EP51: Blade Choice and Disc Loading

Welcome to the Rotor Revolution RC Podcast with Brian Birds. Alex. sixteen. Kenny Hutton. And Nick Wisdom. Welcome to the Road of Revolution. I am here. I I found another way to kill you Oh were you this is the intro. This is the wrong's time to talk, isn't it? See I knew that was coming. But I found another way to kill your helicopter. Oh you did. How did you find it exactly? Well I experienced it. Go ahead, go ahead. But but now I wanna know. No, you'll have to wait. We can do the entrance.

I forgot how to I forgot how to do this. Okay. All right, let's try again. Ready? Ready? Episode fifty one, I think. Yeah, that's it. Welcome to episode fifty one. I'm glad you're ready. I'm glad you have something exciting to talk about. I have nothing exciting to talk about personally in the hobby. My update's gonna be terrible. So I'm glad there's a good one.

But speaking of updates, before we get anywhere, Brian sadly is not joining us this week. He's had a super busy week at home and isn't able to catch up with us, but wishes he was here for sure. So yeah, let's get into some uh Recappage.

And hear all about it. Kenny, what do you think? Do you want to go first? And should we make Alex wait? We can't do that. Let let's do it. Let's make Kenny go first. I'm down. So I didn't have much the week before, but this last week's been some stuff. We got the Air Masters event that went on this last weekend and that was pretty cool. I only went on the Saturday because I saw so much work, you know, going on at at our shop. Where is that one at?

It's it's only about an hour from me, like to the west. It's on um North Bend, Ohio. Yeah, it's like Simple drive, you know, just an hour. Yeah, I've been to that quite a few years and they do night flying and stuff. I just haven't been able to, you know, put enough time into that one after going to like Heliex and Urcha and all this stuff in a row. So I wanna at least wanted to get out there for one day and hang out the whole day. But once it got to be nighttime, you know what I mean?

You've been out in the sun since nine A. M. or ten A. M. and ready to pack it up, you know, by dark. So I didn't stay the last few hours for the night flying though, but they did have lights set up and everything and it was actually a pretty good setup. How was the event? How many how many people were there? That's probably it was not a very big. I would say thirty Thirty, thirty five maybe total. Something like that. I don't know.

Still, that's not a that's that's not a big event, you know. But at the same time, like those are the ones that are the most fun. Those are the ones you don't have to wait to fly. You can go out and take turns whenever you want to and But do you have real conversations with people? You're not just so busy getting to the next thing. Yeah. Yeah. It's like you're not just bouncing around everywhere. Right.

So I started there. I was I brought this the second RS seven that I have. You know, I've been first I had those different servos on there, the Reef servos, and I switched them to seven sixty and I had been messing with them and I switched them to the Airtronics, the SSR mode. And what I didn't realize when I was doing that before is that it like when you redo the narrow band on the settings that I had on this programmer, it, you know, it does shrink the throws along with that.

And we're not going to be able to do that. Anyway. It like changed yeah, like originally it was say like two hundred and twenty. I guess that's each direction. You know how far it goes? There's like a slider and when you s select like the next you know, if you go from fifteen twenty setting to seven sixty, it shrinks the throw of the servo too, like automatically in the program. You know, it makes it like a smaller

distance. So I didn't really pay attention to that. I went from like it said a hundred and twenty something and it went down to like sixty four. So it was like half of the throw. And I had been setting up the helicopter after that, you know, trying to do it and it was it was acting kinda weird just because the throw wasn't there, you know, you'd have to extend your endpoints to like a hundred and thirty percent and stuff and it was real weird. So I ended up switching it back.

to the seven sixty settings and I had all kinds of issues because other stuff was going on. Like I guess that throw when I put it back at the old settings was still short, you know, and I when I was flying it, I'd be flipping and and pulling back elevator was super slow. And I didn't I couldn't see why it was doing that because when you go through settings, you would you would still get your pitch and everything right, but somehow it affected it.

through the flybar list, you know, it was making it like flip really slow and odd. Fly barrel. That's weird. It was the rotor flight unit of Fly Dragon. I think it was just the way the throws were. It did something odd to the to the cyclic, like when when you're flying. I don't know why. It's almost like the gyro was holding it back, you know, when you're flipping. Not just like the throw itself. It's kinda weird.

So I ended up finally figuring it out when I realized I plugged the pro the programmer back into the servos when I unplugged them and and realized this yesterday and I was like, huh, their throw's not normal. So I ended up using the slider and putting it back where it was. you know, normally and it seems like now that it's set up and went back out and I can flip like super fast now. So it's it's smoother and correct. It was kinda robotic and weird when the the endpoints aren't right. So it's

Another one of those things where sometimes you just gotta pay a little more detailed attention to things, you know. I was just going through it and changed the setting. I didn't realize it actually changed the endpoints in the programming setup.

So another thing with programming and stuff like that, it was kind of weird. So I got that set up and I and I was going back through the whole thing'cause when in that whole situation I kept thinking, maybe it's something else. You know, I think I even called Alex. I was like, Have you seen this before? Yeah.

So after this whole situation, I'm I'm like, okay, maybe I'll just, you know, redo the firmware on the Fly Dragon and I'll load in another model, like or just reload the model. So I go back in there and I reload the model and I'm doing some setup. And it's just like I got like two different bugs. So this time I'm I'm going through the setup and, you know, you can lock the servos. And I locked the servos and zeroed the head perfectly. I'm sitting there forever.

Doing that. And then as soon as I unlock the servos, the swash tilts like three or four degrees sideways. Oh I'm like, what's going on here? And I kept messing with it. I would try to like to level it out with the swash live and then with it locked and nothing was fixing it.

And I didn't realize another thing happened and I don't know what it's like a glitch in the in the uh X eighteen R S because the gimbal isn't messed up, but my airline was setting it like one point eight percent one direction, like it was off. Like my and it wasn't I tried calibrating and it still stayed off center. Like I'd move it back and forth. I don't know if there's like a something in there making it do that, you know, but It was weird.

I had to actually go in the only thing that fixed it after It stayed, yeah, it's like the six the stick feels like it's dead center, but then I'd recalibrate it and it still said like one point eight, you know, it was uh it was like fifteen thirty. So it was off to the right like a little bit. And that was making the swash tilt when I was doing the setup and I didn't expect to see that. That's why I wasn't looking in the receiver tab, you know. Weird dude.

Outputs. But I ended up what what fixed it had to be a digital glitch because I went into the the trims first. I'm like, okay, are my trims off? You know, the trims were centered. So it can't be the trims. Well I took the endpoints on the output channel and I moved the endpoint to the right where it was weird. I moved it out to like a hundred and ten or fifteen percent and then moved it back to one hundred, and then all of a sudden it's perfect. And it was zero every time. Holding.

Oh. I would have given up like that. Three hours into this. Yeah, I spent like an hour or two like messing around and I was like, let me try trimming it out and I trimmed it back and forth and then when I put it back to a hundred again, suddenly it fixed itself and it was all centered up. I don't understand what's going on. Dude, I would have been like mad at that. I know I would have been It makes no sense.

I was thinking how does this, you know, Hall Effect sensor get messed up or off center? Is there something physically like something in there keeping my stick off center, but it wasn't? Did you fix all this like in one sitting? I did it last night. Yeah, it took me a few hours total to figure all this stuff out. Dude, you win the persistence award because I would have giv I would have literally had to give up and walk away for a bit.

So this is one of the things that like you you change things, you got something weird going on, go back and and look things over more thoroughly. Don't just skip to where you think it is,'cause sometimes it's in a whole different area. Both of those situations

were not even in the place I was looking. You know what I mean? It was it was just something really odd. So sometimes you gotta go through the whole just look at everything that you did and make sure it's not something else, you know? It was weird. So fifty two is reprogramming your RC car servos in your helicopter. Reprogramming it's it's just not. And on top of that, so I was using that little the sensor, you know, with

the sensor on that pitch pitch tool, you know, the blade pitch tool that's super fine, has the point zero five, you know, point one. And I just realized the whole time I'm sitting there tinkering with that because I had to keep going back and forth that it was just creating like stress because it's so sensitive and precise. You know, I'm sitting there going back, forth, back, forth.

Getting that little tenth of a percent, you know, in the degrees of pitch and it was like it was it that made it take even longer just because I was using that on top of the crooked swash. Yeah. It was great. Interesting you say that though. I've always thought like a more accurate swash or a pitch gauge would be nicer. But what you're saying is if it's too accurate, it just becomes front.

I think it is. You become like the obsessive compulsive sitting there trying to get it within nothing and then you put it on the other blade and do the same thing and you actually will just spend three times longer setting your pitch. It's pretty cool, but at the same time you're gonna sit there and tinker more than you have I agree, but I think literally the thing is so sensitive, I think it could detect like

You know, your servos are made up of gears and like the gear mesh in your servo it can like be off by point zero clicky or whatever. Just to scope. Oh. The one that's in a Kinny Co. Yeah. The um even the alignment I'd have things like if you have your servos moving too much or even just on and they're moving just slightly, you have like crazy, you know.

You could put that aligned pitch gauge on a three thousand pound marble table, pick it up and put it down five times and get five different readings. Yeah. I totally agree.

