Truglodite, you are truly braver than I. I think if I had a Porshe in my garage my Blade would be relocated

So far I'm getting ALOT better at the hovering, with no real problems except my last one. This time the cabinet in the kitchen must have given my Blade an evil eye or something because my Blade struck at it with a splintering effect to one of the main rotor blades (the cabinet won by the way). Luckily my old set of blades still had one good blade so i substituted the broken one for this one. I hear thats not to bright of an idea since it will likely be unbalanced, but when i tried it, there was hardly any extra wobble effect.

When I nick a wood blade and find the covering loose (but mostly intact) I place a drop of CA (like Zap-A-Gap) and smooth the repair with a plastic bag over my fingers. Has worked well so far!

Well I finally decided on a set of blades! I went with a plastic set at my local hobby shop. The guy there has a CP as well and recommended them since I currently lack the skill to make the carbon fiber ones worth while.

I'm sure either way I'll be purchasing my next set soon!

ok, it seems ballsy, but i wasn't stupid about it. the soon to be finished beautiful viper green '73 911T project car (w/ a freshly rebuilt '87 3.4L Ruff Carrera Motor of course) is always covered with bedsheets to keep the kids from scratching the new paint as they skip by (a thick comforter lies over the front where i was flying). still, with or without the worry of the porsche getting dented, the fact that if i left the 3' box i'd ruin my blades for sure was plenty of deterrant.

btw, you got pretty lucky on that unmatched set of blades. the one time i tried swapping a single wood blade i ended up having to add over 5gm of tape on one and 8gm on the other just to get them even close. i gave up on them because their pitches also appeared to be way off.

Yeah I did get pretty lucky there. Ironically both the blades I had left had a very small corner break almost identical to one another. I did use electrical tape to more or less put a slight weight on the end of the blades and it worked pretty well, even tho the tape is heavy, even using a little bit. With these new blades on, the hover and flight is noticably different. There is less wobble, hovering seems alot easier, and god forbid I say it.... I didn't even crash!

most ppl would disagree with electrical tape. i don't reminds me of a few fun experiences i had testflying old-joe's flexible foam/duct tape planks at arco arena. one even had duct tape elevator hinges.

it looks like the plastiblades will work out just fine for you. good to hear you like your setup better than before.

It's definitely a plus. Now if I could get the tail motor to do what I tell it too!

The other day I saw a web site showing how a guy was making blades out of wooden paint stir sticks. He had some method of carving them into shape.

Has anyone seen this site because I would like to look into it more (and no matter how I do a google search for it, I can't seem to find it again)?

Anyone tried it?

What luck your in Heyok! I just happened to bookmark this a few days ago!

http://www.urbanastronomer.com/bladecp/

I've used CF, JCS Plasti-blades, wood symme's, wood flats. My money is on the plasti-blades full symmetrical. Why? CF is EXCELLENT but pricy. Wood anything blows apart if it hits anything, replacing blades can get expensive while learning just to hover. I'm on my second set of JCS full symmetricals and I beat the stuffings out of the first set (and they're still useable). Drawback to plasti-blades...Other stuff breaks because the blades dont. I've gone through 3 tail booms, 5 spindles, 3 main rotor shafts...get the point? All the other stuff you'll break with plasti-blades still won't cost as much as 1 set of wood blades. Trade off. Another bad thing about plasti-blades is they don't seem as smooth in operation as the woodies or CF (vibration), and I haven't found a way to balance them or adjust the vibration out. It's barley noticable, but the vibration is there and you can see it while its turning at eye level. High quality carbon fiber is a joy. They are smooth and do resist slight impacts BUT...if they crack, toss them. As stated earlier, they will blow apart. When I can FLY...I'm going back to carbon fiber. I can hover real good, but until the learning phase is over...PLASTI-BLADES. Just my $.02 worth.

I'll have to agree with you crashcrash. I got the plastic blades and they can take one hell of a beating. So far I have broken nothing else on the chopper when experiencing blade strikes. I do however think they are as stable as the wooden ones were. Tonight I had no problems hovering at all, even though I'm still new to it and only did a height of about 10 inches off the kitchen floor. I was rather excited to see that I was able to hover more or less in one spot for about 20 seconds before losing my cool and over compensating on my drift corrections, thus the blade strike.

Tonight really gave me hope with flying a heli again since I've had alot of bad luck to start with... but I guess everyone does. Tomorow morning I'll probably be waking people up with an early A.M. kitchen flight since it's 10 degrees outside, but I must have more stick time!

One last thing, if your new to flying (i don't mean you, crash) and haven't read about it yet..... cold and the CP are not friends and you'll probably be replacing alot more than just blades if you crash to hard on your brittle little plastic <choose a part you'd least like to break>.

Thanks ScatteredParts! I promise to be more careful bookmarking from now on!

After work tonight I'll see if the LHS has some Plastiblades. If not, I guess I'll order them online.

Maybe I'll visit the paint store for some stir sticks too.

