oldfart
Elite Veteran
Location: Vancouver, Canada
| What Blades?There is a lot more to blades then there length and fit.
The airfoil used, the location of the airfoil's center of lift, the spanwise center of gravity location, chordwise center of gravity location and the matching of these can make big differences in the dynamic stability of the blades.
There are numerous companies in the world that have the machinery to make wood blades. The question is, do they have the design knowledge to design some that would be dynamically stable.
An unstable blade will :
a) make your collective and cyclic servos work a lot harder to keep the instability under of control - even in the hover. Consequently higher battery drain and the servo gears and their bearing seats will wear a lot faster, needless to say, so will all the components related to the control system (swashplate, washout hub etc.)
b) they can cause some trailing edge control rotor head systems to flutter excessively (woof & poof)
c) they will require excessive trim differences inverted relative to right side up, and bigger trim differences in FFF then in the hover then would a stable blade.
d) they will have an excessive (in some cases severe) tendency to pitch up. One will have to feed in a lot of down/forward cyclic when coming out of a loop or specially a stall turn to keep the nose from pitching up and the heli from ballooning.
I have never tested the "Maverick" blades. But I have tested a lot of inexpensive woodies and the $20 Aerotech are very stable for a woodie, even more stable then some of the composite blades I have tested.
So be careful about saving $3. It may really not be a saving in reality.
Phil |