Well I got it all sorted out at least. I took it out, it flew great now. I just had to go w I ended up loading in a Tron settings on it, so I had to go back and redo the tale and I had to re redo some gains, but I'm back to where I was at least now. After fighting weird goblins and gremlins.

That's crazy. It just goes to show you sometimes it's not even what you think it is. And you'll be sitting there one thing thinking, Oh, I just changed this and no some other crazy stuff happened at the same time. So it turned into a big fiasco of stuff. Other than that, I got some jet those SMC packs, tried a couple of those fifty two hundreds and so far back The green one.

Gen Zase. Yeah. Flying this with a gin zase, I mean they're they seem to last a touch longer, but you do get that extra weight if you're looking at that kind of thing. So I'm sure we'll be getting into that a little later, but High voltage or non high voltage? These were just the standard uh standard packs. Yeah, but the green ones are non high voltage, but they are heavy. That's about it. How much heavier are they than the Gen Z? It's not a ton. It is I mean it it's it's noticeable though.

Significant. I think the Gin Zase were fifteen hundred grams and SMC was sixteen hundred with the two packs, something like that. If I recall correctly. Nah, it's not as a ball. Yeah, it's enough. You can tell they're bigger and slightly heavier, but at the same time you get a little more flight time, so it's all a toss up of what you're looking for, I guess. I feel like that two hundred million. How much more flight time is that?

I don't know. I mean I just noticed it seemed like it held the voltage. Okay. A three to three and a half minute range a little longer, you know? Okay. Could just be the pet cells themselves or something also. It's hard to tell, but seems like it did. Other than that, I just got the fall mow down coming up, which will be over by the time this airs, I guess, but I'm sure something from the It's going, man.

I know. I saw Doug Darby's post today about campers arriving on site early and was like, Man Looks like fun. I hope they got good weather. Crash before we get there. All the early early guys, you see'em on Friday and they're like, Well, I'm down to one helicopter and they have like four when they showed up on the All right. True thing, isn't it? It is. There's at least a few guys that do that. They're like out of helicopters by the time Friday or Saturday rolls around. It's great.

That's good stuff. Anything else, Kenny?

Think that's it. Oh no no wait, I do have one more thing in this sense. Right. Yeah. There we go. Yeah. So the day before I figured all this stuff out, I was I was when I sit it down there and I was just kinda like

redoing the programming again, putting the stuff back in the fly barless, you know, like reloading the firmware. I stood up and I was kinda like putting the pitch gauge on. I'm messing with it for like four or five minutes. I'm sitting here doing something. Looked at the laptop and I have my stool behind me, right? So Yeah. You're already gonna see where this is going. I set my transmitter in the stool. Oh. No Oh no, you sat on it.

Yeah, I was like I was like missing the helicopter and I knew it was there and like five minutes later I just barely even started to like lean back like I was gonna sit in it and my and my butt touched the the top screen area just barely and I heard I was like, Oh really? The crunch heard around the wall. A switch? No, I broke the um antenna handle off the back, which these do like if you drop away. Wow. I did get one today though. I got to replace it.

All right. Fifty three suffer the wrath of Kenny's ass. Thanks Free Sky North America for fixing my handle quickly. I had to order one and have it shipped really quick, but

Yeah, I didn't want to super glue it and rig it back. Those things are kind of meant to give before the rest of the case, you know. Something has to give, I guess, if you do do something like that. Yeah. Wasn't a ton of pressure, but I knew at the moment I just started to push down a little bit, I was like, Oh, transmitter's there and it was too late. It was like Man. So how do those sticky three sixty ends feel? Yeah, right up the... That's funny. They're they're great, yeah.

At least you didn't say I noticed this sharp pain. No, the stool's tall enough like I was even barely you know, it was not like a sit down height luckily, or it would have been smashed probably. It's like, you know, thirty something inches off the ground, so I was just barely starting to like sit backwards like I was gonna sit in and I crunched it. I've I've only ever done that with a canopy. I turned around, put the canopy down from the new kit that I was building, and then sat on it.

Like new canopy? New canopy. I was so pissed. Oh wow. That sucks. Pulling paint chips out of your butt too. If it was a line can it'd be like all the paint would just jump off of it probably. It would, right? Does that wrap you up, Kenny?

All right. Well I'm gonna jump in and uh make Alex wait one more round. Okay. This is what you get for interrupting. What? So my update's gonna be really quick, so you won't have to wait long. So I'm almost finished with what's been three straight weeks on the road for work, which has been uh super crazy, kinda stressful projects that have been very long hours every day. So I got no sim, which sucks because I really wanted to. No fly. And I got no buy. I I didn't even like

Wow. I'm a mis hobby and like you know, panic by something just so I felt connected to it. So Just set up like an auto refill order like Amazon, have something come to your house once a week. Ha ha But definitely I've been paying close attention to the hobby as I can and you know, keeping up with folks. But yeah. It's just been kind of a crazy busy period. And unfortunately it's gonna be another at least couple of weeks after I get home so I can fly. I got a little like

Medical thing to take care of when I get home that's gonna take a couple of weeks to recover from. So hopefully I sim a lot in recovery. That's kind of my hope. So I can catch up. I would like to hear that. And get b get back to to you know, flying in in good form. But it's all for good. Don't worry. Uh you're you're not getting lucky. It's not a big deal. I'm not going anywhere. But yeah, it's gonna make me much healthier, which is a very good thing. So I'm super stoked about that.

All I got really is just yeah, life is life in and and things are happening, and but I'm stoked for the hobby. And maybe if I'm feeling well in the first week, I'll get that L Goblin Pro built. Or maybe. Maybe I'll finish the nitro, I don't know. It's a good idea. It's even funnier not to finish it at this point. No it's not. I'm frustrated for m for you. I'm really frustrated about it. You should be.

I know. I think it's the fact that I have to learn Rotor Flight Nitro that just and I know you handed me all the files, so it should be fairly straightforward. But it's not gonna be hard, dude. I'm just like putting it off, putting it off, putting it off. But I'll get there. I'll get there. Yeah. I mean the first sixty or fifty degree day in Atlanta I'm gonna be like, I need nitro. So I'll get there. Anyway, that's all I got. Alright.

Alex, let's hear number fifty one. Oh number fifty one is number fifty one way to crash your helicopters. When you're you're at a fun fly and you're doing an a inverted auto and you're like, Hey, I'm gonna do more than one flip here. So I'm gonna go upright and then inverted and upright and inverted and upright. And then you the nerves get to you and so you hit that safety switch, which is the cheater that keeps your motor running around eleven hundred head speed.

And so it came down nicely and I could have turned it off and probably no one would have known the difference. But I I hovered it in front of people like, haha, I tricked you, I wasn't really doing an auto, even though I think the RPM was above it. And then I proceeded to f to just fly it around, you know, at eleven hundred head speed or so. And uh it doesn't really like that so much. So m maybe number fifty one is just arrogance? Ha ha ha.

Do you have like a loose tail like it wasn't set for that? No. I mean I I tried to like fly it around maybe not three D it so to speak, but like I definitely was jabbing the sticks left and right and it just finally tipped over and hit the main blades on the concrete. Oh. So I ruined and it's not like they just scratched the blades up, like it ruined the blades, you know. So it cost me a hundred and fifty bucks in blades almost. Was that it though? That was it.

That's funny. Arrogance. Oh, that sucks though. So that was at the uh I all I also went to a fun fly this weekend, the Abilene fun fly in in Texas. Went sh man, we've had We have had a really good time lately. Like I've always said there's magic to traveling to events and I think that's because you get to see people you don't always get to hang out with and seeing your friends is fun.

But man, what a magical time we had there. Like the Texas crew has just been killing it lately. I'm very I'm very proud of those guys. So Been super fun. If you haven't made it to a Texas event, you should we're having a good time, dude. We have a great crew right now. So come down and hang out. Your live stream that night was pretty hilarious too from Avalide. I was not drinking by the way. Like that was legitimately just in the that that was the mood I was in.

So uh did you listen to the end of that? I think that I said we should sing and dance. You did. Okay. Which is why like the next day I was like, Were you drinking when you did that? Oh, I was just in I was in the be ridiculous mood, you know? That was fun. What was the turnout there like? Dude, we had almost sixty pilots close to. It was a huge right? We had a great turnout. And uh Jowan had come in from California, so a lot of guys got to meet him and Ethan came in, Ethan Alvarez.

Uh and his father it was it was a great time, dude. What a great advice. Definitely having some new blood in is always exciting. Like a lot of the people hadn't met them and so that was super fun. You know like when you're in the front yard in your neighborhood?

And you're like, I'm gonna fly the M two now in the front yard and then a car drives by and so you land before they get there,'cause it's a little bit embarrassing that you're out front playing with your kid's toy helicopter. Have have you had this experience? Uh I have. I have newfound confidence and I can fly this around without being embarrassed and like When the neighbor's sixteen year old who just started driving drives by and waves at me, I don't like hide my radio. It's embarrassing.

Yeah. Wait until one of'em flies a helicopter bigger than yours and he drives by and he's like, Mine's bigger than yours and keeps going Right, right, right. It's just kinda cool. Like it feels good to feel confident and not feel like I'm playing with a toy helicopter in the yard and I don't want my neighbors to see me.

