Swift Fliers - main blade tighness

[Dogwoodtheone]

How tight is everyone running their main blades on the Swift?
I've hear everything from tight to loose.

If you don't mind, please state the type of blades your running and how tight

-Dog

[Spidious]

I run mine just snug enough to not allow them to drop. Carbon fiber, fiber glass and woodys....

[rotoraddict]

I run all my blades the same. Just tight enough, that I can turn the heli on its' side and give it a little vertical shake, without out them dropping much.

[rjhpilot91]

I had really bad wobbling until I loosened my blades up quite a bit. Everybody on runryder suggested running them really tight to get rid of the wobble, but I found the looser the better.

[osterizer]

I'm in the just-tight-enough-to-snug-them-down camp. Same as all my helis.

The grip tension acts as the damper for lead and lag as the blades flap. If they're too tight, the blades won't lead and lag correctly, and it creates vibration. Too loose, and they can move excessively and become unstable.

[Spidious]

I tried tight and they did not want to fully swing out when I started it up.
I tried loose and it got a bad chicken wobble on the last of the spin down, and almost a boom strike.
Snug seems to be the best of both worlds....

[Cyclick]

It depends on the quality of the blades - if the blades are manufactured to top qulity, they will not only have the same weight and the same spanwise CG, but they will also have the same chordwise CG location.

If the blades have all of the qualities above, you can keep them fairly snug (which is a BIG plus in prottecting you from hitting your tail boom in a hard auto arrival) and all will be well - sool up and spool down.

Where the problem will come from is if the blades are manufactured with just considering a spanwise cg and a weight match. Then you will find some that will not have a matched CCG. This will cause the blades to "lead/lag" differently. This will cause them to cause resonance vibes as they come up to speed on spool up or down through spool down. And unloaded (e.g. at zero pitch) this phenomenon is amplified.

As it is difficult to match CCG after the blade is manufactuered, if you have such blades, you will have to run a looser blade attachment. If you use top quality blades that have closely matched CCG's, then you can run them tighter.

[Gadget01]

I tighten mine just enough to where they need a little force to swing. It's important to match how tight each grip is to the other to avoid vibration from mismatched lead/lag.