The E-flite Blade SR Tips and Tricks
 

Figured Iwould start a thread about everything Ihave learned so far in flying and repairing my Blade SR. Maybe we can all learn from each other and avoid making the same mistakes.

I will start off:

1. It is WAY more powerful than an MSRor a co-axial. Find a big, indoor area for your flights and take it slow. If it gets away from you it could hurt you or somebody. Keep the tail pointed at you and learn the way it reacts to your stick movements.

2. In getting rid of the tail bounce or "wag"in my machine, Ihad to turn the gyro down a little bit. When you adjust the gyro, you only need to BARELY move it to get a response. It took me 4 battery packs to get it just where Iwanted it. You have to power down and back up to make any adjustments take effect. If you adjust too low, the tail is loose and harder to control, too much and it bounces back and forth and works too hard. Ihave finally gotten mine to where it just barely bounces and it only does that sometimes.

That is all Ihave for now. Some ideas for other stuff would be:

1. Parts suppliers Iuse RCBoca out of Florida because they have most of the common parts for the SRand MSRand ship quickly. If they don't have it, Igo find it on Ebay.

2. Videos and how to guides on how to replace key components. Those were life savers when Ihad to fix my broken head and main shaft.

3. ??????

Chris
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RE: The E-flite Blade SR Tips and Tricks
 

Thanks I was going to do this but I glad you did. What are your radio setings? You are using the E-flight radio right? I can hover but then she gets away from me. I have ti stop jerking the sticks just little movements.

RE: The E-flite Blade SR Tips and Tricks
 

Giddy,

Iuse the supplied E-flite radio and Ifly in idle up mode with both the hi and low settings. The high settings seem more responsive for me, the low settings seem a little mushy for me. Iam the same way, I fly in a small area (the lobby at my work, I work midnights) and I don't want it to get away from me.I can do slow forward flight straight away and bring it back and do controlled hovers and spot landings. Need a gym to fly in so I can stretch out without crashing.

Chris

RE: The E-flite Blade SR Tips and Tricks
 

Thanks Chris so you have the toggle switch on the right on high right? and the one on the left back towards you right? Where do you have the dial set at on the left? Oh I have the same radio too. Not even ready to put it on my DX7 or 6i for that matter.

RE: The E-flite Blade SR Tips and Tricks
 

Giddy,

When I fly, Ihave all four toggles to the rear. That puts the trainer off (back left side switch), idle up mode (not stunt mode left front switch), throttle hold off (right rear switch) and high control surface rates (right front switch).

The knob on the left side is only used if you bump up to stunt mode, it adjusts the throttle curve. The dial on the right is only used if you need to control an additional channel channel 5.

From what Iunderstand, there are two flight modes: Idle up and Stunt mode.

The idle up mode basically adds throttle to the blades while increasing the pitch of the blades at the same time to provide lift. When you reduce throttle , it also reduces blade pitch and lowers the bird.

The stunt mode is similar except that it provides for a faster and more constant head speed. The throttle stick then provides for positive pitch for lift and negative pitch for inverted flight. You can fly normally in the stunt mode, you just get a much quicker response going up and down.

Now, to bring the two together, if you tried to start your heli in Stunt mode, the throttle stick would be all the way down, and the head speed would be high. The heli would be squatting on the ground and going fast. So, you use the first throttle mode (idle up, hence the name) to idle up to the throttle midpoint so you can then go into stunt mode and be in an neutral position on the throttle stick.

With a digital radio, you can set that throttle "curve" up any way you like it. With the SRstock radio, you can only adjust the mid point using the left dial.