I also, you know, I'm doing that in hopes that maybe someone will see it and be interested in the hobby also and not just say there's that weird guy playing with his kids' toys in the yard. On that one. It hasn't happened yet. It hasn't happened yet. But you know, it's just cool to feel the confidence there. So I wanted to share that. Also

I've been playing with dampers on the ac on the the SAB. So I it comes with ninety five shore O rings and some B Delrim pieces. I bought the C's. I liked those. Dude XGard makes these they may they've made them before, the m the whatever he calls them, the magic dampers or whatever for the if you look on the website it says for the kraken or for the raw, but they fit this machine also and dude.

Changing to those palm dampers makes such a huge difference in the way the SAB flies. Like, holy crap. I would say game changer. Feels so good. Still with the center pivot? I took the so I took the center pivot out. Like I just don't think it's doing anything anymore with those palms in there. Um so I I suppose but if you think about it like I think the the center pivot prevents

Squish, right? Whenever you give it hard collective maneuvers or a a lot of collective pop. And so if you don't have any squish to give, then I don't think the center pivot does anything. I haven't tried it both ways. That makes sense. Yeah, if you're flying a no goblin and you're like, How do I make it more crispy? I suggest trying it. It's pretty cool. Does the regular heads still come with like a Delrin piece and some O rings too? Is that the regular setup? Yeah.

That's the regular setup. Yeah. So then you have to shim it after a couple of flights and all that kind of stuff to keep it tight. And with these there's no shims, no o rings. It's really nice.

So been playing with some blades. I bought the adventure blades. I have them in the what what what? You're you're supposed to go back and check these things and then shim'em later? What? Yeah, on uh O-ring helicopter, not palm dampers, right? The O-rings it tells you in the manual also, like after flying, check your damping. And if your damping feels loose, you can shim it and retighten everything back up.

I know, but I like to l wait till my tracking's good and sloppy to be like, I guess I should service the head. Ha ha ha. But this is nice. You don't have to service it, you know? It can service you. Yeah, not all of mine got loose like that, but sometimes you could go and like pull on a blade and see the you know, where you've got enough slop where you can move the the feathering shaft back and forth slightly. You know it's tending to get a little bit.

Well, I've decided I really like the tight damping, so give it a shot. Bought some venture blades. I have the seven oh ones and the seven are they sixteens, Kenny? Yes. Yeah, six. Yeah, hey, wait a minute. Did that did that tight dampening contribute to the ground effect blade smashing into concrete? The rigidness give you some feedback? It doesn't it doesn't wobble. I don't know. I didn't think about that. It can be a long...

It's not like wobbling. There's no when you come down from an auto you can go all the way down and it never wobbles. That's good to know, yeah. Cool. So we're gonna talk about blades more. These venture blades are really pretty Cool. Like I've been enjoying the Azure Blades lately. So I still have Ultimates. I have the Azure Pros. And then I have some of these venture blades. The venture blades are definitely more aggressive than the Azores, which can be nice.

I guess it just depends on your flying style, but right now I'm enjoying'em. They're super snappy off center, very, very stiff blade, like you said, Kenny, and you can feel the thickness of the root. Or not the root. Yeah, they're quick and s and rigid. They are. They're nice. I don't know what I like more. I have noticed that sometimes they can do weird things, like if you're doing really high speed maneuvers.

And so sometimes I prefer the Azores. They're a little more predictable of feeling, I think. Can you define weird? Just where the m the helicopter will react in a way you're not expecting to, like it'll overdive or something like that at high speed. And that's my weeks. Not my weaknesses. That's different. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, thank you. It is my weakness, isn't it? Yeah.

We're literally gonna have to change the beginning of the show. It's gonna it's gonna be like that sign in a warehouse that says, It's been three days since we've had an accident. It's gonna be Yeah. I like it. Yeah. At least that does that I don't think that even counts as a crash though. I guess it it costs over a hundred dollars, so it's a crash. But That's a crash. I'm not having to repair things. No, you got lucky that it was just uh blades.

And that one black plastic link that cracked that you haven't really noticed yet. Uh We're talking. Good out of it. Or is it the servo arm? Ha ha ha. You might want to take another look at it. It didn't trip that hard, dude. It just kinda tipped over. It was just still under power. I guess I should check that stuff though. It was under power. Okay, fine.

You're gonna have to check it now, otherwise everyone's gonna be like, you know, if you listened to last week's episode, uh huh, you could have saved yourself some money. Anyway. I'm back. Magnifying glass and Go around him.

Alright, let's uh let's do some news and then we can talk about blades for a bit. And now With all the news from inside the RC helicopter hobby, we bring you the Rhoda. Alright, uh Goose Guy has announced some combo kit. for the RS5, the RS6, and the RS7. We've seen a line successfully sell kits that included all your uh electronics for years and now Goose Guy has followed suit and is releasing combo kits that will include the Goose Guy brand Cyclic and Tail Servos.

Goose Guy Blades, Hobby Wing ESCs, and their own brand of motor as well. So essentially it's flybarless ready kit. Where it's all you all you would have to add, basically, and your batteries, I assume, but pretty much RTF kit other than FPL. The RS five combo kit will retail for twelve seventy-five. The RS six combo kit is thirteen fifty five. And then the RS seven kit is seventeen thirty five.

And uh we haven't heard from anyone basically that uh tried these yet, but the equipment specs look very reasonable and assuming the components are well made could be a very reasonable and easy to configure option for those who struggle to make component selections on their own. Pre orders for these combo kits are open now and expect the stock to arrive around early to mid October. I was not.

I wasn't surprised to see this, but I was surprised to see Goose Guy Blades. I wonder if they're like a rebrand of somebody else's or Yeah. They had their own on the RS four and the yeah, the four they had their own brand blades. And obviously on the S two they do. Yeah, I'm sure they're just having one of these other companies, like they had produced them like that and they just brand'em, you know, kinda like I've seen Blade and some other companies. Do the same thing.

All I know is I was always surprised when I would hear, like recently hear how well the align combo kits sell. So if it's a good price and we Are they still selling wine pretty well? Yeah. Yeah. I didn't know that. Okay. I'm always shocked that they're like still in the running sales figure wise. Not that I get to see a lot of sales figures, but when I talk to people who do, they're like, Oh yeah, you'd be surprised.

Yeah, I think it's hard to pass up that whole deal where, you know, get it all the stuff you need in one, you know, not having to spread it all out and buy all this different stuff and pa piece it together. I think there are a lot of people who are intimidated by motor selection, figuring out which brand of servo to buy and if they can just have it all show up in a box, great.

Yeah, like that study of mine I mentioned, he said, I'll just go on there and when I see stuff that they recommend, I just throw it in the cart with a kit and and grab it, you know, whatever it's recommended. But, you know, it's it's nice when they throw it all for you, you know, it's all together. Yeah. Good stuff.

Well the rotor flight front front R F Suite, which is the Lewis script for the free sky ethos based transmitters, which has an interface for rotor flight f flybarless units, has a major update recently. The developer Rob Thompson made some significant improvements that greatly improved the speed of communication. So if you are missing the speed of your video, Vold Vold radio d in Head on over to Rob's GitHub and download the latest Lewis script.

Did you just say if you're vissing the Ved of your Vauld radio? Maybe I was implying some other radios work faster than others. Oh, interesting. Interesting. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Well Speaking of cool radio. Hold on a second. Breaking wait, wait, one more thing. Breaking news. What? So I I saw that uh Rob has a OFS three update also for your um O and V V three. Yeah, there's a new script for that also that he just released and it's a little faster.

And he also is toying with posting now for plinkers out there. You can put your plane the same telemetry type setup which is in the original the helicopter Lewis script is kind of the same way ported for airplane and it's probably with the FR sky receiver stuff or free sky but it's the telemetry stuff too the same way. Get your battery voltage and What is that for a what? For planes. Plank. Yep. The same the same yeah, those things. Those weird things. Ha ha. With extra surfaces. Unneeded.

Uh so yeah, there's just a few more things to add to that. Are those those things that take up a lot of space when you want to land? Yeah. And then you can pi you can fix'em with popsicle sticks is what I understand. out of the same stuff that your refrigerator comes packaged in. Yeah. Uh huh. I kid Yeah. I've actually been on getting another plane. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Nope. I know. That's it. If you could beep that out, that'd be great. I'll see what I can do.

All right. Spirit has announced speaking of radio updates, even more updates to their wave radio. And we mean that in a good way, as they keep releasing enhancements to make their product even better. The wave radios now feature full Scorpion ESC setup support from the radio, native support for all Jetty sensors, and they also say they've added improvements to quote, reduce servo load and temperature, as well as smoothing for servo movements, which I'm guessing work in tandem.

as well as some more improvements to flight characteristics. So good on your spirit for, you know, sticking with it and just continuing to make things better. All these updates are in the latest version four dot oh dot one. More Goose Guy News, they've recently released a micro sized ELRS receiver, and this is the good bit because it with the correct connector on it already soldered.

for the OMP and the Goose Guy S two Max, the OMP MK two and the OMP V three pro. So you don't have to feel like you have to solder a Radio Master RP two if you don't want to. This is the fast and easy way to grab one. These have been hard to search for, so here's the part number GT000132. Right. Somebody made an E L R S receiver for lazy people. Yeah. Like cut and solder. I like it too. Let's get people in the air faster, especially beginners buying that size helicopter. That's cool.

