Yeah, the Blade CX would be an excellent trainer for the Blade CP. I used a Hirobo XRB to learn on, and then moved up to the Blade CP with very little problems.

thanks Bdavison. yes two weeks is just not enough time. however i will be watchin for your upgrades. while saving for my cx.i want to get my cp ready for when i am done learnin.

Hi all.. just looking. Great thread Bdavison/its people like you that make this such a great hobby. i can only guess the amount of time it takes to get the proper perspective as well as editing of text in pics lighting etc/let alone describing in post the steps as well as assembly of heli and keeping everything in sync. not to mention uploading etc in proper order without reediting replys as well. thanks for giving back to the hobby what youve learned with your time with the blade. excellent picture qaulity and great text editing as well in the pics. this is probally a larger undertaking than some may realize and shows your dedication to the hobby as well as to helping fellow hobbyists. they say a picture is worth a thousand words and the pictures are awesome/some video when your blade is flying again would be really great as well if possible. once again thanks for the great post.

Mr Bdavison;

I am experiencing a problem and thought you might have had it come up~in a hover and constant head speed, all of the sudden, altitude is dropped and by adding a touch of power, altitude is regained~I have ruled out electrical hits by changing out the entire head from another "Blade" that I have~Any sugestions?

Regards;

Larry Smith
Kansas City, Mo.

Larry,

Depending on how it is dropping what you are describing could be normal. If the heli seems to be jumping or bobing up and down by an inch or so then it could be the flybar sticking inside the rotor head. If you are talking about the heli just seeming to slowly decend by a foot or so and then come back up then I'm afraid that is normal. The constant adjustments that are required to maintain a hover can cause one blade to drop more than the other at times and this can cause the heli to drop. Just like you are constantly making adjustments on the right stick you will constantly make adjustments on the throttle as well to maintain a stable hover. This is why a lot of people remove or lessen the ratchet in the throttle stick to make it easier to make these adjustments.

So depending on exactly what you are describing it could be some binding in the head or it could be completely normal.

My CP is doing something that I think is wrong, or maybe it's me...

When I turn the GAIN fully COUNTERclockwise, the tail rotor stops. When I turn it CLOCKWISE, it starts running and goes crazy when I turn it all the way. Shouldn't the PROPORTIONAL pot be doing this?

I followed ALL the steps described in this thread and my Blade still WON'T hover of fly stably...

?????? HEEELP ???????

Art

I think there should have been some new threads started around page 5. Most of these posts have nothing to do with the title of the thread.

a very slight adjustment goes a long way.very sensative.

Okay gang - kind of a noob here! I taught myself how to fly this thing in about a month. I dumped some cash on upgrades and a few broken parts but there’s one thing that I cannot emphasize more. Use caution when flying indoors!!!

I just upgraded to an 11.1v Li-Po. I had a 9.4 but with the carbon fiber symmetrical blades, after 5 minutes of flight, there wasn’t enough juice to keep the thing in the air. Well, after installing the new battery, I had 4 successful hovers of about 1 minute each. I decided to put the thing away because it scares the poop out of my dog.

Anyway, I landed and went to disconnect the battery. When I set the transmitter down, the 3D switch flipped (switch on the right). The blade took off totally out of control and started flying around the room. The only way for me to keep it from hitting a $3000 high def TV was to bat it down like a bug.

All is well now. My TV was okay, however, my carbon fiber blades are now toast.

Just a warning to all!!!

I’m going to disable the switch so this doesn’t happen again.

-Pilot352

IMHO the carbon fiber symmetrical blades are only for once you have managed to start going into acrobatics with this heli. If you're not doing stall turns, flips, loops, and rolls then you have no reason to be using the CF sym blades. Trust me I learned this one myself and I'm even working on acrobatics right now myself. I'm not spending the money on another set of CF blades. I'd rather spend the money on cheap wood blades that take 20 seconds to install then spend 10 hours trying to track down vibrations and wobbles from a damaged head due to a ground strike with the CF blades. Go ahead and put them on your heli but be warned.

I don't need the bling of the CF blades and with some time the woodies can track just as nicely as the CF blades... Sharpies can make the woodies look pretty nice too

Wow...ok


Heli bobbing up and down.
First, dont think that you can set the heli at a certain altitude and leave it there. It will require constant throttle changes to maintain altitude.
If the heli is rapidly jumping up or down, the first place to check is the well-documented "sticky collective". There is an easy fix to this at the beginning of this thread. Other things that can cause this are a bent spindle, radio interference, wind currents(like from a fan or floor vent), thermals, etc.

