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90 size blades
I'm spending most of my time flying my Aurora at the moment and, thanks to Trevor at Midland Helicopters, I've been playing with some new blades.
I've noticed fairly recently that a lot of new design blades are appearing and they are all really pretty good - or put another way, it's getting hard to pick major faults and differences between 3D rotor blades these days
One of the sets of blades I've flown are the new 703mm Maniac 2 blades - these blades have a massive chord, very very wide indeed (anyone for cricket?). Good finish with the same visual design as the normal Maniac blades, but with an additional 2 on the end (superscript, like a 'squared' maths symbol). Aside from the slight visual change, they are also stiffer and lighter than their predecessors.
They come with hard foam blade grip spacers. The spacers have three little nipples which sit into recessed mouldings on the blade roots top and bottom. After one flight, the nipples were compressed a little - I'm not sure how they will fare long term or if a set of metal spacers would be a better long term idea - but they worked fine nonetheless. I fitted them to my heli and popped it up into a hover to see that they tracked perfectly.
They are a nice punchy blade with tons of lift from the oversized chord. They have fast and accurate cyclics and I didn't really get any excessive motor bogging in heavier pitch manoeuvres, which I was expecting to be honest. They don't feel too pitchy in forwards or backwards flight and generally felt pretty good.
Moron over here (yes, me!) forgot to try some autos on these blades, but will do so in the near future... I have a feeling they will hang forever
I flew this set after having had a flight with my 690mm V blades and in comparison to those, they are slightly less poppy on the pitch (there is a little flex to them that V Blades don't have), but have faster cyclics. The rest of the flight characteristic is in the same ballpark and they work well.
Next up was a set of 710mm Torsion blades. Holy crap. Awesome!!
At the moment, in my opinion, absolutely nothing touches the Torsion 710mm blades. They are astonishingly good. Very fast and accurate cyclics, incredible pitch power giving awesome punchy pitch stops - better than my current V Blades. They auto well too, in fact they have the whole thing sorted and I can't really describe how great I think these blades are without gushing like a girl - so I'll stop.
Damn... too late
Finally, the 693mm Insane blades from BBT (in the Maniac stable).
Visually the same as Maniac blades, except they say Insane instead of Maniac. They are a narrower chord blade than the Maniacs and definitely narrower than Maniac 2s. They actually have what you would consider a normal blade chord width, like Torsion or V blades.
The blade shape is slightly different at both root and tip too.
I only managed a single flight on these blades today, but woah, my heli had a shift on! These things are apparently designed for speed, and from my single flight today, I'd say they got that part nailed.
No blade grip spacers needed for these, which is a bit odd (although nice as I hate messing with blade grip spacers!!) but I would like some continuity - make them all the same root size
I popped them onto the heli and then got it up into a hover and the blade tracking was perfect once again. I think you're unlucky if that doesn't happen these days on a well setup heli with decent blades.
They felt nice and responsive and not very power hungry maintaing good headspeed throughout the flight. Better than their fatter brother (Maniac 2), but not by a massive amount. They auto'ed pretty well too - I certainly didn't feel troubled at the bottom of the auto, where there was enough headspeed to hover, piro and land comfortably. Again, more time on them needed for a fuller assessment, but for now, I think these are pretty good!
Did I mention Torsion 710mm blades were awesome?
LOL
Cheers,
Rob
I've noticed fairly recently that a lot of new design blades are appearing and they are all really pretty good - or put another way, it's getting hard to pick major faults and differences between 3D rotor blades these days
One of the sets of blades I've flown are the new 703mm Maniac 2 blades - these blades have a massive chord, very very wide indeed (anyone for cricket?). Good finish with the same visual design as the normal Maniac blades, but with an additional 2 on the end (superscript, like a 'squared' maths symbol). Aside from the slight visual change, they are also stiffer and lighter than their predecessors.
They come with hard foam blade grip spacers. The spacers have three little nipples which sit into recessed mouldings on the blade roots top and bottom. After one flight, the nipples were compressed a little - I'm not sure how they will fare long term or if a set of metal spacers would be a better long term idea - but they worked fine nonetheless. I fitted them to my heli and popped it up into a hover to see that they tracked perfectly.
They are a nice punchy blade with tons of lift from the oversized chord. They have fast and accurate cyclics and I didn't really get any excessive motor bogging in heavier pitch manoeuvres, which I was expecting to be honest. They don't feel too pitchy in forwards or backwards flight and generally felt pretty good.
Moron over here (yes, me!) forgot to try some autos on these blades, but will do so in the near future... I have a feeling they will hang forever
I flew this set after having had a flight with my 690mm V blades and in comparison to those, they are slightly less poppy on the pitch (there is a little flex to them that V Blades don't have), but have faster cyclics. The rest of the flight characteristic is in the same ballpark and they work well.
Next up was a set of 710mm Torsion blades. Holy crap. Awesome!!
At the moment, in my opinion, absolutely nothing touches the Torsion 710mm blades. They are astonishingly good. Very fast and accurate cyclics, incredible pitch power giving awesome punchy pitch stops - better than my current V Blades. They auto well too, in fact they have the whole thing sorted and I can't really describe how great I think these blades are without gushing like a girl - so I'll stop.
Damn... too late
Finally, the 693mm Insane blades from BBT (in the Maniac stable).
Visually the same as Maniac blades, except they say Insane instead of Maniac. They are a narrower chord blade than the Maniacs and definitely narrower than Maniac 2s. They actually have what you would consider a normal blade chord width, like Torsion or V blades.
The blade shape is slightly different at both root and tip too.
I only managed a single flight on these blades today, but woah, my heli had a shift on! These things are apparently designed for speed, and from my single flight today, I'd say they got that part nailed.
No blade grip spacers needed for these, which is a bit odd (although nice as I hate messing with blade grip spacers!!) but I would like some continuity - make them all the same root size
I popped them onto the heli and then got it up into a hover and the blade tracking was perfect once again. I think you're unlucky if that doesn't happen these days on a well setup heli with decent blades.
They felt nice and responsive and not very power hungry maintaing good headspeed throughout the flight. Better than their fatter brother (Maniac 2), but not by a massive amount. They auto'ed pretty well too - I certainly didn't feel troubled at the bottom of the auto, where there was enough headspeed to hover, piro and land comfortably. Again, more time on them needed for a fuller assessment, but for now, I think these are pretty good!
Did I mention Torsion 710mm blades were awesome?
LOL
Cheers,
Rob
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