Now just throw it in the box'cause it probably costs them like pennies to make. All right.

We've talked about tariffs a fair bit on the show and their effect on the hobby. So SAB has recently announced that due to these tariffs policies in the United States Now that SAB is forced to increase their pricing in the US across the entire line by ten percent. This price increase will go into effect for US customers only on september twenty ninth. The tariff on imports from Vietnam is currently at twenty percent in the US and seems to have stabilized there so

The price increase was inevitable, honestly. Uh we can't keep expecting manufacturers and distributors to eat these costs. So we're seeing similar increases on a variety of electronics as well. So for those in the States. It's kind of looking like this is the new normal. You know, a lot of hobby products are just made overseas and we're just gonna have to uh deal with some uh raised costs for a bit, probably a long bit.

Yeah, I've noticed it's kind of across the board now. When you look at most of the products you've bought for the past, you know, four or five years, they've all kind of gone up ten to fifteen, maybe twenty percent. Yeah. We'll see if other manufacturers follow suit. For now, SAB is the only one to announce the price increase, although I think some others are kind of just quietly increasing prices, but uh we'll see.

All right guys, Tron has published a bunch of details and photos of the new Elite seven hundred man it was so Supreme anyway. No, me too. Because I like that name more than the Elite. But anyway, the Elite helicopter detailing all its features. So we know that it is a hundred percent carbon mainframe. They're up to a fifteen what what?

What's I was thinking, you know, you can go ahead and just just do yours different, just custom paint on the side of it, supreet. You couldn't decide which one you wanted. Yeah. Yeah, supreet, I like. It was the weirdest named helicopter out there. Okay. This thing is now they're I don't know.

I don't know if the fifteen millimeter main shaft thing actually does anything or not, but they're they're they're they're going with the flow. So they're with a fifteen millimeter main shaft now, beefed up rotor head. Sealed grips that keep grease where you want'em to. They have got more main shaft support with dual bearings, thicker main gear, new angled frame design that kind of tilts the helicopter up and keeps the tail out of the dirt, the new tail tensioner.

They've got new uh adjustable head geometry, so you can choose if you want F three N or F three C or Different throats. a linear head geometry, there's a new tailcase. Uh it can go all the way up to three seven hundred and thirty millimeter main blades. So looks like a really great kit coming out soon. Expected release date is ten thirty one, October thirty first.

And price is right under$1,000 and US dollars,$998. Look for your pre-order soon and get them coming, guys. It looks like a really great kit. Yeah, it really does. That was the one I was tempted. I was like, Nope, you've committed to two Ill Goblin Pros. That's what you're doing. You can't have

Yeah, I still have my Tron seven and I keep looking at it like, Man, I don't need this and I'd but I'd still like to fly one. I'll see if you know, if I get to fly one or something, maybe I'll change my mind. But right now I still love my Tron seven. Somebody needs to redo that meme of the guy holding the girl's hand, turning around looking at the other girl. Advance elite. Yeah.

All right. In Excel Power News, the Spectre Canopy design contest for this new Spectre Ultimate is done and a winner's been selected. So the winning design ended up being a sort of white, pink and purple combo.

It still looks very much Exopower brand. It's not like a big departure from their style. But it does look very nice and it's gonna be released with the ultimate kits. Uh Exopower says they will also offer a variety of other designs, if that's not your favorite, that will be available soon as well. I've heard these are new canopies are already in production, dude. Like they should be available soon. That's fast. Yeah.

Someone asked about a different color on there. Did you see the guy asking then he posted Rob posted another picture, it was the same, had some purple, but then it also had some orange or yellow. stripes on it too. I don't know if that's even gonna be a possible one, but it looked like it was a rendering Do you guys have any friends that entered in the contest? No. And then I didn't get to it.

I have a buddy that did. I really wanted him to win'cause I thought it'd be freaking really cool to fly a canopy that my buddy designed. Would be cool. It was fun watching all the designs that came out, dude. I thought it was cool the way they published it and let people vote. That was neat.

That is cool. I have a buddy of mine here in Atlanta whose daughter is an art student who designed a canopy that he had manufactured. So he flies uh an RS seven with a canopy his daughter designed and it looks really cool. That is cool. Awesome. So XD Fly. ESC has released a new software update that allows them to support the DShot 300 if you're planning on doing the digital protocol, as well as Spectrum SRXL2 telemetry now. That's cool.

I don't know that there's is there other ESCs that are supporting that? Because I've not really seen the SRXL two going through uh copy weing in other units. Aren't they the only ones doing D shot? There m uh there's some other like f uh custom firmware ones that do, I believe for sure, but I don't know about other uh mainstream ones. But usually the SRXL two is just through uh I think only the Avian ESEs are the only other ones that have native spectrum telemetry, but I could be wrong.

Correct us if we're wrong. Send us a note. Tell us where we screwed up. But the X D fives definitely have the biggest variety of protocols, I think, at this point in telemetry options, which is cool. That D shot is so smooth, man. Yeah, you you've been flying it? Uh, I flew someone else's and was very impressed. Yeah, I know our favorite rotor flight guru Archie has been flying it exclusively now and swears by it, but uh have not tried it yet. Anybody got a road replay? Anybody anybody mad?

Don't think so. Maybe Alex? I hear a radio. I was gonna try to use it as a lead up, but then I didn't like what I did. Ha ha ha All right. So I don't think we got any rotor replays, any rotor rages this week. So let's move into event news. All right. Coming up.

There is a decent amount coming up. There's a lot that just happened this past weekend, obviously. But we got the Dominican Heli Showdown in the Dominican Republic, October third through the fifth, including the 3D prize competition with a bunch of cash on the line, lots of propilots coming that. Got uh the Hanover RC Heli SmackDown in Hanover, Virginia, October sixteenth through nineteenth.

And also one I hadn't seen is the Hellies over Greater Southwest in Fort Worth, Texas, October third through the fifth. That is a forty dollar pilot fee, lunch included Saturday, and a raffle. You can find more information on the Hogs 2025 Facebook page. You search that. Yep. I'll be there also. That one's like forty minutes from my house. Bye. Stoffos Helly Rodeo is coming up in Coolidge, Arizona, November sixth to the ninth.

And don't forget the season closer for a lot of us, the Torches Gators Winner Bash. This year is the second weekend in December, so make sure you got your calendars marked correctly for the 12th through the 14th. And yeah, the organizers have very nicely changed the name of the event to Gators Winner Bash in memory of a beloved club member who recently passed. And I think I think that's it for the news. Hello everyone. I'm Keniko and this is a World Call Revolution RC podcast.

Alright guys, so this week we we've been kind of talking about this in the background, but I've been playing with blades. I know Kenny you've been playing with blades. Nick, I don't know how often you play with blades. Do you play with blades often? Sharp ones in the kitchen. No, I do. I do. No, I do. I like to try blades a lot. I have a lot of different ones in my blade bag. An embarrassing amount, in fact.

So I don't want to say we're doing like a blade review per se, but I do want to talk about disc loading, blade size selection, and then I wanna get into a little bit about the flight characteristics of the different blades that are out there that we've tried. So I feel like

You know, the best thing to do is to discuss the different model sizes in those blades also, not just relate this to seven hundreds, because I feel like I see a lot of guys with five fifties who really like to to es to play with blade sizes and stuff like that.

And we should talk about the effects and what what what that has to do with your helicopter and how it works. So do y'all wanna start by defining like what is disc loading? Oh, like the scientific definition? I suppose is is there a scientific definition for disc loading? I don't know. There's a formula for it for sure, but don't ask me what it is.

We're not mathematically doing this one, are we? Oh wait, Kenny's mathematical. I like just looking at the square inches, you know, of the surface area of your blade versus the size and weight of your helicopter. And when you're looking at disc loading, it's tip to tip of the blades, including the distance of the rotor head, right? Yeah,'cause you'll see that some models have like a bigger head design than others and that matters too. Yeah. Yeah, if your head's

Distance, yep, correct. You're getting a longer throw in the blades. Yeah, but for for people like me who like to simplify things, disc loading is essentially the same thing as wing loading in a way for airplanes. So it's it's the weight of the helicopter versus the size of the disc. So we've got what affects the weight, like obviously our airframes, but you can choose different battery sizes.

Motor size, if you put a giant Turek whatever or Equodrift whatever, or whatever gigantic motor out there versus a forty five twenty five, it's gonna make a difference. Correct. Yeah, a lot of stuff contributes to that. Batteries, blade the blades themselves, the ESC, the electronics. Yeah, servos. That's a good one. Especially on like a five hundred size or five fifty size where you have the choice between full size servos or mini servos, that can make a difference in weight as well.

You know it's funny you brought up the motor thing'cause I bought one of those Turek motors, the big special one to put in my L Goblin when I built it and it was Yeah, it provided a ton of power, but I could feel the weight of the motor. I ended up going back to the lighter motor. Interesting. I feel like you're one of the few that said that who doesn't just get stoked by the the power of of these bigger motors. I could I could just tell it was affecting

Some the stuff that I didn't care for. Yeah. Yeah. Have you guys felt like this seems like to me on a it's a more common or weird thing on a like a five hundred size, maybe or like Uh you basically, you know, you can choose most of those size models. You can choose the full or mini like he was talking about, servos.

