Zeal Blades

[pgoelz]

Originally Posted by bmc76

Just received the 210's, surprisingly they are indeed longer than stock blades, though the chord is not as wide as I thought they would (or should) be. Gotta do a few things then I'll take a closer look and take some photos. I'm still happy our little unloved by the masses 250 is getting some attention.

Where did you get them? I can't find them for sale anywhere. I've had some scary flutter on two different sets of Align 205Ds so I'm real interested Both times, I was lucky to get it down without serious damage.

Paul

[skunkworx]

Originally Posted by pgoelz

Where did you get them? I can't find them for sale anywhere. I've had some scary flutter on two different sets of Align 205Ds so I'm real interested Both times, I was lucky to get it down without serious damage.

Paul

Try the Lynx dampers if you haven't yet. I'd bet that was your problem. Mine were terrible about that. Swapped them out and no more shakes or violent flutters. Blades shouldn't have anything to do with it.

[pgoelz]

Originally Posted by skunkworx

Try the Lynx dampers if you haven't yet. I'd bet that was your problem. Mine were terrible about that. Swapped them out and no more shakes or violent flutters. Blades shouldn't have anything to do with it.

Way ahead of you... Lynx dampers are on the way I bought them to address a mild wobble in flight but maybe they will keep the blades under better control too.

And no, blades SHOULDN'T have anything to do with it but that assumes they are weighted and shaped so they are stable. I am not at all convinced Align blades are stable. The last several pair of 450 and 250 blades certainly have not been balanced well enough to fly. They all shook even after a careful teeter balance and required that I carefully match the CG (which was measurably off) as well as the weight before they would run smoothly. I even had to build a blade balancer because the one I had was too big for the 250 blades. But the 250 blades are the only ones I have ever used that fluttered like this.

Paul

[skunkworx]

Close is usually good enough for me. I've been narrowing it down on the 250 little by little, but bent parts are responsible for 99% of my problems it seems. I had a shake worse than a 130X due to a bent up head block. Replaced it and had the wobbles. Replaced with Lynx and now smooth as glass! You'll never look back

[pgoelz]

Originally Posted by skunkworx

Close is usually good enough for me. I've been narrowing it down on the 250 little by little, but bent parts are responsible for 99% of my problems it seems. I had a shake worse than a 130X due to a bent up head block. Replaced it and had the wobbles. Replaced with Lynx and now smooth as glass! You'll never look back

Looking forward to it! I don't fly aggressively but I like my helis to fly SMOOTHLY and PREDICTABLY.

Paul

[Slobberdog]

The Zeal blades are pre production and on test, providing all goes well, they should be on sale soon,

[skunkworx]

Guess we'll see how it goes then. I just hope the product testers are pretty harsh on them and they perform well. I've already got enough paint stirers in my flight box (aka plastic boat oars) and I'll be bummed if they don't outperform the Align blades.

[ThePhoenixxxxx]

Hey guys I got my 210mm Zeals today and I measured them up and got weights, all the info is in my thread in the Zeal section. I will hopefully get them flight tested this weekend, you can never trust ohio weather!

[pgoelz]

Originally Posted by pgoelz

Way ahead of you... Lynx dampers are on the way I bought them to address a mild wobble in flight but maybe they will keep the blades under better control too.

Paul

The Lynx "dampers" arrived today. I put "dampers" in quotes because while they fit where the dampers go, they are hard plastic and (as far as I can tell) don't provide any real "damping" functionality. The head is now a rigid head.

The wobble is GREATLY reduced. I tried some brief tweeks and I might be able to tune it out completely but even as-is, it is acceptable. Part of the problem in my case at least is that this is a scale (Hughes MD-500E) ship and as such is heavier than stock and the vertical center of mass is lower than the stock pod and boom heli. Additionally, I am at the moment test-hovering in the basement in a fairly confined space so I am hovering in my own turbulent rotor wash. Couple that with the "normal" swash slop and I can see where the heli might hunt slightly around center.

Still playing with cyclic gain and cyclic feed through ratio, looking for perfection And still waiting until the Zeal blades are available. I'm hoping their different profile, longer span and higher weight will get rid of the very last of the wobble / wiggle in a hover.

Paul

[skunkworx]

Well, if you really get down to brass tacks, they do give under pressure. They're just at a much higher durometer rating than the stock sets. Rigid works great for me though!

[pgoelz]

Originally Posted by pgoelz

Still playing with cyclic gain and cyclic feed through ratio, looking for perfection And still waiting until the Zeal blades are available. I'm hoping their different profile, longer span and higher weight will get rid of the very last of the wobble / wiggle in a hover.

Paul

Tried a little experiment this evening. I was wondering if the slop in the swash and possibly the servos was contributing to the slight remaining wobble in an indoor (in rotorwash) hover. So I looped a small rubber band from one grip arm over the top of the head button to the other grip arm. The idea was to preload the swash bearing and at least on the ground it worked until forces applied to either blade overpowered the rubber band. This is an old trick used on the MCPx, for the same reason.

In the air, it made quite a difference. With the rubber band in place, the hover was silky smooth, even in my limited indoor test hover area with pronounced rotor wash. . Without the rubber band, there was a bit of wobble.

So small amounts of wobble seem to be due to the control system hunting back and forth within the mechanical deadband caused by overall head slop. Now to see if I can come up with a more permanent solution to preload the swash bearing. I wonder if different blades.... ones that required more force to achieve hover pitch.... would do the same thing without any spring required. Kinda the opposite of what "Chinese weights" are supposed to do.

EDIT....... I found an easy way to preload the bearing and I'll post it on its own thread.

Paul

[bmc76]

I have about a dozen flights on the Zeal blades now.

The good:
They increase the stability quite a bit, makes the 250 feel alot less twitchy.
Much better for high speed

The bad
They are much less snappy on cyclic and collective
They are hard to see


Not quite what I was hoping for but some people will like them.

[skunkworx]

Do they flex a lot or are they grabbing a lot more air and it's slowing them down? I found that I tend to like the stock plastic blades when running higher headspeeds because they limit the twitchiness, but they bog way too easy and could use a CF or GF stiffener to make them a little more efficient under load. I'm kind of surprised they don't make a straight-up solid carbon or wood-core blade in this size. That or a really good quality plastic blade like KBDD for the 130X.

[Murph_d]

A little heavy and not cheap, but here they are. When I get them, I'll post my impressions (weather permitting)

The bad
They are hard to see

Maybe Zeal payed attention, the energy graphics look like they are easier to see.


http://zealblades.com/shop/product_i...roducts_id=468