Well, I had a detailed wrap up report and poked a wrong key and blew it away. I'll try to recall what I said;

The final results of the home-made grips is a mixed bag. They are light-weight. They also have all of the variables that hand cut / drilled / sanded parts have so my repeatability is terrible. The junk blades that I used in my first experiment flew far better than my new blades. I did some sanding and the blind nuts shaft does fully penetrate the blades and grips so I can tighten the screws fully and still swing the blades.

At this point my tracking is off and I can get that fixed. Oddly, the tracking is spot on under acceleration but it flutters on deceleration. The blades do fold easily on impact but I am impacting things that I should miss because my handling is off.

Bottom line, if a guy has time and no money these grips can be made to work. I don't know that they can be made to work as well as CNC. However is someone wants to create a set of dies to control the cut and drill operations, the parts can be made far more consistently. That may be all that's required. There are also kits that allow us to refill our own computer printer ink tanks. Some do that and others have no luck with them. It depends on where the owner is headed with his project.

So I'll get this tuned in and it will fly well when I get it finished. Would I make a set for someone else? Not likely, but I'd supply instructions for a DIY experimenter. I do appreciate the fact that I have grips mounted and the heli is still at less than stock weight.

I guess at this point we know what works for inside and also outside, so we should publish one concise list of what works. Grips - blades - motors - lube (or not) - batteries. One list that we know works well. Anyone can deviate any way they please, but we need a baseline.
And through this a few guys who were using tight blade grips have gone to loose grips with a lot of success, so it's not a total loss of time and effort.

So I'll wrap this up with a little story. And don't laugh.

My heli sits with the battery in it part of the time. I shouldn't do that, but I do. Anyhow, the boomtown skids have sort of sagged. They are splayed at the rear and the heli sits low and it just looks bad. So I figured that I would make a little stand with a couple of grooves for the skids so they don't spread. In the mean time, I used a very light weight Velcro wrap around the skids. It has the grippy side on one side and the fuzzy side on the other. It just wraps around the skids and hooks to itself. I guess I put the grippy side out for no particular reason.
Anyhow, I thought I would make my first trial flight with the new blades in the kitchen. And the kitchen has a large industrial carpet in the center. It's resistant to everything. Anyhow, I set the heli down and spun up the rotors to alignment speed. Then I pushed for lift-off speed. It got light but wouldn't lift. More throttle, and it seems to be trying, but still nothing. It was pumping a lot of air and I could hear it strain. What the . . .??? Full throttle. Maybe the battery is down from my messing around - and then it happens!! My VELCRO BAND had hooked to the nap of the carpet. I Velcroed the heli to the carpet, and when it tore loose, man did it hit the ceiling!! Now THAT's lift power!

Off to supper.
See ya,
Soloboss