Hope all this makes sense, it took me a while to understand all this in the real world and to conceptualize it.

c

RE: The E-flite Blade SR Tips and Tricks
 

Thanks for the making my head hurt. No just kidding. I think I will stay where I am at in the training mode tell I get the hang of forward and backward. Should not be long . But we have had some very strong winds here for like two weeks it seems like. Can't even fly planes thats how bad it was getting. So I think with the left toggle on low and the other one set so I can use the throttle is where I should be for now. Thanks I will keep you up to date on crashs and things like that. Eric

RE: The E-flite Blade SR Tips and Tricks
 

We've had wind up here for the last two weeks as well, shingles are blowing off the houses....been staring out the front window.......winds are gusting to 60 to 80 kilometers per hour..oh well.....sooner or later

RE: The E-flite Blade SR Tips and Tricks
 

Hello all,
I got into heli's after seeing a video of a 450 sized scale heli... There is a guy at the field I fly at that flies a few different electrics but I haven't gotten to ask him about this one yet...
I have an MCX, flew it for the first 3-4 months quite a bit. then it went on the hobby shelf... the CX3 came out and I almost pulled the trigger... but I want something to fly outside at the field...
I am liking the looks of this, looks more friendly than most CP's , I don't think I'm ready for a TREX, and no Blade 400 for me, I already have the DX6i...

So, my delima, is this a safe step to outdoor heli's, I see no other good choice... It's going to be this or an EDF when the wheather gets nicer...
Happy Landings...

Hope to see alot of flight reports on this one...

RE: The E-flite Blade SR Tips and Tricks
 

Great web site.

I picked up an SR about a month ago. Practiced in the garage, no wind,getting it to hover a few inches off the ground. Probably not the safest place to fly. Now flying outside in the backyard. I use 2 sets of T-Rex training sticks with foam balls. Ihave 6 of them on the bottom. A bit heaver than the E-Flight trainer but makes it more steady for me (good thing).

I have a DX7 for my msr and mcx so decided to try it with the SR.

The DX7 workes great for me. I am still a beginner when it comes to larger single rotor Heli's. With the DX7 I cranked the rotor speed down to about 75% (my SR gets a bit sluggish if Igo below 75%, but is easier to hover) and limited the servo travels to about the same as the HP6DSM.

Big improvement for me is I reduced the collective even more. Ihave the pitch set so it never goes negative. Even with the HP6DSM in "beginner mode" there was a little bit of negative pitch.

When I fly and go into panic mode I ram the thottle all the way down and was driving the rotor blades into the tail boom (3 so far, but easy to replace). Now with the DX7 the SR lands a bit more softer.

If I ever get any better flying Iwill crank things up on the SR.

I CRANKED THE TAIL ROTOR GYRO A BIT COUNTERCLOCKWISE. The tail rotor was kinda "twitchy" with the motor constantly speeding up and slowing down. Now runs much smoother. I lost a little bit of heading control so I have to adjust the direction some (left hand joystick) but I think it makes a smoother flying heli. Also Ithink the tail rotor motor will last longer this way.

PARTS BREAKAGE SO FAR:

Tail booms (3)
Blades (2)
Rotor shaft (1)

Iguess not too bad considering.

It is windy in Valley Forge, PA right now so will try flying later.

Tom.............

RE: The E-flite Blade SR Tips and Tricks
 

I have mine on the way....Im getting rid of walkera 53q3 police heli...real nice heli super stable just time to upgrade...[link]http://cgi.ebay.com/Walkera-53Q3-Police-Heli-NO-RESERVE_W0QQitemZ150432475400QQcmdZViewItemQQptZRa dio_Control_Vehicles?hash=item2306796908[/link]

RE: The E-flite Blade SR Tips and Tricks
 

Damn.....finally nice here......but windy...had eight inches of snow.......melting..........itching to get another couple batteries burned out...HH..was great...new motor for my tail........looking forward to seeing if it works...

RE: The E-flite Blade SR Tips and Tricks
 

From my "yellow wire" and tail motor thread, I learned this:

<div id="TixyyLink" style="BORDER-BOTTOM: medium none; TEXT-ALIGN: left; BORDER-LEFT: medium none; BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent; COLOR: #000000; OVERFLOW: hidden; BORDER-TOP: medium none; BORDER-RIGHT: medium none; TEXT-DECORATION: none">Fixed.  Got my tool kit out and soldered in a new tail motor and put on a new tail boom.

After about 1/2 a battery pack, I had the gyro and the proportional adjusted back to where they belong.  A few trim adjustments and she was good to go.  I was hovering in my kitchen, a huge accomplishment for me to fly a larger heli in a small space.

So here are my observations as I examined my old tail motor.  