A set of symmetrical wooden blades is CAN$19.95 and the first set got destroyed when I was barely into my second battery

I lost rotor head parts due to cold temps....the link balls break right off due to torque when the plastic is cold.[:'(]

I think thats the only thing I havent broken yet, Crashcrash. *knock on wood* [&:]

I'm actually getting braver in the 4x8 space of death I have to fly in (the kitchen again). Today I managed to hover about 5 feet in the air under relatively great control! The plastic blades managed to go through a cardboard box and remain undamaged, although I did come dangerously close to breaking the blade holders and the flybar ended up twisted... but just to where I had to twist the little flybar blade back into place (worked fine after that). I did discover that the higher I fly... the more control I seem to have. I suppose this is due to the airflow from the blades not rebounding from the floor right back into the heli. Talk about fun!

To Heyok: I'm not sure how well those paint sticks will work, so let me know! Plus let me know how long they took to make . I think you'll like the plastic blades alot, those wooden ones are definitely not designed to be forgiving for us beginners. JCS Hobbies is the company that makes my immortal (as of yet) set of blades.

you are brave. if i scratched the kitchen cabinets with my blades my wife would kill me.

I run the Plasti-Blades as well and had the problem of breaking tail booms. Well, one tail boom. After that boom strike, I decided to find a boom that could take a beating.

I looked around my workshop and noticed that I had a couple feet of titanium tubing left over from an aquarium chiller project. The diameter was too large to use directly, but it was super light, so I slipped it over the new tail boom when I replaced it.

Now, the blades just bounce off of it. Excellent!!

Karl

Glad to see I'm not alone in my weekly payment to the LHS for elfite replacement parts. I never did use the wood blades.. went straight to plastic. Every hard landing...ok crash. I either broke the tail boom, a blade grip or bent the main shaft.

I've read lots on this great forum about replacement parts as well as clever fixes, but rather than order upgrade parts I decided to try fixing what I had. To fix the main shaft problem I fabricated a new main shaft (luckily I'm a machinist) and resused the gear by removing the old bent peanut butter shaft ( i have lots of gears...). To fix the tail boom strike problem I formed a 12 inch piece of thin walled aluminum tubing into into a curved section. Halfway back to the tail the tube touchs the ground (thereby removing need for the flimsy tail support) then curves back up at an approx 30 degree angle. May look bad... but the blade flys (ok.. hovers) beautifully. Now when I land hard nothing breaks and I'm immediately back up in the air. flying ugly is better than broken pretty!



Ken

With the right jig, the bent spindles and rotor shafts can be easily straightened. The hole where the pin goes through can be tightened up with a ***** punch of correct size...to a point. "peanut butter"...that's funny (true), but funny. Just remember, when you add strength in one place, the damage will occur someplace else. When you redirect damage like that, try to direct the damage to "less expensive" components. EG...blade grip is a lot cheaper than blades, etc.

As for the wood blades ... I smear a layer of superglue on the leading edge tip and smooth before use. Seriously reinforces that plastic covering. (hope I'm not repeating a well-know tip ... I didn't see it in this thread!)

AG

a couple feet of Ti tubing? right in my back pocket.

seriously karl, that's a neat idea for ppl using plastic blades. if i was you i'd find a few more sources for the tubing and give jcs hobbies a call. if anything can hurt jcs, it's a broken tail boom. they might appreciate your help ($$$).

[edit: nevermind the edit...]

I get lucky there, somehow I manage not to scratch them at all! I dont know how or why, since the blades are starting to show signs of damage, but the cabinets are fine, no dents, and no scratches.

So far since I fixed my CP I havent really been hitting anything hard *knock on wood*. I just hope this trend continues where I learn a little more each time and the heli isnt taking a beating itself for my ignorance [:-]

Well, Just found my first bent spindle. I'm actually surprised to find it. I've been crashing ever since I got the thing and It hasn't bent.

I guess I never went nose down from 8 feet in my living room before :b

Oh, well. I've been beating up by trainer airplane as well.

Learn to crash or crash to learn?

Karl

Edited for spelling

Broken tail booms are still cheaper than new rotor blades. Example: 1st hard ldg = cracked tail boom...super glue or electrical tape does the trick. Second hard landing...better have a new tail boom in your parts bin. As soon as I see a crack in the tail boom...I order a new one. I've replaced 3 tail booms (my fault). BUT...only replaced 1 set of plasti-blades and they are still useable. I know where the strike zone is in the tail boom. If I got off my lazy hindend, I'd put a cushion of elect tape at the strike zone reducing breakage to a degree.

Dear god I knew it was bad luck to mention the "not hitting anything hard". I didnt manage to break something but I did manage to launch one of the orange balls on the training gear about 30 ft down the hall by crashing into a chair! Talk about odd luck.....

Dont trash the spindle... Get a plastic mallet and put it on a solid surface and straighten it with the plastic mallet. Works pretty good. You may not get it 100%, but you'll get 99% of the vibration taken care of (still useable).