotor blade that had the CG closer to the blade root until they were about equal, and then added some tape to the other blade on the CG to make the weights balance out.

I purchased a digital postal scale today too, I HIGHLY recommend that everybody get one of these, they are a MUST for electric aircraft hobbyists (not to mention people who want to make sure they're not putting on too many/too few stamps!). The scales out there for postage are pretty good for the most part (get a digital one for simplicity and accuracy) but all the ones I saw are accurate to 1 gram, so with rotor blades it will be tough to tell which one's the lighter or heavier one (both carbon blades were at 11g but I didn't know which one was heavier by fractions of a gram). However the scale helped rule out the possibility that one of the blades lost enough material to make a big discrepancy in weight.

So after balancing and weighing my blades, I stuck them back on my heli, reset the pitch control links and had them tracking in no time. It wobbles a little (new main shaft too) but it's not anything bad enough to cause instability or electronics problems. Hovered the heli very reliably in my front yard after the fix and I'm ready to go flying tomorrow!

My aircraft page has been updated with the new Blade setup if any of you are interested in what I'm flying with.

A couple tips that I've learned from my experiences with my Blade:

Those of you getting problems with burned-out tail motors, Helihobby sells a tail motor mount that accomodates two tail motors. You split the motor leads between the two so each motor gets half the voltage, resulting in less wear on the brushes. However I am yet to burn out a tail motor (I'm only on my 2nd tail motor, last one was replaced because the front bushing fell out and the motor stopped working properly). If you're getting problems, at the least you can just purchase an extra tail motor heat sink and use two. Keep a small space between them to maximize surface area and therefore cooling potential. I'd also recommend using an extra heat sink on the main motor (especiailly if you go 9T) because that motor can get HOT.

If you got a new main frame assembly for a rebuild, chances are that you've noticed there are not included canopy support rods! My original remedy was to cut the rods off of busted skids that I saved, but it doesn't work that well. My new trick is to get two brass rods (it seems that the grips on the frame they mount two have different inner diameters...). I matched a 1/16" rod for the front mount and a .072" rod for the rear mount and they fit PERFECTLY. They CA very easily and they weigh so little that there's nothing to worry about. The rods stay in very nicely, no wobble, and they are rigid so you won't have your canopy bobbing around everywhere. I highly recommend you take this route (most hobby shops have a place where you can get rods or tubes of various lengths) because those little fiberglass rods that are on the skids are a little dinky, at least from my experience.

Finally, see those little dinky fake airvents on the front of the Blade canopy? Peal those stickers off and use a hobby knife to cut them out so those fake airvents actually do something. When you're in forward flight it'll help keep your battery cool and get some airflow over your motor. If the windshield of your canopy is coming lose, now's as good a time as any to take it off and spraypaint your canopy! I believe it's made of Lexan so use R/C car body paint (R/C car bodies are made of Lexan too so these paints are specifically formulated to bond to Lexan, most stuff doesn't) and some Lexan-compatible C/A to fasten that windshield back on. Note that the R/C car body paint usually comes on flat, with the exception of some metallic colors, because car bodies are painted from the inside so the layer of clear lexan on top of the paint makes it glossy when viewing from the outside. When I get the time I think I'm going to experiment with this and make my Blade truly my own.

That's all for now!
DarkWombat