cruzmissile

Why is it causing problems? I though the higher headspeed equals better response and flying?

kokamo

My Feedback: (1)

ok guys, first post here in the Blade CP thread.

I am a newbie to helis but a long time flyer of 3D aircraft. I have been on the sim for over two weeks and have gotten quite good at nose in, FF, FFF, inverted flight, inverted hovering, all that good stuff. ANYWAY, my question is, would the Blade CP be a good first heli for me??? I just want somthing small I can fly anywhere when I get the urge.

Has anyone else learned on this heli? It seems to be a good machine but I just wanted to know what everyone else thinks of it before I buy.

Thanks, Joe

budgetdude

My Feedback: (6)

I think it was hitting like 2000 rpm, it was jolting up and down uncommanded.

budgetdude

My Feedback: (6)

It is a goog machine, although I think it is harder to fly than my 30 size nitro machine. If you use the training gear you will be fine but if you dont you may be buying a mainshaft everyother tipover.

cruzmissile

2000rpm's seems a little slow. The blade stock does about 1500 rpms. I don't think it's the speed of the blades I think it's something else. Could be a glitch or collective sticking.

DarkWombat

I say go for it kokamo. I learned on my Blade and I just had a lot of 3-Ch. parkflyer experience. I did my research on the terminology and all the know-how about helis soon after I got it and was careful. It'll be tough at first (easier for you because of simulator experience) but you'll get it with practice if you stick to it. The Blade is really cool because it's really inexpensive, parts are cheap, and it's quite a durable and easy to maintain little heli.

cruzmissile

The blade CP was my first heli as well and had no sim experience with a heli. I've been fly gas models for about 4 years. The parts are inexpensive and it's easy to find them as well. The after market parts for this heli is also very abundunt.

bdavison

My Feedback: (1)

I learned how to fly collective pitch on the Blade. Its a fairly stable helicopter.
Its going to be different than the sim though. In your sim, crank the sim speed up from 100% to about 120%....then try all that stuff again. It will be a little more realistic.

hdbint

I bought a blade a few weeks ago and couldn't be happier. I have no prior experience other than a few hours sim time about 5 years ago.

I saw the micro heli stuff about a month ago and thought it would be great BC no build time and parts are fairly inexpensive so I picked one up along with an extra battery. I couldn't help myself, a CP heli for 220 bucks? Amazing!

After the first battery to pre flight check / blade tracking, day one ended early on the second battery with a bent spindle, broken skid and a few cuss words. (It was fun...I flew it like I stole it.) I ordered ordered a spindle on line (LHS didn't have one) along with a bunch of other spare parts just in case and a training gear. I found [link=http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_3131294/anchors_3131294/mpage_1/key_blade/anchor/tm.htm#3131294]Bdavidsons E-Flite Blade Assemby[/link]link and absorbed as much knowledge as I could there and other threads as I patiently waited for my parts to arrive.

Well the day my parts were to arrive we had a little problem called Rita making landfall just to the east of us. Needless to say, my package was delayed.....almost a week. Parts FINALLY arrived and I got'er set up per Bdavidson's thread and the sticky collective fix.

Third charge was used to scoot across the livingroom floor on the training gear. Fourth.....I went ahead and decided to break the gear from the ground. I achieved 5 controled hovers in the living room about 6" to 1'-0" off the floor. They were tail in's and short in time (2-5 secs) but ohhh so sweet. I just tried to keep a cool head and made sure I was watching for trouble. At the first sign of it, I would put her down.

For us new guys, I would say that you can learn on the Blade. I have heard that it is not the easiest helicopter to learn on but so many have made it their first helicopter. To the new guys I give the following advice: GET THE TRAINING GEARS, they have made a world of difference so far for me. Learn how your BCP moves by getting the skids off the floor but don't let the training gear leave the groung until you feel very comfortable with it. Be careful BC when you get her skids off the ground, she'll move pretty fast on that training gear.

For you experienced guys, Thanks for sharing your knowledge on the board. It has helped me tremendously.

I have a long way to go but I am having a blast doing it and have only trashed a few parts (I'm sure they won't be the last). I did notice that once I set the heli up properly, it was so much smoother than it was out of the box.

Hope this helps someone.

