Carbon Fiber blades are highly recommended after you can hover the heli and do basic flight w/o training gear (otherwise you'll be wasting money). They can take your everyday ding against a bush or grass or anything soft and not have any damage, where wooden blades would have the covering peeling and they'd be frayed at the tips. A few strikes like that with wooden blades and you should be getting replacements soon. The carbon fiber blades can take a huge beating before they're not flyable anymore, partly because when they start to deteriorate, they deteriorate in the exact point of impact and chip off instead of warping or having covering flying off like with the wooden blades, so just a little bit of light packing tape and you should be OK for a while. Once the damage gets extensive (say, 2 good-sized gashes along the leading or trailing edges of the blades) then it's time to retire them and get another set, but judging the abuse they've taken that's at least 3 or 4 wooden blade sets so they've already paid for themselves almost.

And then there's the performance boost. Carbon fiber blades are much stiffer so you get more consistent performance with them. When you've got rotor blades spinning upwards of 2200 rpm, any slight variation in attitude or airflow will cause a lot of stress on the blades. Wooden blades will flex much more so the airflow isn't as ideal as it should be, while carbon fiber blades barely flex at all. You will notice a very nice improvement with the carbon fiber blades, a LiPo and the Aerobatic Enhancement Kit. While they're not invincible, the carbon fiber blades are far more durable and reliable than the wooden blades.

This isn't a thread..... it's a 28 page book. LoL

I have a couple of questions.

1. Has anyone had the problem with the blade when inverted the main rotor hits the tail-boom and drops out of the sky?

This has happened several times with mine and surprisingly with minimal damage. I'm sure it's me on the pitch stick a little too much. It flies inverted and does rolls fairly easy. Has anyone encountered this?

2. Are there any brushless motor set-ups available for the cp-blade?

I keep asking but hav'nt got any answers yet.

My blade has a 1320 mah li-po with the 9 tooth motor and carbon-blades. It goes where I ask it too, just seems a little weak for inverted manuevers.

Wow... I'd wouldn't imagine that's possible under ordinary conditions unless perhaps your rotor speed is wwwwaaaaaay too low. The centrifugal forces shouldn't allow it to get quite close enough to the boom to hit it mid-flight, or maybe your tailboom is loose.. but if that were the case, you probably wouldn't be flying long enough to get inverted anyway.

No off-the-shelf kits yet. To go brushless on the BCP, you end up doing a complete separates upgrade. New Tx/Rx/ESC/BEC/Gyro/etc.

There was a post about advancing motor timing by twisting the back of the can by 30° (1 hour) clockwise -- consider that. And also, do the sticky collective fixes (blade grip washers & centerhub/flybar problems). Maybe that'll help out.

NOOB here.

Has anyone had to cut their Blade body for the batteries to fit,.......inside.?

Reason I ask is I cant get the body to reach its mounting pins if I try to wrap the body around the bottom of the battery pack.

Dennis
Did that to my blade body this weekend..had the same problem as you.

Now the body fits with no problem at all..go for it.

Good Luck!
Darrell

I cut mine also to fit the Li-PO battery.

While we are on the subject of batteries. My tail rotor twitches from side to side while I am hovering with my Li-PO battery (1800 maH). I tried to adjust the gain on the 4-1 but that helped very little if any. However, using the stock Ni-Mh baterry the tail rotor is fine.

Any suggestions on how to fix this??

Thanks guys. I did finally get the body on but it was a stretch. I would rather cut the body, as these little copters are very delicate compared to my other r/c toys over the years.

Especially compared to my weedeater powered Firehammer.

My 3S 1320mAH LiPo battery doesn't fit well either, but it's all in how you put on the canopy. I slide the canopy over the battery and 4-in-1 so that everything always fits inside. By the time the canopy is mounted on the cf rods, it's a fine fit w/ room above the 4-in-1 to spare.

An 1800 mah LiPo is really cutting it in weight. I don't think your heli has adequate power to lift all that weight. Try adjusting the gain some more, but I think part of the problem is you're weighing down your heli too much, it's torquing one way and the tail is compensating but over compensating and then the gyro undercompensates to bring it back and the cycle repeats. Your motor is working harder to keep that heli up, and when it adjusts the tail rotor speed the main motor speeds up or down, as the tail motor speeds down or up, so the heli is also dropping too much because of the added weight and you're getting all sorts of problems. I could go on but you get the idea.

