Another Blade SR tale of woe!
04-08-2014, 02:12 AM
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Another Blade SR tale of woe!
This is a tail-rotor motor tale!!!
Before I get to ditzin’ the Blade I want to first say that all in all it’s a fun little helicopter to fly. I’ve got like 30 flights on it now…, mostly inside, and I enjoy flying the little twitchy thing around the shop.
Now let’s get on to the tale of woe: I had another Blade SR that I had got for Christmas but only flew it a couple of times when I was drunk so it had a couple hard landings. Anyway, it sat on the shelf for most of a year or so when I finally decided to get it down and start flying it. I probably put 10 or so flights on it indoors and then started outside and the wind just slammed me first into a tree, and after I had got it back it got slammed into a curb.
I decided to get another one and be more careful with it so I ordered it up and UPS had it on my doorstep in just a couple of days. Anyway, I unpack it, charge the battery (plus the other two I had from the previous one) and took to flying. On the second flight the rotor motor just quit. No warnings…, it just quit when I was two feet off the ground and luckily I was able to do the rotating uncontrollable landing fairly easy. I tried recharging the pack…, messing with the gyro setting…, and messing with that proportional setting for the rotor mixing (under the Blade) to no avail.
I called the company (I believe it was Horizon Hobby) and they shipped me out a new motor free of charge. In the meantime I looked on the internet and found a bunch of forum posts about these crappy little rotor motors and how they just burn out. Well, after reading that I decided I better buy a few to keep me going so I purchased 4 of them from Amazon (like $30). And it’s a good thing too…, as after I installed the new motor Horizon sent me, it too quit after 2 flights. Although this one started to lose effectiveness and then slowly died.
Well, long story short, I put another motor in and also decided to not fly back to back flights but let the little motor cool between flights (the thing gets up to over 165 degrees when flying)…, and I got a good 20 or so flights until that motor burned up. Now, I just installed another one and I’m up to 3 flights on that, but I only have three motors left. Once those are used up I’m going to give the Blade SR the 12 gauge shotgun salute to put it out of its misery.
Eflite should really do something about this issue…, it really looks bad for them. The only other complaint I have is the transmitter throttle doesn’t have enough resistance and is too easy to move when flying. Adjusting the stick length really didn’t help…, what would really help is if the TX had a way of tightening the stick throws like my pro (Futabe/Hitec/JR) transmitters do.
All in all, not a bad little toy…, it just sucks that you have to dick with the rotor motor so much!!!
Ken
Before I get to ditzin’ the Blade I want to first say that all in all it’s a fun little helicopter to fly. I’ve got like 30 flights on it now…, mostly inside, and I enjoy flying the little twitchy thing around the shop.
Now let’s get on to the tale of woe: I had another Blade SR that I had got for Christmas but only flew it a couple of times when I was drunk so it had a couple hard landings. Anyway, it sat on the shelf for most of a year or so when I finally decided to get it down and start flying it. I probably put 10 or so flights on it indoors and then started outside and the wind just slammed me first into a tree, and after I had got it back it got slammed into a curb.
I decided to get another one and be more careful with it so I ordered it up and UPS had it on my doorstep in just a couple of days. Anyway, I unpack it, charge the battery (plus the other two I had from the previous one) and took to flying. On the second flight the rotor motor just quit. No warnings…, it just quit when I was two feet off the ground and luckily I was able to do the rotating uncontrollable landing fairly easy. I tried recharging the pack…, messing with the gyro setting…, and messing with that proportional setting for the rotor mixing (under the Blade) to no avail.
I called the company (I believe it was Horizon Hobby) and they shipped me out a new motor free of charge. In the meantime I looked on the internet and found a bunch of forum posts about these crappy little rotor motors and how they just burn out. Well, after reading that I decided I better buy a few to keep me going so I purchased 4 of them from Amazon (like $30). And it’s a good thing too…, as after I installed the new motor Horizon sent me, it too quit after 2 flights. Although this one started to lose effectiveness and then slowly died.
Well, long story short, I put another motor in and also decided to not fly back to back flights but let the little motor cool between flights (the thing gets up to over 165 degrees when flying)…, and I got a good 20 or so flights until that motor burned up. Now, I just installed another one and I’m up to 3 flights on that, but I only have three motors left. Once those are used up I’m going to give the Blade SR the 12 gauge shotgun salute to put it out of its misery.
Eflite should really do something about this issue…, it really looks bad for them. The only other complaint I have is the transmitter throttle doesn’t have enough resistance and is too easy to move when flying. Adjusting the stick length really didn’t help…, what would really help is if the TX had a way of tightening the stick throws like my pro (Futabe/Hitec/JR) transmitters do.
All in all, not a bad little toy…, it just sucks that you have to dick with the rotor motor so much!!!
Ken
Last edited by firmth; 04-19-2014 at 12:41 AM.
04-16-2014, 03:52 AM
#2
Senior Member
My Feedback: (13)
Are you referring to the TAIL ROTOR motor, perhaps?
FWIW, experienced heli pilots generally WANT the left stick to move quite freely, the better to make quick and subtle pitch/yaw changes while holding a steady hover.
I have one of these, and find the left stick horribly "tight". The ratchet mechanism is the main culprit, but I lost interest in helis before figuring out how to disable the ratchet. It will involve removing the transmitter back case.
I'm recovering from surgery, so I decided to get this little machine back into service while I'm sitting around the house. Found everything so far except the steenkin' batteries...
I had not heard that these had any major issues… guess I've got some reading to do.
.
FWIW, experienced heli pilots generally WANT the left stick to move quite freely, the better to make quick and subtle pitch/yaw changes while holding a steady hover.
I have one of these, and find the left stick horribly "tight". The ratchet mechanism is the main culprit, but I lost interest in helis before figuring out how to disable the ratchet. It will involve removing the transmitter back case.
I'm recovering from surgery, so I decided to get this little machine back into service while I'm sitting around the house. Found everything so far except the steenkin' batteries...
I had not heard that these had any major issues… guess I've got some reading to do.
.
