Attention all Swift 16 owners.

[broke-again]

My new swift crashed yesterday because of what appears to be a major failure on the main grips on only the fourth flight. The original post can be found here, there are pics too http://www.helifreak.com/viewtopic.php?t=27031

I have emailed Century and will post their response.

Just concerned in case this is an issue that could affect other swifts out there, if this fails there is very little you can do, so you may want to inspect your own blade grips carefully before each flight.

I would also like to know if this has happened to anyone else out there?

[Rodney]

I think you jumped to asumming the grip failure a little to fast.
Have you seen all the vids of the swift having the crap flown out of them?
I have seen a swift flown on 8s with 600 and 610mm blades and no grip failures.

[broke-again]

I havent assumed anything Rodney, im only going with what occured and the evidence i have. One grip definatley failed in hover, then the other as it came down. This was not crash damage - the heli came in tail / belly 1st .The head and blades were intact, though nicked in places.

Im not scare mongering either, its highly possible that i may have one dud out of 1000's but would hate to see this happen to anyone else, not that it will.

[RAV50]

Sorry to hear of your mishap, but from the description of the event in your original post, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that your crash was NOT the result of blade grip failure. These would have failed afterwords - during the crash.

Why? Simply because, if the blade grip control arms would have broke off as pictured, either the blades would have feathered at 0 degrees of pitch and lost all lift OR they would have feathered at 90 degrees in which case again they would have lost all lift and in this case you would also most probably experienced an in air boom strike!! In which case, you would have been witness to an in air explosion similar to the heli being hit by a shotgun shell - it would have exploded in mid air!!!

In either case, there is no way that your heli would have climbed at all after you lost control nor could it have "rolled".

The most likely cause was a radio or servo issue. What radio equipment was being used? Where was the receiver located relative to the Motor, ESC and Gyro? This is the areas that I would be prone to examine.....along with a few others.

[broke-again]

Thanks for the input, but the blades are 100% intact, a couple of very small nicks as is the flybar. I could understand the grips snapping where they did if the head or blades made contact with anything, but they clearly didnt or they would be badly damaged. This is why im having a hard time with this. The co-pilot system gives the bird a clean bill of health on an electronic level. :dontknow

[Rodney]

I have had a failure that I know was not grip related, but yet both grips were broke with out a scratch on a set of RT710's. I had a sevo screw come out causing the crash, how do I know this, the screw was laying in the canopy after it hit the ground. Like i said on the other post in the open forum. It would have had a boom strike if the grip had broke in a hover, not climbed out with out control.

[Tim Tompkins]

I don't think there is really that much stress at your breaking point. In flight the blades rock on the brgs. with very little load. Even hard 3D is much less than it would take to break them. The real load area is around the blade root. The bolt area is the most stressed and it is why they all have gone to 4mm bolts now. I have broken plenty of grips right where yours are broken, during a crash.

TimT