Here is a video.
I've found a little trick to help find bad blades in a new pack.
The good blades will help ALOT with tracking.

After going through 4 new bags of matching # blades I've only found full two sets that work.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=_7PwNTXOWMs

I brought the water up to a full boil then dropped the blade in for one minute.
Success! It worked. Here's a video.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=RmNv8OlG6GQ

NOTE! Some blades take longer then 1 minute, Boil them for 5 mins

Nice one Rice! Haven't seen and/or thought of that before!
But why the hammer?!

Can't watch video at work , what is the gist?

It worked out pretty good. Finding matching blades made my heli fly GREAT!
The hammer was to let out my fustration
I'm going to call e-flite to see if they can replace all my defective blades.

HEY BRY!
HAHAHA! Can't watch the video at work! Thats for hijacking my last post [>:]

Yeah, yeah, yeah... [>:]

I suppose you can have your little victory for now. Wait 'til I get home, though! I'll watch it 10 times just to spite you!!!

IF you haven't smashed the bad blades, could you do us a favor?
I have been told that heating the blades in very hot water (or boiling water perhaps) the blades would revert back to their original form. The thought is that they all come out of the molds looking alike, but they get packed and smushed in shipping. They should be able to be restored to their original shape if they memory of the plastic is still in there.

I have yet to find just the correct set of blades to test this on. You are so close to being a MYTHBUSTER!
Wouldya?
Couldya?

Please? If the myth is busted I can finally quit telling people to try it.

Soloboss

Solo, I tried dipping them in boiling water but it didn't seem to work for me. I'll try it again later maybe with hotter boiling water and longer dip time.
Mythbusters my wife tells me that same thing. The good thing is I would only have to commute 30min to work each day. (they work out of San Fransico) My wife has met them.

This is what I e-mailed e-flite today

I'm a horriable speller and even worse at grammer so don't pick on my dissablitly too much.

I guess they would have to be in the water long enough to heat completely through, but that would happen in about a minute I think. I'd guess a quick dip won't be enough, but I have no idea how long your 'dip' was.
I've suggested that trick to enough people that I should have heard if it was the magic that we are all looking for. Maybe a longer dip time would do it.
Heck, if it does work you can post the results and be a hero! How cool is that?

Alright Solo this one is for you since your page has helped me out so much with getting my cx tunned right.
I brought the water up to a full boil then dropped the blade in for one minute.
Success! It worked. Here's a video.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=RmNv8OlG6GQ

wow, nice! that is good to know. that's an easy way to check them and fix them if they are bad [sm=thumbup.gif]

Note to self: watch video at home as eat2muchrice doesn't like to EXPLAIN his videos!

I don't even talk in my videos [:-]

wow, hands of steel =) grab that thing right out of the boiling water =)

I think heating it up and then setting it on a flat surface is probably going to really help out. If you wanted to you could probably drizzle some cold water on the blades after you set them on the hard surface for them to set =)

That should be great info for all the cx2 owners out there



in true mythbuster fashion, you could get 4 blades, all defective, take a video of the heli trying to fly, do the repair and then take a vid after =)

btw I like the ipod timer

I started doing that after my video. Running cold water on them afterwards makes handling/cool time much easier/faster.
As for making a video of me testing the defective blades on my heli, well....I DON"T HAVE ANYMORE DEFECTIVE BLADES
Maybe E-flite will send me more blades to replace my old ones and then I'm sure I'll get some new warped blades to do that video for you.

hehe, that's quite the dilemma that you've got yourself in now..... no more defective blades.... I sure hope you can dig yourself out

it might end up costing you a FORTUNE! hope you've got a good pay check for the heli cuz it's gona need it

I like your style, man! Short, sweet and to the point.

HA! finally got to watch my videos! only took you 2 days

what are the blades laying on top of? is that a ruler? or just flat table? its hard for me to tell...


thanks

I used a piece of glass and put my new blades down and as I look down eye level at them in different directions its amazing to see the warps in some of them...! Also then the "tap-test" that Eat2muchrice provided us was very helpful...Never seen that procedure done before, and it surely will help narrow it down when trying to find a good match. I've always heard of the boiling to snap em back in shape, but never tried it. Seems promising now...! Thanks for your insights/experiments Eat2muchrice...


-- Jeff

Very Nice! Thanks a bunch!

Its just my glass table. the bar under it supports the glass, its not a ruler. All you need is to hang the ends of your blades off of a flat surface. In my boiling video you'll see that I just use a cutting board.

That's excellent!
One minute in boiling water and they have to be removed from the boiling water using your bare fingers. I need to take notes. LOL

At least a dozen times I have posted the suggestion that people do this. I've never heard that it actually works, but it always made sense to me. So we have a way to take care of those darned lower blades that won't track. So is there any good reason not to open every pack of blades and cook 'em so they are all the same?

Knowing that this is a factual information tidbit and not just an interesting thought, it needs to be put into the CX setup paper. This could save the membership a ton of money!
Except you. You ran out of warped blades and now you have to buy more. I'm really sorry about that.
This forum is a hoot! I love the banter.

And thank you very much for the work and video. I need to link the test and boil videos within the paper so people can see the process.

Man, yer a HERO! How does it feel?

Soloboss

I'm glad that I could be of some help to people in here. This compaired to all your guys help and assistance in the forum is only a small fraction.
A "Hero" Thanks, Soloboss. Thats going to make me smile all day maybe even a week .

One last update about bad blades.

Even after matching #'s, testing warp, boiling them, tracking and getting them perfectly balanced, I STILL have problems with bad blades. Just one set of bad blades will cause huge power loss, shorten flight time and slow yaw turn. It can make it seem as if your heli needs new motors, your batteries are dying or even your 3-1 or 4-1 is bad.

We need to figure out a way to find perfect blades, other then using the buy, guess, tune, check then trash method. I figure the only other test to do is some sort of pitch guage.
The only other solution is to get grips and after market blades. I have my heart set on the new lighter microheli grips ($60) with xtreme blades but the cost them won't pass under the wifes radar.

Boiling the STOCK blades for 3-minutes will straighten every warped blade no matter how bad it is. I'm supplying blades for four (friends & family) CX2's and have purchased 16-packages (still 10-packs un-used) since Christmas. I have found some pretty badly warped blades out of these 64-blades and I have not found a single blade that did not return to perfectly flat around the edges (when laid on a flat surface) after boiling.

I am now boiling every blade from every package then weighing each blade, and then matching sets of blades. Sets that don't match (by weight) perfectly get balanced and each set is kept seperate from other sets. If (when) we need to replace blades it's now easy as we just grab a matched set and replace them. The heli's tune stays the same (or very close) and we are back to flying in no time[8D]

DO NOT BOIL XTREME BLADES! Xteme blades will curl and be ruined if boiled!