A good stable heli but.........

[jette41]

After having problems getting hold of the tail drive gears and having to replace the main and tail blades, that were causing vibration (tail blades) and oscillation (main blades) I have to say that the Blade 700X is a really nice machine. Unfortunately the blade issue is a big expensive let down not to mention the inconvenience regarding the tail gears. Would I buy one again? No!
Anyone else had similar problems or am I just unlucky?

[tomatwalden]

Did you balance your main and/or tail blades? All blades are in theory balanced from the factory, but any blades (revolution, edge, SAB, etc) should all be checked for balance and adjusted if you're getting oscillations. That's just general heli setup, nothing specific to this heli!

as for tail gears, these do seem to cause an issue since they can strip if you haven't got a good mesh, and if your gain is too high. Are you sure your tail oscillations are not caused by gain rather than tail blades? The Blade 700 has high mechanical gain, so works better with low electronic gain.

[jette41]

The oscillation was on the skids but that has now been resolved by new blades, I'll balance the other main blades and the tails and keep for spares. I'll also turn the tail gain down. The gears have been meshed correctly, I was referring to the lack of them a little while ago. Thanks for your help Tom. In retrospect perhaps I'm being a bit harsh.

[tomatwalden]

The skids may have shown the oscillation but the fact that new blades fixed it means that the first set were unbalanced. This isn't unusual for a set of new blades regardless of heli or blade manufacturer. I've had to balance both Align and SAB blades in the past. If you haven't got a blade balancer already - definitely something worth investing in!

FWIW, I've found that the tail is improved on the 700X by using a shorter tail horn (thereby reducing mechanical gain), allowing you to run higher electronic gain values in the FBL unit!