Lipo's on the Blade.
A fully charged 3cell 1250mah lipo should fly the blade for close to 20min on a single charge...even with the CF blades.
If you are flying with symmetrical blades (either wooden or CF), once the battery reaches about 10V you will barely have enough power to get airborne. Recharge the battery. 9.4V is too low to fly the blade on the symmetrical blades, and running your lipo that low can damage it. Never run it lower than 3.4V per cell....and I wouldnt recommend getting anywhere close to that.

I disagree with LOstSOul. I think the carbon fiber blades are an excellent addition...even if your just flying around. But you should be at the point where you aren't running into everything before you try them. The carbon fiber blades are $34 bucks. If you run into something, most likely the CF blades will survive all but the worst hits, but you will most likely break head parts. Head parts are still cheaper than blades. For instance a new main hub is about $6 bucks. Even for the low cost woodies...replaceing a set of blades is $12-17 bucks. Me personally, Id rather bust the cheap head parts than a set of expensive blades. Usually what I break is a ball link off of the Main Head Frame "A" or "B".....a part that I can replace for about 4 bucks....much cheaper than a new set of the woodie blades. If you prefer the woodies, than by all means...use what ya like. The other thing I like about the CF blades, is they come in the package straight and fairly balanced. I went through three packages at the hobby store, of woodies before I found a set that had both blades straight. Which makes me wonder if some of the vibration problems that have been reported are a result of flying on warped blades, not to mention it also makes tracking almost impossible.

bdavison,

Thanks for the info on the Li-Po's I bought the 9.4 2 cell version under the advice of my LHS monkey. It flew pretty well with flat bottom blades – I only flew it about 3 times with the 2 cell Li-Po. When I put the symmetrical blades on, there was a definite performance reduction. After reading the “NOTAM’s� from e-flight on the CP, it mentioned that the 11.1v 3 cell units work better with symmetrical blades. I’m hesitant to buy another set of CF blades until I get better at flying this thing.

I guess my post was more suppose to be focused more on the dangers of the 3D switch, not the CF blades. But let the thread take on it’s own coarse!!

Keep up the great info though!! Many thanks.

I still disagree with you on the CF blades bdavison. When I crash these days it's going to break everything. My last crash not only took out my CF blades but also the entire head. Sure if all you are doing is hovering and you are still occasionally scuffing the blades on the ground the CF blades are better but I've not scuffed a blade in months. To put it in perspective, my last crash cost $75 to fix the heli. That was just in parts. That did not include replacing the CF blades that were broken. Had I been using the woodies I most likely would not have destroyed the head at all. All told I'd say those CF blades ended up costing me well over $100 in damage to my wallet. My woodies track just as good as the CF blades ever did. I'm just not going to spend that money again. $15 for the types of crashes is much easier than $100.

I'm going to wait until I'm capable of doing all of the acrobatics I can do with this heli and I've not crashed in months before I put the CF blades on this thing and by that time I'll probably be moving up to a trex or some other heli.

As far as hitting the idle up switch accidentally I'm not sure how that could cause the heli to fly around the room. If the heli was pretty much shut down like you say hitting the idle up switch would simply push the heli into the ground due the the negative pitch of the blades. Unless you were already at over half throttle the heli would have simply fallen hard to the ground.

You know, I thought about that. But this is the only explaination that I have. It happend real fast. The heli rose about 4.5 feet off the ground and my first action was to swat it down before it hit my TV. It sounded like it was at full power. When I got my heart slowed down and started picking up the peices, I tried to restart the heli (with the bladed removed) - The throttle and trim were in full OFF position. That was the setting when I set the Tx down. When I powered back up, it wouldn't init (solid red light). I then saw that the 3d switch was in the wrong position. Switching it back, then all was okay. I'm going to take my heli outside and try to duplicate this.

I have read in other posts about people saying that the CP will "jerk" at times. I have experienced this myself. But the motor jerk was real short in duration. Just enough to make the blades go cock-eyed. This was long enough to take off and rise to 5 feet or so.