Thanks for listening,
Brian

kokamo

My Feedback: (1)

Very nice reply Brian. Thanks.

Thanks to you all. This is making me get more motivated in buying a BCP. I just have to save a couple of more pennies to buy it. I also need to sell a couple of things on ebay to get to the point of getting spare parts also. Thanks again guys, I will steadyly be watching this thread to see any more talk about out little heli's!

Joe

bdavison

My Feedback: (1)

COOL...glad you liked my thread. One of these days Im going to get around to finishing it. Glad it helped you too.

Ive heard flying helicopters described a few different ways. Here are some of the best.....


Its like balancing a bowling ball on top of a pencil, the only thing is.....your friend is holding the pencil, and your telling him which way to move it to keep the bowling ball from falling off.

Like trying to keep a marble still on a sheet of ice in a earthquake.

Like trying to run as fast as you can with a styrofoam cup full up to the brim with water....and not spill a drop.

stevennh

Does anyone have the parts diagram for the 3BB blade holders? I purchased a set and one set of bearings but can't quite figure out how to put it together. I had hoped to put a set of bearings in the head and have the blade holders fit over them, but I see now that each blade holder needs three bearings and I might need another set for the head? Has anyone installed one of these?

Steve

ljrt

stevennh:
Check with Cruzmissle. He was going to check at his employment on Thursday about the setup for these.

kokamo

My Feedback: (1)

HA HA HA! Thats funny! I have heard one very similar. "It's like balancing a chicken egg on top of a needle"

DANG, I hope it's not that hard! I tried the egg/needle thing before and it was impossible! .............j/k

Joe

bdavison

My Feedback: (1)

Its hard, but you have to remember....not impossible.

It drove me bonkers when I was first learning. I went through blades like crazy. Never did much damage to the helicopter itself, but I went through blades like they were candy. Just remember while learning things will break, but its TOTALLY worth it.

Learning to fly heli's is like learning to ride a bicycle. You remember. Dad told you to start peddling, and you did. He held on to the seat to keep you from falling. You were wobbling all over the place. Eventually he let go, and you were peddling by yourself, then BANG...you fell off. Started crying, kicking the bike, etc etc etc. Then every chance your Dad got, he shoved you back on that bike.
Crashing is like falling off the bicycle. Eventually you'll get tired of bustin' yer butt, and you'll learn how to do it so you dont. The only difference is nobody is holding you steady while your learning, and you have to put yourself back on the "bike".

Remember the 3 "P's" of helicopter flying.

"Patience" - Start off slow. Dont rush things. It will come eventually. Be patient when things dont go quite right. Fly slowly, methodically, and with all the concentration you can muster.
"Persistance" - When and if things go bad, be persistant. Dont quit. Learn from your mistakes, and try again. NEVER give up. Dont lose sight of what made you want to fly heli's in the first place.
"Practice" - And LOTS of it. The more you fly, the better you will get. Fly every chance you get. Everyday if you can.

If you have these three things, you'll WILL learn to fly heli's.

Flying helicopters is mentally demanding. It can and will stress your mind. If you start getting aggrevated, take a break, relax and then go at it again. Remember its supposed to be fun.

cruzmissile

I saw the diagram for the new blade grips but there is no way to find them on the internet, so I'm going to have to bring my digital camera to work and take a photo of the sheet and post it onto here. The new blade grips have a total of 3 bearings per grip. I think the spacer is also shorter to accomadate the third bearing.

goodbeer

Wow,

Thanks a bunch Wombat! I just finished rebuilding my blade today. I managed to crack the tail boom on it during a particularly hasty landing [X(], and that meant a complete rebuild (new frame and tail), and I found the main drive shaft was a bit mushed around the head pin so that got replaced too. $50 and a few hours later and it was back in the air, and this time it stays pretty straight (first flights had a lot of yaw to the left that I could not dial out)...

Not sure how big my living room is, its quite big and void of all furniture, my son's second game room... I have hovered it pretty successfully in there I didn't even think about flying it outside but I guess I'll give that a try next I also found out I have the 9T pinion on there, wondering if I should go to the 8?

At any rate, its a darn cool toy for $150 (what I paid). I may go buy a spare one, wish they came in different colors...



