Really that sensitive?

[al_evans]

I fly about the same every time, have my timer set to 5:30, and compulsively look at the amount my charger puts back into my batteries. When everything is right, it's about 460 mAh. I've found that if it's much higher than this -- 480-500 -- something is wrong somewhere. Tight links, blades a little out of balance, main shaft slightly bent, .... I can always find something that needs fixing.

A few days ago, although the power consumption was correct, I was noticing a slight bit of vibration at one point during spool-up. So sometime after that, I pulled the blades off and stuck them on the little Align balancer, which I put between two water glasses. One blade was about 1/4 inch lower than the other. I added a piece of ordinary Scotch tape ~1 inch long to the light one, which brought them into perfect balance.

I don't know how much that piece of tape weighed -- my scale only measures down to 0.1 g, and they didn't register when I put a similar piece on them. But the power consumption for the same batteries, same flight time, went down to a consistent 440 mAh. That's a little over 4% power savings, for a blade balance change somewhere in the hundredths of a gram!

These things really ARE sensitive!

--Al Evans