Weight your heli. If it weights more than 11.5 ounces with battery, you've got a problem and you need to cut weight.

As far as brushless setups go, I don't think it's worth it in the end. The Blade is a nice heli, but its strength (the simplicity yet effectiveness of its design) is also its weakness. The main frame is a simple plastic " T ", it's one piece for strength but if you break one small part of it and you're going to have to get a new main frame after a few tries with C/A. As I see it, there really isn't much of a point to go brushless with this heli. Sure, you'll get more power but is the heli really designed for it? I don't think it is. Sure, brushless motors are lighter and more efficient, but you'll be adding more weight with a brushless speed control. You'll have to tinker with the gear ratios again, and there is so little room for a brushless motor in the first place that it'll be tough to find a good match. As cool as going brushless with the Blade sounds like, I think it's not worth it. If you want to tweak it to the max and do all sorts of junk to a heli, get a T-Rex. I'm gonna keep flying my Blade of course, but I've gotten my next heli planned out (T-Rex 450XL CCPM) and will be getting it in late November probably.

The most I'm willing to do with my Blade is change out the radio system (done), go LiPo (done), get Carbon Fiber blades (done), and maybe get a higher-performance tail motor and/or a nice vertical fin to replace that dinky little vertical tail support rod that breaks too easily.

But anything else to me seems like a waste of time and effort and money. However, there's still the mantra that "we do it because we can", and I'm sure someone will or is in the process of converting their Blade to brushless. If you do, more power to ya. If there's a really significant improvement in the heli's performance, then I'll have second thoughts about plopping down another $120 to go brushless.

Thanx flaXen, I just overhauled the head yesterday and everything is tight. It was flying fine, but the head's rpm's seemed to be on the slow side. I rolled it halfway and flew inverted then brought the nose up and it happened again. I'll try advancing the motor timing and let you know how that goes. Needess to say, after the blade hit the ground, I pulled out the Caliber 30 to put a smile back on my face.


One more question for now, why do they sell a 2 in 1 speed control unit?

Is that for a brushless set-up? You need a seperate gyro also.

So, after disasembleing my blade grips to flip around the washers I have a question. How much push/pull slop shoud the grips have on the spindle? If I were to tighten both blade grips onto the spindle with the end cap screws, push them in towards the spindle and then pull them out how much movement should I see?

The 2 in 1 is for going seperates. I fried my 4 in 1 and replace the RX so I could use my good TX and also got a gyro. Its not for brushless but works very well at powering both the main and tail motors, mixing the two and providing BEC power without the expense and weight of two ESC's. Well worth the $35 if you want to go that direction.

those blade heat sinks are pretty wimpy IMHO...their surface area is minimal!

GWS makes 370 sized heat sinks that are a drop in fit for the blade main motor covering the whole motor just below the vent holes...very effective heat sink.

ditto for the tail motor. The GWS heat sink designed for that size motor covers the whole motor. after a flight I can barely feel the heat in the tail motor.

a drop in fit here also. I usually resolder the ground wire on the motor to another spot to allow the heat sink to be placed on the motor with the most surface contact

cheers
Papa Sharptooth

Bouncing about the living room, my then three year old grandson declared himself "a kangaroo".
"If you're a Kangaroo, what is Grampie", I ask.
His reply: "you a dinosaur"

I need to replace the tail boom on my Blade CP.....what would be the preferred type of adhesive to hold it into the main frame and tail motor housing?
Thanks.

HEy I finally finished reading through all of the posts......I have to say Im impressed with heli people......

IN a monster truck forum there would be nothing but put downs and flaming in a thread this big. ( we all know the LST is the best LOL!)

ANy way I hope I can break into the new challenge of a heli soon...later guys

After putting my e-sky honeybee fp back in the box and on the shelf, I am very impresed with the Blade I have had it for a couple of days now and am starting to realize once out of ground effect it smooths out nicely. Its kinda weird, I could be wrong, but it seems like ground effect kinda pushes the heli down then it will "pop" off the ground a little. I have found that if I concentrate I will get to that almost flying point and lift off to about four or five feet above the ground and it is much more controlable. if I barly move the stick and slowly lift off it is all over the place. If I can keep from going down hard and breaking the blades on the boom I would have a lot more flying time. fun copter Keep the thread going , good info here. Dave

popping off the ground could be the begining of the "sticky collective" issue. Mine flew fine for about three weeks and then the "sticky collective" started with slight "popping off the ground" action (about 1 - 1 1/2 feet off the ground). Not the drastic 6 feet leap some experience.....but you probably took care of that after a long thread like this singling out this unfortunate feature.



the heli should actually get light on the training gear and be able to move around close to the ground. not popping into the air. I could be the difference between notches in the TX throttle stick and how you have the collective trimmed. Heli TX's shouldn't have ratcheted throttles but the stock TX with the blade comes this way. the ratchet can be removed and probably should be when you get a moment when charging those batteries.