You most likely got a glitch. I have had my heli just run up to full throttle and come up about 5 feet in the air and then fall. My buddy has his do it and it cost him a trip back to horizon for the heli.

It seems that the stock transmitter has issues if you get between it and the heli. It always seems that the heli will glitch if I set the transmitter down behind me then go to unplug it. It does sound more like you got one of the odd glitches than accidentally hitting the idle up switch.

Dont disable the idle-up switch...

use it more...

Makes flying, especially hoving, easier cause it keeps the head speed up...

Im kinda curious though. If you just flip the 3D switch, it will jump to mid throttle, but it will be at full negative pitch if the stick is all the way down.....how on earth did it take off?

EDIT......whoops.....Lostsoul beat me to it.

Hey bdavidson...i think you promised us pics of busted blade carnage!!!!

or did you already put them up and my dumb-head missed them....?

i just had a radio glitch from hell....i may have gotten inbetween the heli and radio, i fired up the radio ,set it down, plugged in the heli battery and as i was turning around to pick up the radio the heli fired up and went to the ceiling of my shopand was pinned to the ceiling for about 5 seconds, then as i was holding the radio trying to figure out what happened it turned over and you guessed it ...it found the floor.have ya ever seen a fish on the shore thrashing around this was worse it went on for near a minute while i tried to pin it to the ground to pull the plug and stop the carnage. total damage that i have found so far .....1 broken pitch linkage,1 bent fly bar,total loss on the tail blade and lost a bearing,woodies are toast and i replaced the main shaft and gear because i think it had a slight wobble but not certain so i will keep it and check it at another time. not as bad as i would have thought after i saw how it looked. radio glitches suck.......... oh ya and i did everything right on start up trim and throttle down normal mode.....o well i just about got her back together for another shot need to balance and track blades..also i got the alum. swash while i had it apart, any thoughts about it ,does it help any other than in fff from flex?

I looked all through the thread and couldn't find any talk about a "sticky" collective pitch. Could you be more specific, please?

Thanks

Check this page out for detailed info on the sticky collective issue on the blade. Be aware that horizon has released an upgrade to the blade around the middle of september that introduced a 3 ball bearing blade grip that helped to remove the issue. If your manual has an insert in it that includes info on this upgrade then you don't have "the" sticky collective. It could be something else.

[link=http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=382982&highlight=sticky+collectiv e]Horizon Hobby Blade CP Sticking Collective Problem Resolved For Free!! [/link]

Oh wow, thanks a bunch for that. I couldn't find any insert on an upgraded blade grip in my manual. Is there any way to tell by looking at my heli w/o taking it apart to see if I have the upgraded blade grip or not? I mean I bought my Blade new mid-November so it should be upgraded if they did it in September, right?

If your servos and 4 in 1 are made of a semi- transparent plastic, then you have a new version with the 3 BB, otherwise not. Good luck :0)

No, you didnt miss the crash pic. Im still trying to find that crash pic in my external harddrive of GB's of pics. I know its in there someplace. Im basically going folder by folder looking for it. It may take me a while...but Ill get it. It basically shows the heli laying on the ground with the canopy all busted up, the head and 2/3's of the blades on the heli is laying on the ground with the hub sheared in half and the blades are exploded into splinters, and the tail boom looks like someone strapped a firecracker to it, the skids are hanging off the bottom.

Im thinking what happened is I got a tailboom strike, which killed the tailboom and sheared one blade in half, then down it went, underpower, and the head sheared off when it hit the ground. I never did find the other half of the blade.

I got to find that pic....you guys are gonna love it. Blade Carnage at its finest.

Im hoping to have a bell/hiller head on my blade by this weekend if all goes well. Ill be posting assembly pics up here of it. Its the Esky head, not the E-flite Blade head as the E-flite head isnt out yet. But since I know some folks have ordered or already installed the Esky head on their Blades, I figured it would be a good addition to the thread.

Well it's not entirely true that if you have the clear 4-in-1 and servos that you have the upgraded blade grips. I bought my heli in mid september right at the time that they were rolling out the new blades. Mine has the new 4-in-1 and the new servos but it did not have the 3bb grips. If you bought the blade from your local hobby shop then it is very possible that you have an old stock version from the mid august-mid september batch like mine. The only way to tell without taking the heli apart is if there was the added page to the manual around page 20. You can not tell the difference just by looking at the blade grips.