lol, you make me laugh Arrow. Actually of all the people on the board that look to find out why things work, you've got to be one of the most mild mannered and willing to accept when someone else might know more about the situation =) I think that is a great attitude. People need to know why things work =)

I'll try to explain the 8T concept and see if it makes sense, and if it doesn't then I'll give it another go ahead. The 9T if you just look at gear ratios will give you a higher head speed because everytime the motor goes around it moves the main gear 9 teeth, where the 8T only moves it 8 teeth. The comparison comes in the strength of the motor. The stock motor only has a limited amount of strength, so when you put the 9T on and 18g worth of blades it really loads the motor and slows it down. When you move down to the 8T it theoretically slows the head speed, but you have more power because the motor is spinning faster. You will have the same amount of torque on both, but horsepower is a combination of torque and speed, so the faster moving motor will have more horsepower even though the torque is the same on both the 8T and the 9T.

I like anaologies so I'll try to explain it with one of those. If you are pedaling a bike and you are in a high gear it will be very hard for you to push the pedals and you'll get tired quickly, although theoretically you can go faster in a harder gear. If you gear down a bit you'll have more power for faster acceleration and you wont tire as easy, although you wont have as high of a theoretical top speed. In the real world though you might have a higher top speed because you are more in your "power curve".

This is what we are trying to do with the motor. The easiest way to tell that it is not in it's power curve is if it has excessive heating, like the 9T for the flat bottom plasti blades. I just got an 8T today that I am going to slap on and I'll let you know how that turns out =) Hopefully it wont work the motor quite so hard, which should mean more punch out power and longer flight times due to less power consumption.

Hopefully that makes sense =)

If not let me know and I'll try a different way to explain it.