There still isn't any aswers to how much play should be in the blade grips (side to side action) after disassembling it to do the recommended corrections to the washers. I did the washer switch out as well and have a little bit of give from side to side even thought it's as tight as it's going to get.

I took mine apart also but didn't notice any play in the grips. It did "look" like it could have been tightened more though, but the screws were all the way in. I have flown it a bunch of times since. So, if your screws are tight I would venture to say that you are OK to fly.

Does anyone have any suggestions for a better tail support? I have tried to glue that little rod on the back in about 10 times with no luck. I drilled out the hole a bit to get more depth and still keep losing the tail support when I land in the grass. It does not seem like the current design is strong enough.

Steve

You guys are going to probably shun me away because I have a link to another site about the blade, but you have to see what this person did to his blade. totally upgraded from the ground up.

[link=http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=519449]Blade upgrade[/link]

Cruz: there looks like there is play in the rotor head as far as the grips are concerned, but when you put it all on the main shaft with the paddle control frames the blade grips shouldn't be able to be pulled or pushed across the spindle. The washers in between them should be able to move freely though.

And about that Blade: very impressive I must say, especially with the canopy and the brushless motors. However I'm still going back to my original argument about duking it out with this heli: it isn't worth it. Duke it out with a T-Rex or a similar-category heli that has the construction and competitively priced aftermarket parts out there that would allow you to change out specific parts and have more control over what you can install and where you can put it. But still, a very nice job.

The T-Rex and similar helis in its class are designed for maximum modifiability and performance (and it comes at a price, the T-Rex 450XL CCPM heli kit alone is $200 without any electronics!). The Blade is a great heli because it's something you can buy and just...FLY. There's no complex setups or assemblies to worry about, there's a minimal number of parts to break, aside from servos and motors, all the other electronics are in one nice little box....that's the genius of the Blade. When you go crazy and start converting it to brushless and using all sorts of insane setups, sure, you get an awesome heli, but it defeats the purpose of the Blade.

So that's my opinion. Still, I really like that uber-modified Blade. Puts my minimally-modified one to shame!

Hi guys....I just bought a Blade CP today. This is first heli and i KNOW that I am gonna crach it...lol Thing is, It was working earlier and it seemed like the batterey went out . So I charged it for about 2 hours and then put it in. I tryed putting the throttle up and all it did was move the Blades left and right. No spinning action. Then it all went out and wouldnt connect to my Remote. So I charged the battery some more and tryed again. What it says in the manual is that you have to wait for the light on the 4-1 thing to stay Green and then your good to go. But mine will not stop blinking red and green, it never will stay on green. In the mean time I try to move the controls and nothing happens. The red and green light eventually start fading away like the batterey is goin dead or somthing. Ive tryed several times to disconnect and reconnect the battery. and sometimes the green light wont even show. It will just be blinking red. Anyone ever heard of this kind of problem? Please let me know.......Thanks Guys!

Make sure the throttle stick and trim is all the way in the down position as well as your idle-up switch is off {switch should be forward in its down position} If any of these are not in the correct positions, the 4-1 unit will not arm. Good luck with your blade.

DarkWombat,

Yes I agree about the upgraded blade, I would not spend that kind of money on the blade. It just looks cooler when someone else does it, I do however has had an eye on the Shogun 400 V2. It's less weight than the T-rex. If not that then I also had my eye on the Swift by Century models.

[link=http://www.centuryheli.com/products/helikits/swift/index.htm?currentid=304?currentid=304]Swift Heli[/link]

This is just a project idea, I still have a hanger 9 P-51 .60 that needs an engine, and a PCM receiver. I also have a Dynaflite Decathlon that needs all it's electrical equipment and engine. The decat is going to be a very long project. The heli stuff I'm doing is just something for me to play inside the house while I get my planes put together.