And I feel like the times that I've chosen the mini servos, even though they s will say they have enough rated torque and everything, they don't have the feel that I feel comfortable with, like sometimes. You know, like the blades almost feel like they have too much.

authority on the servo. You know what I mean? Like there's like the disc loading's light enough because the the servos are smaller and they're slightly weaker than a full size that it actually doesn't feel as good sometimes, you know, to choose the small servo. I guess it depends on the airframe and I don't think I understand what you're saying. Are you saying that it makes the helicopter so light that it feels weird?

Yeah, like I had that on a goblin five hundred before. Like I had it with some full size servos and I put smaller, you know, servos on there and when I put the minis on there it just felt weird like it and then it was almost too floaty. You know, I I basically ended up with lighter disc loading, you know, so then it was just too floaty and it just felt

odd all of a sudden'cause I was so used to the other way and it just felt like it needed the extra weight in a way. You know what I mean? It just didn't have that same solid feel. It felt more darty and kind of erratic. You know what I mean?

I fe so I feel like we get this more disc loading to me matters more on the five hundred to five eighty size models. And then when you get into the seven hundred it's more like just personal preference stuff. Exactly what you just said, Kenny. I had a buddy who gave me I bought that Tron 55 from and it had 580s on it and it felt so weird, dude. It felt very off. And I put 560 blades on it. increase the disc loading and now it would settle into maneuvers and it felt way better, dude.

So Yeah, sometimes lightness is not the answer, I guess, is what I'm getting at too. You you'd notice that it's just not flying like you feel like it should. What would you say are like the symptoms of a helicopter flying too light? Usually you can feel it. Sometimes even in the five hundred size you'll you'll actually feel if the blades are either too large or too wide.

You have a lot of tail issues too at that point, you know, because you have so much grab and lift with the blades that you're fighting the tail trying to kick out on you too, if you ever notice that. Like, you know, you'll go up and down real fast and it's wanting to dance back and forth because it's there's just so much authority on those blades, you know?

also say if you get if you get something that's way too light of disc loading Even as a sport pilot, like if you're just flying around and you're doing circuits and you notice the helicopter's not maintaining momentum, like I'm having to push it through, whether that be in a loop or you're just making a bank turn or something like that, like you notice. You need some weight. And when the the blades are all you feel

I'd say that's Nick, to answer your question, that's what you're feeling for as kind of a newer flyer. And then when you start getting into more hardcore quote unquote three D stuff If it if it's hard to place the helicopter, like weight m weight helps place it, like when you're bringing it down. So a super light, too light a disc loading helicopter, it's almost like it's constantly climbing on you and you're having to force it back down to the ground when it's too light.

Yeah, you're forcing it to to go in directions that it doesn't really want to go. It's wanting to just kinda stay there and hover. Yeah. I I also find that helis with light disc loading are not as good in the wind. You'll fly it on a windy day and you're like, this is this is just a dog. It's not It's not fun. And especially if you have more than one helicopter and you have a heavier one, you'll be like, Why is this not the way I expect it to. Um

I mean we had that we all we all went on and on about how great the Tron Dynamic was and it is it is fun, right? That lightweight a machine is super fun. Yep. But but it's that one was not fun in the wind either, you know? No. Even at max head speed at two thousand RPM it was. If it was really blowing, it was it was like, All right, time to put this away and get something else out.

Now that being said, I think that playing with disc loading is fun. Like you get bored in the hobby or something and you want to try something new. This is fun to play with. It's a relatively inexpensive way to change the way your helicopter flies and looks. So And I'll say one o as a beginner sport pilot, you know, three D aspiring pilot, I guess.

I will say one of my favorite ways when I start to feel like the disc loading is too light,'cause I do generally like to to run longer blades, is to add weight with more battery capacity. So If you're flying a six S five thousand machine or forty five hundreds, go to five thousands, fifty five hundreds, fifty three hundreds, six thousands even if you want to. There's a lot of choices in pack size on the market. So it's a great way to be like, hmm this is flying too light.

But I like it. That's a great way to add some weight to it. So Nick, I have a question about this, because you typically prefer to fly lower lower head speed helicopters, right? Mm-hmm. Do you run big blades or do you run small blades? Smaller. Do you run the the m more average size blade or do you run an oversized blade? I'm giggling'cause I'm about to say I like big blades and then you just have to say and I can't blades. Yeah. I knew it was I could feel it. I could feel it.

just I like the way on a 700, 715s, 720s, 710s feel. I don't know why I can't put my finger on it and and I think you'll find that's true of a lot of things with blades. It's definitely true across different blades. You just have to try it and then see which one suits you better.

And then you'll just say, I don't know, the helicopter feels more confident. I feel more confident on longer blades. But I do play with the with the weight of the packs as well. And I do like a lighter heli, but not too light heli for sure. You get too light.

Uh I I I asked this question for a reason. What Because you can also effectively decrease your disc loading by increasing head speed, right? You get more lift. So why would you choose to run a bigger blade rather than just increasing your head speed by fifty or something? Oh boy, I feel like this is a math test. Um

That's kinda like how I flew for a long time and I I would run like most people run in two thousand to twenty one hundred on their seven hundreds and I'd like to run, you know, eighteen fifty to nineteen fifty range. And sometimes you could just like like

Like Nick's saying, you know, if you use the bigger blade, you still get the same up and down, left and right f speed movement, but with less RPM basically. You know, and it it has a similar feel, but without that crazy fast reaction time you get with the Do you feel like Yeah. Like smaller blades with high RPM is more aggressive feeling than a lower RPM bigger larger blade size. It's like Do notice. C R P M or something.

I think you do notice it. It's kind of a different feel. Like it's it still reacts fast, but it's more predictable, I would say. Does a longer blade give you more agility? I think that depends on the blade, how it's weighted. Like some of'em do and some are really dead. Like my seven seventy, the sport that I have, has seven fifty blades on it.

But because they're the SAB ones that don't really have that reactive feel to them, they don't you know, even though they're large, they don't really have that fast. quick feel. You know, you could probably put like a even smaller blade on there that's wider and it would feel faster. If that makes sense.

Yeah. My experience has been with bigger blades you get faster off center responses, more more grab, if you will, but when you hold the stick, the overall rates are lower than they were with the smaller blade. I feel like and correct me if I'm wrong, I also get better like autos have a little bit more hang time with a longer blade. I think that has to do with the weight of them the just the mass of heavier blade autos, you know, for longer. Yeah.

Yeah, my Steam four twenty, I I had the stock blades on that for a while and I switched those to the ultimates, and the ultimates are slightly wider and just a little longer. And that made a world of difference on that size silicopter. It was, you know, before it was a little

less lift, you know, it didn't feel like it had quite what it needed. It might be a little too much now for somebody else, like to where it's real floaty, but it actually feels pretty good to me for a smaller helicopter. It kinda slows the smaller helicopter down, you know, on that size. Which is not a bad thing, you know, if you're flying Darty all over the place and you want to kinda

Slow it down. That's another way you can do it by just increasing the uh blade size. And that kind of slows down your speed on those smaller models.

Well let's let's talk about the smaller models. I feel like the five fifty, five hundred size is super popular size for people. How do you guys choose blade size for that? I generally stay true to the size. I like to run five fifties on five fifties. It's what I have on my M5. It's what I had on the Goose Guy RS5. I don't like five sixties.

Um but I haven't tried them all. I've just been happy at 550s. I get good flight time, plenty of performance, and haven't felt the need to to stretch it personally. Even though I like longer blades on seven hundreds. I don't know. God. I was gonna say, but I also haven't tried a lot of five sixties, so it may just be that I've just been happy. I really like the spin five fifties, those are great blade if you can get'em. How do you guys feel about uh Kenny?

Good. I was gonna say interestingly enough, I have the Nimbus Nitro and I I built it as a six fifty, so it was already stretched boom. And it does feel different, you know. Being stretched, that that helicopter, you know, probably is better on the smaller blades. I mean, I still fly it like it is. And I really haven't even tried it on the smaller ones, but I can tell, you know, with the the longer blades on it, it's very

I'm only running like six tens, I think, on it now, but that's plenty of blade on that helicopter. You know, it's very floaty and you got you kind of have to force it like you were saying, to go in directions. But with it being that size helicopter, I kind of enjoy that difference versus

you know, the speed of my seven hundred. So when I do fly it, it's a nice, uh relaxing more of a relaxing flight, I guess I'd say, versus just darting all over the sky. You know what I mean? It depends on what you're looking for on those smaller models. Kenny, you're y what you said is like exactly where I was going anyway. Like I was gonna ask, what do you think about stretching a five fifty size to like a six hundred or or larger? Because I Yeah. I feel like people do that.

to not necessarily make it fly better, but maybe because you want to fly a larger machine and you haven't bought one yet or you're trying to fill a gap in a size that you don't have. And I always feel like every stretched machine I've ever had feels Dainty in the air, if that makes sense. Like Yeah, I think you end up just with that lighter disc loading. It just feels

different than what it's supposed to feel like, but it's it depends on if you're wanting that or not. You know, like we said with the dynamic was kinda like that and it just depends on if that's your thing. You know, if it's if it's too light and you want to go really fast and rip around the sky, you might need to go ahead and step back down to a smaller Blade for the airframe weight. So if someone has a five fifty and they're like, Hey, should I stretch this, what what do you usually tell them?

