Wood vs FRP vs Carbon

[907Heli]

I'm new to nitro heli's and I'm currently flying stock wood blades on my Century Hawk Pro .30 with the stock .32 engine. I'm considering an upgrade to either FRP or Carbon blades and I'm wondering what the differences in performance are between the FRP and Carbon.

[MotorRotor]

Over the many years I have been flying these RC helis and testing many, many different blades, I have found some well designed and manufactured wood blades, that were safer to use, and flew better then some poorly designed and manufactured fiberglass and carbon fiber blades.

So now I strongly believe that one cannot make a blanket statement that a blade made from any particular material will be better then another that is made from a different material.

The only true comparison of consequence is to compare any particular blade to another particular blade. e.g. Is the Hobby King 550mm Carbon Blade better then the 550mm Aerotech wood blade.

In the past, I have even found some wood blades by the same manufacturer to be safer then some of teh carbon blades they had on offer. In fact that particular manufacturer eventually recalled all of their C/F blades that proved to be unsafe.

I have found some cheaper C/F blades that in time (around 20 or so flights) that would start to cause vibrations. On close inspection, it was found that the blade bolt holes on one had started to elongate!

In another case, after similar vibrations had started, I found that the weights inside one blade had not been properly glued inside so it had started to migrate towards the tip, causing a big difference in spanwise CG.

I have tried some C/F blades that had the chordwise cg so far back (very poor design) that they would cause some type of rotor heads to flutter and which also caused a severe pitch up attitude in fast forward flight.

So just don't make the mistake of only judging a blade by its cover (what it is made from).