When the heli was brand new, the tail motor would make that buzzing / grinding noise that everyone complains about.  Once it quit holding the nose, it no longer made that sound.  The new motor is very quiet and has a manufacture date about one month after the original one put in by the factory.

When the heli was new, the tail rotor would begin spinning up as soon as the main blades began to spin or shortly after.  As it went out, it would not start up until much later and was weak in power.

The heat sink is easy to reuse for the tail motor.  It is not glued on and simply pops off and goes on the new tail motor.

So, here are my theories for why the motor went out after about 20 flights:

1.  Bad motor, stuff happens.

2.  Crash damage??? Maybe the tail struck something and caused a slight bend in the motor shaft that wore out the motor.

3.  While trying to plug in the infamous yellow wire, I plugged it into the wrong port and/or wrong polarity and fried the motor.

So, I hope someone else can learn from my mistake.  I  believe that you can adjust the gyro gain remotely with the stock transmitter, but for me, the pot on the gyro will do fine.  Still searching for that perfect setting where the twitch almost disappears, but you have good control.  Not sure it exists with a non-belt driven tail, but I will try to get closer.

For anyone else who wants to try, I would suggest that someone put it in plain english as to how to do it.  In other words, take the yellow wire, plug it into the 5th pin from the left and make sure the yellow wire is on the bottom.  Then, in using the Channel 5 knob, you get xxxxx.



Read more: <font color="#00265e">http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_9659557/anchors_9671414/mpage_2/key_/anchor/tm.htm#9671414#ixzz0lVuxODsK</font>
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RE: The E-flite Blade SR Tips and Tricks
 

Nice thread. I got a SR a few weeks ago. I landed it a little hard but not that hard and had a boom strike which broke a blade and bent the boom. Topdown solved this mysterious boom strike. I guess I chopped the throttle and the blade went into negative pitch and flew into the tail boom. I'm thinking about getting a DX7 radio so I can have more control over this heli. So far I'm not too happy with these heading hold Gyros. Back in the days of the Concept 30 helis once you got the thing flying they handled like a airplane. Hopefully the DX7 will allow me to cut the gyro off or at least down when I'm flying. I want to be able to fly rather than go into 3D conniption fits as everyone seams found of doing now. I got the Real Flight G5 and have been practicing with the Heli-Max AXE CP copter.

I found a really great web sight that has good info in the Blade SR since it's a Google top rated search item I'm sure most of you have seen it but here is the link anyway.
http://www.rchelicopterfun.com/blade-sr.html

I'm most impressed with the new Li-Pos and out-runner motors. Flying this ting for 10 minutes with that little motor and small battery pack seems almost like magic compared to the aspirin bottle sized 05 can motor and heavy 7 cell 600Mha battery which barely got my sailplane over the trees before the motor cut out. I think that battery pack weighed more than the Blade SR!



Thanks for the Boa RC link C9403 I'm still waiting on some blade grips that I ordered off of ebay on May 10th. I see the guy just shipped them yesterday.

RE: The E-flite Blade SR Tips and Tricks
 

Have you guys tried the cp2 blades on her yet the round ones not the ones that are flat on the bottom? It handles 100% better with them. And move the weights to the out side of the fly bar. You know leave one set there because they hold it in place but the other slide them out to the paddles and run the cp2 blades and is a much batter helo. Thats what I think and my two cents. I will move up to my DX 7 later.

RE: The E-flite Blade SR Tips and Tricks
 

Would you say that with the CP2 blades it makes the Blade RS more of a "beginner" heli? I have flown some mini helis before but this Blade RS is a fairly big jump for me and I would like to simplify my learning curve as much as I can. I plan to move the weights out on the fly bar and of course keep all transmitter switches on their easiest settings.

Do you have a link to these CP2 blades? I did some searching and cannot seem to find them.

Really enjoying this thread.
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RE: The E-flite Blade SR Tips and Tricks
 

Hey all, As a new Blade SR owner, I should warn any other new SR owners to be carfull. A small blade strike willl splinter your wood blades and can easly
bend the blade grip spindle. It is easy to change but only if you have a new one. lol Have fun.