34Ford, nice video. Being a pure beginner myself I appreciate how difficult those seemingly simple manouevres can be. I've had my Blade for 2 weeks now and am only just getting confident in 1 to 2 foot high hovers, tail-in.
I notice everything in the video seems to be tail-in, you managed to make the mental jump to other relative headings yet?

LOL, nope afraid not. I just managed to do this much saturday. And the least little wind and Im all over the place.

Dark Wombat,


I have ran this motor for awhile now, and it has no ill effects on the 4 in 1 unit (and that is with a 3cell lipo). The motor does run a little hotter than the stock, but with my experience in the past with this motor, that is common. I have also ordered an MS Composit Bell Hiller control unit part #(ms230) to put on the head unit (to try and up the cyclic response for 3d moves) and it should be here next week. I have heard that this device coupled with the ccpm has great results in producing good 3d results. But i will have to find out for myself, because this heli is very hard to get inverted. It just doesn't have enough power to pull it around good enough.

Dark Wombat,

Its easier to roll it upside down then flip it.

Build up some airspeed, then pull the nose up, and roll it over. Kinda like a barrel roll, only you stop it inverted.
You can also fly it backwards building up some airspeed, and then flip it forward. It does need more power though for good 3D aerobatics. Ive got mine as tweaked as I can get it, and I could still use more power.

I've had a Blade a little more than a month. The problem is in a hover, when I input right nose to correct tail drift, she drops fast. Slammed the black top a few times. this has cost two tail booms and a set of carbon blades. Any idea what's going on?

oneslim

Bdavision,


Everytime i try to loop, near the top my tail also will slide to one side from the torqueing effect. the only way to fix it is with a headholding gyro, but i will save that money for when i get a bigger heli with a belt driven tailrotor. i've only seen two videos of people getting these things inverted and one is from eflite ( which i would hope they could do since they make the thing). And have not heard of many others if any trying or getting them inverted. I dropped mine from about 20 feet tonight trying to loop roll inverted and did not have enough room to recover. but that is ok, i wanted to rebuild it anyway.

The fireball motor is a great upgrade to the stock 370 can that's in there. The fireball motor is a 370 motor and is actually an upgrade for an electric R/C truck called the 18MT. The fireball motor makes this little truck haul so much speed, it's insane. Glad someone mentioned it because that's the same motor I had already thought about useing as an upgrade. Yes it is very inexpensive compared to brushless setup. It only cost $12 at the hobby store I work at.

Good eye cruzmissle, you are correct it is an r/c car motor. but it works very well in small electric planes and the blade. and yes, very cheap compared to brushless.

cruzmissle, what hobby store do you work at? i also work a hobbystore, hobbytown

I'll check where I work if we can get a Fireball. We stock Venom rims so it shouldn't be a problem.

There's some other motors out there too. Team Orion makes the Baja modified motor (although this is on the higher end side, it's a $50 modified motor so amperage draw may be too high), they also make the Big Block and some other stuff. But before I get into that stuff I need to get a Hyperion E-Meter. If you don't know what this bad boy is check it out at TRex Tuning (go to Setup -> Hyperion Emeter). It's a hand-held wattmeter that measures watts, voltage, amperage, resistance, everything of the sort you'd expect. But it also has a built-in tachometer and a datalogging feature so you can plug it into your PC and have real-time graphs! I think it's a necessity for anybody who wants to change out motors and find the right power system. I'd have to make sure that the head speeds are up to snuff, it's not drawing too many amps and also I can find out if I can push it farther.

The motor I can get will proabably be a tougher choice for me because I'm using the 900mah LiPo so the amperage draw can't be as high as it can with the 1320mah LiPo.

You have more flying time than me, but when I correct with the rudder mine was doing the same thing but I have pretty much concluded it is me. I believe my right thumb moves just enough to make it go in reverse.[]

I work at Hobby Town USA in Columbus GA.

You have more flying time than me, but when I correct with the rudder mine was doing the same thing but I have pretty much concluded it is me. I believe my right thumb moves just enough to make it go in reverse.[]

No, I have been trying to work around this for two weeks, I know it's not me. I input a little more throttle and it still drops. Maybe 1 in 10 times when I do left rudder it will jump.

Open question for anyone who's tried it.
I'm thinking of getting a LiPo to replace the NiMh, and the manual recommends a 3-cel, and changing the motor and adding heat sinks, but does anyone know why I wouldn't want to just switch up to a 2-cel LiPo running around 800 mAh. It's only a .2V difference from the NiMh and with the weight savings should give me a significant improvement in flight time/performance.
I would just buy one and try it but I don't know whether there's some weird switching that goes on in the 4-in-1 that only supports 7.2V and 11.1V, nothing in between.
THanks
(getting better, but I know when I take the training gear off I'll be going through blades every landing like there's no tomorrow).

Don't waist your time with the 2S lipo. I have heard some guys can get the ship to hover but just so. Go with the 3S 900-1320 and you will be happy. I actually used the stock motor for quite a while with the 3S and it worked fine but got a bit warm. If you follow the upgrade path on the Horizon you can't go wrong.