[img][/img]

DarkWombat

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

Jet Jaguar

I work at a Hobby Shop also. I have also flown the new upgraded head units. I don't like them as much. They don't have the sticky problem, but they do have another. They tend to hop up and down rather quickly making it difficult for someone who has no experience flying helis to fly it. I switched the washers and flew it for a customer for about 3 stock batteries worth, and it seemed to get a little better. But i believe i will stick with my original. And as far as an upgraded motor. Try a Venom fireball 370. I have used this motor for about a month now, and have had great results and at $15, it's a great deal compared to a brushless setup. Which i would not put on this type of heli.

DarkWombat

Welcome to the Blade thread Jet!

This Venom Fireball motor you're talking about, does it have any issues with the stock 4-in-1 unit (eg. amperage draw). If it makes the 4-in-1 a little hot I should be able to use with my 2-in-1 unit without any problems.

stevennh

cruzmissle,

Thanks, I would like to see the layout. I tried to put it together like the old one, just with the extra bearings, but I was using the existing hardware (for the 2BB) and the shaft that holds the holders seems a bit short and I ended up with too much play. I put two washers in but that seemed too tight. A picture would be great... I thought the new setup would include a bearing at the rotor shaft, but it sounds like the extra bearing in the holder is the only change. My Blade works well now anyway so I guess I should just leave it alone.

Steve

DarkWombat

I've got a question for you guys, although it might have been stated before.

My right rear servo is a little weird from the other two. It's still one of the original stock servos and I purhcased a new Eflite servo anticipating replacement, but I haven't replaced it yet. The servo is very difficult to move when power is off, if I move the swashplate with my hand the other two servos always move yet this right rear servo doesn't. However when power is applied it moves fine. It's a little louder than the other two but it still seems ok. Is it nearing the end of its life anyways and should I swap it out? I don't want to take it out if I don't have to because that means undoing all my wiring and re-routing it with the replacement servo's wiring.

bdavison

My Feedback: (1)

I just got a set of the carbon blades yesterday...and finally got around to fixing my gyro. Carbon blades are really nice. If youve gotten to the point where you dont doink blades very often...go for the carbon ones. They are really sharp looking on the heli, and they are made FAR better than the wood ones. Nice hollow core carbon blades. High gloss finish, straight carbon grain. really well made.

Performance wise....not much difference between them and the wood ones. They do seem to track much better, and collective changes seem faster, but Im not positive.

If you fly over dirt....DEFINATLY go get some. Im occasionally planting mine in the dirt trying something stupid. One hit on the wood blades and the ends look like they exploded. My carbon blades have taken a few dirt hits, and it doesnt faze them. Not even a nick or scratch.

I do however wish that they had painted the tips or something. I airbrushed the tips of mine with a bright yellow stripe to match the canopy. Looks pretty sharp if you ask me.

My old gyro died on me a while back, so I've been flying around with no gyro. Finally, got a new gyro for my heli. Its the new 4-in-1 box with a clear case. I dont know what they did to the new ones, but the gyro locks in much better than the old ones. If you toast something in it, you dont have to void the warrenty to find out if it toasted either...you can now just look through the clear case.

Now if we could just find some carbon fiber flybar paddles. A nice MD500 fuselage kit, and then I'd be happy.

Have any of you managed to do any flips with rotations at the tops or anything? I wanna try it, but I dont know about that tail. I can do loops, stall turns, inverted hovering (a little), and rolls, and a funky looking tornado, but Im wanting to really get on it, and try something tight and wild.

34Ford

My Feedback: (2)

Well here is a 6meg video I made of me trying to fly the blade after about 13 attempts.
And I have NEVER flown a r/c copter ever in my 30 plus years of r/c modeling.
At this point Im just learning how to use the rudder, much less hover.

To me this is proof that a newbie can learn on one of these and enjoy it. I am having a blast and I think its the concentration you must give it compared to other models.

I hope this gives some beginners some I idea of how easy it can be, although I have a long way to go at least you guys can see a total noob can do it instead of reading material. Hope this helps some realize if I can do it............



[link=http://home.att.net/~machwon/Blade/Copter3.wmv]Click here[/link]

ljrt

bdavison:

Here is a site with cabon paddles along with a lot of other mods.

http://www.helihobby.com/html/blade_helicopter.html