I think it's the same thing. I would look at what they're doing. Like if they're just, you know, doing slow flips and maneuvers then Sure, it's not gonna hurt anything. It may cost a little more in a crash unit or replace the longer boom and the blades and stuff, but at the same time it might slow'em down to where they can have a better, you know, flying experience too, because it will actually decrease the uh

speed at which your roles and everything are. I mean, unless you change things on purpose to make it more agile, it's gonna kinda slow it down a little bit. I liked the feel of the RS six when I stretched the RS five and I put six tens on it. My only disappointment in stretching in that way was that I couldn't fit a bigger battery in between the frames.

I really wanted to run six S fifty five hundreds and get some more flight time, but it it just wouldn't fit in the pack I chart that I had. Maybe there are some that would, but That's the thing, when you stretch a five hundred or five fifty to a six hundred ish. And if you're limited to six S packs, if you can't fit something bigger, you're gonna suffer on flight time because the bigger the disk, the more amp draw. And then and obviously that means less flight time.

Yeah, you may puff some packs if you're flying pretty hard that way. Well it's definitely fun to play with on those five fifties. I just feel like I've seen a lot of people lately trying to run larger blades on a five fifty and then I was like that doesn't necessarily mean to lead to better flying characteristics and I wanted to talk about that a little bit.

Obviously choosing blades is uh totally perf personal preference, so don't take it for gold. You know, you can play around with it, but If you get if you get a smaller, lighter helicopter and you notice it feels weird, you should definitely try, you know, making the disc loading a little bit heavier.

Can we talk about the Tron Dynamic a little bit? I know we talked about it a little bit earlier. I'm really curious where you guys landed with blade choices. So the Tron Dynamic is a lightweight seven hundred size helicopter meant to run on six to eight S systems. Uh

So what did you guys do with Blade Choice on your I only ran two different sets. I think I had some spins and then I had the seven hundred ultimates and the ultimates I left on there most of the time, but it really was just too much blade.

for that airframe size I felt like. Like it was a lot of lift, you know, for the weight. I probably should have ran maybe like a even like a six eighty blade would have probably been better. Like something a little bit smaller, I think would have felt better to me. Alex, what about you? What did you run? So I only ever flew mine with seven hundred ultimates on it.

I do think that I would have had more fun with it with a six ninety or like a six eighty five blade. And I I had a set of spin six eighty fives that I intended on putting on there and I never did. Uh, but I I had the chance to try the spin six eighty five recently and I thought they were They were slower reacting than I wanted to be. Like I don't think that would have been the answer for me.

Um that helicopter is ungodly fast too if you have like thirteen degrees of pitch and two thousand RPM on that thing. It is quick. Yeah. And it was fun. It was fun. It just wasn't something I held on to long term. You know. It was super fun. No secret, I love the helicopter. But I had the same experience. I was like, Whoa, this thing's crazy light with seven hundreds on it and

And I started going up in battery sizes and I still wasn't quite happy and that's actually the helicopter I experimented with the most. I tried lots of different blades, battery sizes, motor pinions, all kinds of stuff. But I settled on six nineties and I loved that helicopter on six nineties. So sometimes going down in blade size is the way to go is also another way to increase your disc loading. If it's too floaty, you don't like it, pick a shorter blade.

I wish I would have tried a different power system too,'cause I had a a twelve S setup already and I put that in there with the thirty three hundred packs. And I would have liked to try something like a seven or eight S size, you know, setup on it that was just made For that size helicopter a little different, you know what I mean? Running different RPM on it and the smaller blade and see how it did too.

Here's something I don't have a lot of experience with that while we're talking about blades I'd love to ask you guys about. What about nitro blade choice and disc loading? What do you do there? I still run similar RPMs. So I like the ultimates on mine most of the time. Yeah.

I've been flying ultimates on my nitro machines lately. Seven hundreds on the seven hundred and then I have an uh I didn't talk about this yet in my update, but I have a Nimbus Nitro that I'm trying also with the five sixty ultimates. So Nice. I did try the venture seven oh ones on the Nitro and they're fine. They're it's still smooth, but it's it's definitely a quick quicker cyclic or a bit poppier than even the ultimates on that that helicopter. Pretty cool.

Plan on trying it also. It's funny though, Nick, because that's why I had bought those spin 685s to try on Nitro and the dynamic, and I just never did. Uh I definitely feel like it would be nice to have a little smaller blade maybe on the nitro and m but then you I'd want to run more head speed and you can't, you know? So You're stuck around eighteen hundred between eighteen hundred and two thousand typically on a nitro. Seven hundred. Yeah.

Can you run larger blades on a nitro like can you run seven fifteens, seven twenties on a nitro or is that a no no? I have tried seven fifteens and at full stick deflection. I'm not talking about collective, just cyclic, not touching the collective at all and you snap it and it would just go bl you know, it would just kill the RPM. Um That was my experience with it at least. I'm I'm sure other people have had better experience with it. Did not work for me.

I bought uh Rail six ninety sixes, the new ones to try with my BK Nitro if I ever finish it. Um That'd be a good sign to try. A lot of guys around here fly them and love them, so I thought I would give them a try. I could see that being a good play.

Yeah, well it's so not really n brand specific. We can go into like e I gotta use name brands because uh the designs are all different. But like say you're going for an Azure type of a design or

Spins. They're more designed like they seem to do better at a higher RPM, you know,'cause the lo the disc loading's different on those blades. They're a little bit Thinner blade, so if you choose those it's mainly'cause you're a kind of person either likes the softer cyclic or pitch feel or you're running

you know, a higher RPM where like like Nick's talking about the railblade. I got a couple of sets of those and I do like'em. They're kind of similar but but have a different feel than the ultimates and that they're they're kind of close related and then the same thing with the venture. You know, the venture are kind of in between those or even faster, you know, so it's it's all dependent on your RPM, I would say, if you're using the same length for all those blades.

I don't know if you guys feel the same way, but you know, the the Azures and the spin type blades are ones you're gonna probably you're not gonna feel that quick pop the same way as the other three blades ba based on speed. Does a longer blade track better through Yeah. More sport type maneuvers. If they're molded straight You don't

If you don't like'cause sometimes you you get a wider blade and you slow the speed down like I do a lot of times, like eighteen fifty or nineteen hundred and your the wider blade you'll end up with like flutter more. You know, you'll be doing flips and it'll be fluttering. I don't necessarily think so. I feel like with a longer blade, if you're running lower RPM, you get more flap, right? Than you would with a smaller There's more flex involved there, yeah.

Yeah. I don't know I feel like the answer to your question, Nick, is by putting a larger blade on you are effectively getting more head speed because it's a larger blade and so the tips are t traveling faster than a smaller blade. I would be interested to see what you thought about putting smaller blades back on it and going up like fifty RPM or, you know, twenty-five or something and see what it did, see what it did. Just curious, you know. I should give it a try

Yeah, along with this loading, like that's could be one thing that maybe turns you off of a blade. If you think you got it all good and you're flying, even if it's a large or a small blade and y and you hear it making a little bit of flutter, that right there could be

a turn off for you and it might not be that you have your tracking off. It could be like I said, if a blade is a little bit twisted or something, sometimes there's just a fuzz difference in the two blades and you might still be out of track a little bit. So you sometimes have to listen for that and just make a tiny Link adjustment, you know, and then you might actually like the blade size or the blade, you know, width or length that you chose. So

Don't overlook a blade just because you hear a noise the first time or you think, oh, they're coming out of track because they don't like this RPM or something like that. It might not be that at all. It might just be you need to tweak the tracking just a fuzz.

I noticed that when I went to the venture blades, maybe their quality control is not I'm not saying they're not good quality blades. But th I've noticed that the root of them is not as consistent as some of the other brands and you do have to like actually get your tracking right when you put them on.

I've noticed the same thing, that's why I brought this up. I I had the same deal. Like if you get'em just right, like you can put'em on a pitch gauge and you might see the exact same number on each side. But in flight, it might be twisting just a fuzz difference. So you actually have to fly it, listen to it, go back and just turn one link, you know, if you're gonna mark it, turn that link one way or the other and see if it gets better or worse.

And you might find that just a tiny, you know, a quarter of a degree difference just from barely turning the link will make'em quiet as can be. Because I have three or four sets now. And I did that on two of the helicopters that were just slightly making noise and now they're silent and it flies even smoother and better.

Yeah. I didn't want to just say I don't mean to just call venture out, but I've seen other people put them on and be like, Oh, they're too loud and I was like, Well they're not tracking. I agree. I've seen that with other blades. There's some of them cheap Chinese blades you could get that were way twisted, you know, and and you can actually even with a twisted blade, most of the time if they're just slightly off, you can

Track it out to where it's pretty good. And that's what you have to do sometimes. You have to manually don't just expect that your pitch gate made everything perfect. Sometimes it isn't. You gotta kinda listen basically. Totally. Anything else to add about disk loading for now? Choose the right batteries, I don't know. I mean sometimes you overload and and make your helicopter feel bad by getting too big of packs because You know, fifty five hundred just looked well. Like looked up. That's fine.