Yeah Jet Jaguar, the hard part is getting it inverted, once it is, then you can keep it there. To loop it you have to get LOTS of altitude, then dive and come ripping by you (still with lots of altitude) and pull the nose up to loop it. Be ready on the sticks, Sometimes the tail will swing. Put some Fins on the tail, and it will help ALOT, but you have to have forward airspeed for them to work. If it doesnt make it up to the top, be ready on the sticks to roll it out.

The easiest way Ive found to get it inverted, is to come ripping by you, pull the nose up a little, and then roll it over. Apparently e-flite figured this out too, since every video they have....thats how they got it inverted. They wont tell you that though, but video's dont lie. Watch the e-flite video on horizons website, you'll see him come zipping by, pull it up, and roll it over, then key rudder to make it hover inverted nose in. Sneaky little ******. I wonder how many blades he broke before that pilot figured out how to do it.

I got a pic somewhere on here where I have mine inverted about 2ft off the deck. I had to roll it to get it there. Then inverted hover down to the deck. So far I havent been able to repeat that though. I just got lucky that time.

Practice stall turns ALOT. They will help you get used to the beginnings of a loop. Plus keying the rudder at the top will get you use to your "escape" procedure should something go wrong. Keep increasing your pull up, until you get it inverted. Remember to keep LOTS of forward airspeed, or it wont make it over the top, and you have to abort with the heli at about a 45 degree inverted angle.....hard to recover from.

I had a nasty crash a couple of days ago trying to pull a loop. Broke a blade grip, and stripped about 10 teeth off my main gear, and crumpled up my canopy. Darn thing didnt make it over the top, and stopped about 45 degrees...just couldnt pull out. It went in nose first inverted into the dirt. For some reason it didnt do a thing to the blades....Ill never figure that one out, especially since I was in idle-up when it went in. Darn thing was flopping around like a chicken before I could shut it down. It happened quick....REAL quick. But aye....thats just part of it. 15 bucks later and I was back up and running. Couldnt find a canopy, so Im flying on my crumpled one. Ill get another soon.

Really, that's surprising. I figured if I managed to find a lipo that supported a high enough current per cel I'd be ok.
Ok I'll stick with the 3-cel path. I already have the aero upgrade kit anyway so I have the motor and sinks I will need.
Thanks.

I've added two heat sinks to the main and tail motor. The heat sinks for the main motor has just enough room for the air vents to be exposed. I also advise to use some heat sink compound, a bit messy but it works to dissapate the heat really really well. I'll share some photos later.

bdavision, are you using a 900mah LiPo? The 1320 is still kinda heavy. But yea I think the heli might be a bit underpowered for an easy transition into inverted flight (I am SOOOO not going near there any time soon).

Just wondering, I said before that because there is fixed pitch tail rotor instead of an adjustable pitch tail rotor, a heading lock gyro would probably work poorly with the Blade, what do you think? I'm thinking of trying some new stuff out, and since I expect to get a T-Rex eventually anyways there's no harm in getting components now that I can use later.

Wombat,

You are correct, the headholding gyro would not work to well on the blade. I would suggest just getting a better heli if anyone is looking to buy a HH gyro. Also thanks Bdavision for your info on getting inverted, that is what i had thought would be the only way. I ran across another video of another guy getting inverted several times during one flight, if anyone wants it, drop your e-mail in the forum. global hobbies has also stopped carrying the ms230 bell hiller control, so i'm having to find somewhere else to order it through my hobby shop. because i'd rather get my hobbyshop price since i work there instead of ordering direct. hopefully this will work well. it is supposed to make the flips and rolls alot more axial. I also am using a eflite/(TP gen 1)3cell 860 mah lipo instead of the TP 1320.

I noticed that the grips on my BCP had a little slop too. I noticed this after I set it down a little too hard and the spindle wound up getting bent without so much as a blade strike. When I installed the new spindle, I added a small flat washer in between the O-ring (038) and washer (015) on each side of the center hub. This made it nice and snug and the washers seemed to fit perfectly so that each end of the spindle is now flush with the outer bearing (014) on either side (if the spindle is not flush, i.e. a little too short due to the added depth of the washers, you should be careful to balance the length of the spindle between each grip side as you reassemble for a balanced hub). I also reassembled according to the sticky collective fix - reversing the outer washer order. This made the whole assembly operate really smoothly even though the grips now have no slop whatsoever!

Just to make sure I had a good fix, I crashed her even harder a few flights later and the spindle survived just fine - unfortunately, that energy had to dissipate somewhere else and the main shaft took the fall this time.

For whatever it's worth I'm running a GY240 with pixie 7 and DD tail. Works real well. Tom

tomcatt51,

thats cool that it works well, but can it get inverted well? and if so please explain.

Im running a 1250mah 3cell. I might try a 900mah and see if that works better.
My next option is a non standard upgraded motor. Im thinking about something out of a RC car or something.

Hmmm,

Did the shop get any more of those motors you use in Jet. Didn't have any when you showed me your heli the other day.....right after you put on the CF main blades.

I think I'm going to try one of those out along with the CF Blades. You were asking me about CF tail blades and I found some on Monday if your interested. I don't think they will perform better but they look sweet.