You put it on there and you're like, Okay, now it's a tank. There's I've had times like that. Yeah, it's cool in twelve S stick packs, there's a lot of choices as well. Forty five hundreds, five thousands, fifty one hundreds, fifty threes, fifty fives. Now they're getting even bigger, fifty six hundreds. And like you said, if you try to choose like a forty five hundred or something to be lightweight and then go the wrong way and get like larger blades, you really shorten your flight time.

The truth is it's way cheaper to change the length of your blade than the size of your packs though. Ha ha. True. Totally, dude. And then blade brand matters too. Like that's where I'm going next, is if we're done just talking about disc loading in general. Yeah. We want to talk about the different blade brands and how they fly. I would love to hear your thoughts on that.

All right. Well there's a lot of different things out there with blade brands, right? And typically you'll find a one brand or one blade set will do something really well.

But that doesn't mean it's the best blade for everything because typically what I have found is if it does something well, there's other things that it might not do as well as another blade that doesn't do everything well either. So for example a smacky blade, something that's really great for smack, usually has a pretty wide blade and that means it's inducing drag so it doesn't carry speed as well for fast maneuvers and

Stuff like that. So there's always a balance between choosing the blade that you want. But I feel like if you're watching a video of your favorite pilot and you want to fly like he flies, like choose his gear. He flies that gear for a reason. Don't just go, I'm gonna buy these blades. and then expect the same performance you're getting out of whatever you're watching or trying to get into, you know?

I think it's a good thing. If there's a style that you admire out there and, you know, the pilot is able to do it with that blade on it, it would be a good choice to try. For sure. Yeah, the blazes change a lot the characteristic. The the blazes change the characteristic of the model a lot, you know? Go ahead, Kenny. I had two or three people come up, you know, after they grabbed the the ventures.

And they're like, Why didn't you tell me they were so good? I said, Uh just fly'em some more, you know,'cause that's w you can't just judge'em, you know, any blade off of just one flight or so you gotta fly it.

And do different maneuvers that you normally do and things that t'cause it's gonna act great in a few situations, like you said, and then Some other things you do, you're like, Whoa, I didn't like that, you know, or it's just not doing what I want and maybe in this high speed pass or, you know, a big looping, you know, whatever, peer writing flip or something, and then now it's acting weird and fluttering.

you gotta try it in every direction. And I noticed the same thing, these guys that said this was the greatest blade ever come back and they're like, Oh well, I'll still fly my ultimate sum or, you know, something else because right don't you don't hate it. It's just it's the same thing. It's something different. So it's got its purpose and it's got its shining ability, you know, just like other ones do. And you can't just

say this is the best blade ever, just like you said. You have to try'em all and and kind of compare and you might like special, you know, thing that it does better. Like the the ventures are very fast and pitchy off center. But then some other pilot's not gonna like that, you know? Like if you're just trying to be smooth and fly good, you're not gonna like want a super reactive blade. So it's all in choice too.

Hello? Hello? Hello, Alex. What's going on? Yeah, I'm here. Hey what's going on? So I got this message from M M C about Why he chooses bigger blades over smaller blades. Oh cool. What did he say? So for his flying style, we're talking about seven hundreds at least, uh he's he said he tried a lot of different blades, but found that he couldn't fly bigger moves or

or f couldn't go faster during flying and so he had to increase his pitch a lot when he was using seven hundreds and increase his head speed, which was killing his batteries. So if you're wondering why do Kenny Ko and M C K and those guys use the seven fifteens, they've noticed that They can lower their pitch, run bigger blades, and get a longer flying time. So it's less efficient when you're having to run more and more RPM and more and more pitch.

Huh, I guess that makes a lot of sense. That's cool. I would have guessed the other way. Yeah, I uh had always felt like you could get kind of the same feel out of more RPM with seven hundred size blades, but I obviously don't fly like these guys either. So Well, cool. Well, hey, thanks for calling me and sharing that, man. Yeah, that was fun.

So I went through a period of time where I would basically brought bought a ton of blades and tried a bunch of different blades. So I've kind of had experience with a lot of them and I I wrote some down here, Kenny, to look at and we could just kinda go through and say, Hey, these are the characteristics that we noticed about these blades.

And obviously someone else might feel something different'cause it's totally subjective. But I feel like a good all around blade, uh, there's two that I think do really good all around. The ultimates, right? The seven hundred ultimate can be pretty smacky. But is also a pretty good overall blade. It just doesn't necessarily if you like flying speed passes, this is probably not the blade for you, in my opinion. Yeah. I actually don't like the ultimates. Speed pass maybe like an Israel.

I could see actually'cause as a more like sporty pilot, I could see maybe not liking'em. I've tried'em an a couple of times and everybody loves'em, so it don't listen to me. You should try them. But I don't know, they just don't suit me in some way and I can't put my finger on why I just like other blades better. Other blades feel more predictable to me than the ultimates. You might like the rails because I think they're more in that category you're looking for like that.

It's funny, rails are something I haven't really messed with. I don't have a lot of experience with rails. I think they're a little more rigid maybe, is what it is. But they're but they're not that wide and flexible as a ultimate. You know what I mean? So they have more of that trait line tracking ability and stuff for speed passes or for just floating maneuvers, either way. Can I suggest a blade for the good all rounder category? Yeah. Do it. I'm here. I'm ready.

I really like the latest generation of SAB's blades. They like suit me well. They feel like a great all around blade. I would agree with that. Stuff like that. They're not like super reactive, but they are so very strong too. Like they're they're a beefy blade, I would say, if that makes sense. Very predictable to me. Like I love the way the Ogoblin Pro flies on them. It just goes where I point it. It doesn't have bad tendencies or whatever. Like I just

I don't know. Yeah, I don't know the weight on the blades, but I feel like those S C B blades are a slightly heavier blade, which might help in that predictionable predic prediction type of a feel where you can You know what it's gonna do next, like you're saying, you know, you don't have that crazy poppy like it's so light that it's all over the place feel. Yeah. I feel like they don't stop as well as like the ultimates freaking stop, you know?

Uh that's where I'm getting out with the ventures. Like like somebody who's wanting smooth tracking and and just You know, predictable smooth flights. That's where you'd wanna recommend is like an SAB blade or something, just because you know it's gonna perform like that versus something that's not Blee blades are also really easy to tune. Not the best at tuning and you're getting baubles and stuff, the SAB blades are just kind of Forgiving. Yeah.

Yeah. Guilty. No, that's very true. They're very easy to get dialed in. And I don't do a lot of stops. I my flights tend to flow more than have a lot of hard stops in them. So I get that. That's probably part of why I like'em. I like to put the helicopter at a ninety degree angle to whatever I was traveling at and give it full pitch and make it stop right there on s on the point. And to me when I fly an SAB blade, I enjoy doing that because I like watching how far I can push through it.

Yeah, it just like plows through my stop. I it's hilarious. Stretching the main shaft out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But that that's not to say they're not a bad blade. They do some things very well too. They're a great overall all blade.

What do you have you guys phoned the Azure Pros mod? Is that the white tipped one? Yeah. I have not. What do you think? That is m that's my current favorite blade right now. It probably doesn't smack Sorry, I was gonna say how do they compare to the red tips as you talk about?

The red tips were more smooth feeling to me than the pros. The pros are a little bit more aggressive, grabby than the the red tips. The red tips, what were nice about them was how smooth they would be at high speed transition. And the pros are a little bit more grabby than the red tips are, but they also have more stopping power than the Reds did. Not a ton more, not like the the ventures do or the ultimates.

But I feel like you get a little bit more stopping behavior with the pros, but still really good at W when you're when you're traveling really fast, if you like to to like fold your helicopter door, you're like flipping in the direction of your travel, not a roll, but a f do you guys know what I'm say talking about when you flip in the direction of the travel, like you fold it?

Yeah. Am I describing that good? Okay. They do that really well. I mean, they really like to transition. So I'm enjoying those right now. Call. I like the Azure red blades. I only I actually enjoyed them at low head speed on on this I had them on a Spectre that I used to do a lot of low head speed stuff with and they flew great. also very safe and predictable. As much as they're supposed to be a very agile blade, I just I don't know. They were

rounder. They were not aggressive, like off center fast feeling. Yeah, they were never weird feeling to me. Yeah. They seem pretty predictable and smooth. And I know Kenny and I are both playing with the Ventures. The Ventures smack better than the the Azores do, maybe not quite as good as the Ultimates, but They uh they have that same design where they transition well, like I was talking about with the Azores too.

Yeah, I feel like you can stop it more precise too, like if you're going down real fast or up and then you want to stop in a certain position and you can do that a lot quicker just because of the stiffness of that blade. I just noticed that when you start flying really fast with those, the the ventures, they get kind of pitchy feeling, like you give it a small input and it wants to dive or something, is what I feel like I'm seeing.

Yeah, they're not as happy like it as at with fast like going from straight to like a quick up or down or something maneuver. Right. But they're fun. I mean I'm enjoying flying them. I have them on three machines right now. Yeah, I feel like I still even have to fly them longer and get more used to'em. And I think the more you get used to'em, the more they'll work for you. If that makes sense, like how they feel versus when you first put'em on.

You go through this phase like they're crazy fast, then you're like, Okay, I can control this. These things here I need to figure out. Yeah. What I do like about them and the ultimates as well, like if you're doing I don't know what your rates are on your machines. I I I tend to run my aileron and elevator like flip and roll rate. If it was a V bar at like one thirty, one thirty five and in rotor flat I'm at

three ten, I think. And it's fun to do like a fast aileron or elevator flip and stop and the machine just, you know, it stops right there where it was. Those blades do that really well. Yeah, for sure. Have you guys messed with the spin blades? I had'em on my Nimbus five fifty. They're actually on my scale bird. It's what I painted because they were already black and white and largely one color for the scale bird.

And I've also tried them on the M five and uh I really like their five fifties. I haven't tried the longer spins, but the spin five fifties were a great blade. I had the s I had the seven twenties on a kraken and some other helicopters for a while. It's it's interesting that it really livened the kraken up, like it felt More agile with those things on there than with the SAB blades. But in the long run, I ended up feeling like it was just too light of disc loading for me. But

Dude, they tracked really well in fast forward flight and stuff like that too. They're super stable blades. Yeah, they remind me more of like an a a line type like the order of a line blades in a way. Like the design and stuff. I put'em on I think the six tins on the stretched Nimbus Nitro and that tamed it down versus having those wider ultimates that I had on there before, you know, that'cause they're a thinner blade, so it actually helped that helicopter feel more of its size.

Didn't feel as floaty. Makes sense.

Do you guys ever find an airframe where your favorite blade didn't suit it? Where you were like, Huh, I love this blade, but I don't like it on this model. I think for me it might be the dynamic. I think it was the dynamic with the ultimates on there. I think the wide blade was just a little much for that helicopter. Flew great, but it still felt like it could have used something thinner blade, you know.

I should have tried that dude. I regret not putting other blades on it and playing with uh Yeah, I should have tried maybe the Azure or something like that just to give it another try. You guys follow the switch plates? I used to. I did when I first started in the hobby. Uh they're kinda hard to get right now, but they were a good all around blade also. They did pretty good. They're nice and loud, but When they were Ed. And they're loud. I do love that.

I love when there's like a hot shot pilot with switchblades at the field and it's like Yeah. I love it. Totally agree. Good stuff. They were a good all-round beginner blade. What about uh an a pair supposedly they're gonna do another run on these, but I haven't heard anything. What about VTX blades? Do you guys like those? Because man, I love me some VTX 717s. That's funny, I never liked them at all. No, I never liked them.

I didn't either. I had two sets when I had my Krakens and they just don't they never felt predictable to me. Like they would kind of act really quick sometimes and then slow at other times when you wouldn't expect it. That's funny. I loved them on the Tron advance. Love them. I wanted to like them. I like tried to like those blades. I don't know why I w I guess I wanted to like them because I liked Kyle Doll and I wanted to fly whatever he was flying at. And the shape's cool.

And the shape was super cool. Yeah, but I agree with Kenny. I found them doing weird things that I just didn't care for. So And over time if you're sitting really hard, they delaminated it. I wonder if our discrepancies between a more novice pilot like me and you guys is Uh the the we like different blades, it's funny. What you want your helicopter to feel like when it's, you know, in the air basically, not just it hovering but all around, you know?

It's totally like it's like everybody's underwear, honestly, you know. Funny way to look at it. I also feel like though the way you want your helicopter to fly probably changes over time. Like sometimes I want it to feel this way and sometimes. Correct. Yeah. That's a good thing for manufacturers'cause then there would only be one blade for sale. Yeah.

That's for sure. Yeah. No, it's fun seeing the new stuff come out and there's always something new to try and It's a relatively relatively affordable way to try something new in the hobby and not super invasive like taking all your servos out. You can trade blades with your buddy if you want to try different ones, if you don't don't think they're gonna smash'em into the ground or yours, vice versa.

Yeah, you gotta put some conditions on the trail. Like you crash'em, you buy'em. What was I gonna say? Shoot. Oh. Uh we are really lucky right now that there's a lot more blade manufacturers right now, it feels like, than there've been in There's a lot. Yeah, there's the new the new rails, right? Which I haven't tried. Uh we just went through. What's the other V one? Um Phantom Falcon? Yeah. I mean I guess there's still a line blaze. Yeah.

Some people buy some of the cheapy there's like those Falcon RJX, you know, things like that. They're better up there. People grab'em when they want like a cheap set and those are you know, the companies make'em. Some of'em are making these other blades, but they're dependent on you might get two sets and one of them's more straight than the other set, you know, with those cheap. Oh, there's the Nick Maxwell blade too. Hẹn gặp lại các bạn trong những video tiếp theo.

The ri the Revos. Yeah. Yeah. I haven't really messed with the first RC blades. I haven't tried the new generation. The the original generation is a great cheap practice blade. Not great at anything, but just a very cheap blade that you don't care if you crack. I think that'd be interesting. I think he had the new ones on there with the leading like the trailing edge that Kirk Cook. Yeah. Yeah, they flew pretty good actually. Didn't feel weird.

I look really... had a lot of pop to it and everything, was really, you know, up and down pitchy, but it didn't feel like you didn't roll fast like crazy, so it felt pretty stable. I would think there'd be a ton of that because of how big the tip is. Yeah, the way that tip's trailing back I think leads to a lot of stability.

SAB blades. That's that's I'm sure we've missed some. That's ten brands of blades right now you can choose from. Yeah, that's a lot, dude. And I know we miss some. That's pretty cool. But yeah. It's always disappointing to have a whole episode on discloading and then to end it with the moral of the story is it's it's up to you. Yeah. I mean it is really All personal preference and I know. All I can do is give a baseline of uh each one's feel or

Yeah. I mean you can you can say like this is a solid setup that a decent amount of people like is about the best you can say. Bye. You really can't go wrong with an SAB blade or an Azure or, you know, any number of these

You need to write down the type of things you like to do in flight and then choose the blade based on that. I guess if you're just trying to if you can't afford to blade hop and buy different ones and try'em, then you wanna pick the three or four things you like to do in the air versus, you know, just grabbing a blade. Like do I like to hover more? Do I like to do smooth rolling flips? Do I wanna go fast across the sky straight?'Cause all those blades are gonna handle that differently.

And honestly, if you want to try blades, one of the good ways to do it is to buy'em, try'em, and if you don't like'em, bring them to a fun fly. Put a you know, if they're a hundred dollar set of blades, put a sticker on them for eighty bucks. So it costs you twenty bucks to try them. So buy them, try'em, and return them. Ha ha ha. No. Slightly used.

But I've done that where I put a bunch of blades out with, you know, post it notes with a price on'em and a fun fly and, you know, churn'em over. If you tried'em and didn't like'em, get rid of'em. Just don't ship'em'cause God you will get eaten alive shipping a long tube everywhere. Man, I shipped someone some blades. I Uh I didn't know better. I should have known better. I just put'em back in the package they came in and like wrapped it in paper and it crushed the tips. Yeah, that was stupid.

Yeah. I always save blade boxes when I when they ship to me so I can ship'em, but I've learned that it's not profitable to sell a single set of blades and ship it. Yeah, you can do like three and four combo packs for a fixed price, but It's just not worth it otherwise. You're gonna have to reappoxy those pack together. I cut'em into three pieces to save on shipping. That's fine. Yeah. What else do we want to say about Blaze? Get out there and fly? Yeah.

Fly and try. It's the only way to do it. Or find one you love and stick with it. Yep. Does changing blades reduce your chance of progressing? I don't think so. Not as much as changing helicopters. Yeah, changing helicopters, remaidening a machine and getting to know it is totally different. Or setting on your canopy. Oh, your radio. Uh or you're right. Yeah. Yeah. Back at you, bro. Yeah. What have you said on lately, Nick? Yeah. Motors or batteries or anything? Yeah. Watch where you sit down.

Ha ha. Well on that note, uh I'm sad Brian isn't here,'cause it would've been interesting to hear the like Is that hanger rash or is that hanger ass? Oh It's all right. If you're gonna be at sprinkling, be be careful what you put on your chairs. Kenny's ass is gonna be there. Um but it's lethal. Ouch. If you ask me to take a seat, you better pull your transmitter out of the chair first. Well then let's wrap up this episode. Go out there and fly.

Yeah, go out there and fly. All of our everything are on our website, Rotarevolution dot live. So you can find the swag store, emails, contact, Facebook, all that stuff is available on the website. So head on over there. And check it out. Thanks very much for listening. This is Episode fifty one. And this this was good for me because I want to go fly now. That is good. I really want to go fly. Das ist geil.

I actually flew today. I went out and tested that, you know, screw up that I had going on in the flybarlet. I have not had the chance to really get out and fly like I want to, so this was motivating. Don't break your X eighteen R ass.

It is motivating. You know what's always funny? I get like you're like, oh, it's a podcast night and you're so tired, you get beat up at work all day, and it's amazing how much energy I get back talking about helicopters. Like now I'm all like happy and jazz and awake. Alright. And on that note, that's it. I'm pressing stop. This concludes this episode of the Rotor Revolution RC Podcast.

To learn more, stay in touch with the team, and to join the Revolution, check out our Facebook page at facebook.com slash Rotar Revolution RC Podcast or find us on the web at Rodarevolution. Help us spread the word and leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform. For listener questions, advertising inquiries, or to reach out to the entire team, Email us at questions at rotorrevolution. Thanks for listening.