Align 600mm Night Blades
| Reviewer | Ashley Davis |
|---|---|
| Review Date | 1st March 2008 |
| Manufacturer | Align |
| Model | 600mm Night Blades |
| Unit Cost | £70 |
Introduction
The following is a review on the new align night blades for 50 class helicopters. The blades are 600 mm in length and feature red tip lighting, and different coloured blue and green lights for the top and bottom of the blades respectively.
The above is best illustrated with some pictures of the blades with and without the lights on.
Boxed blades
Box contents
Top and bottom of blades
Blade root
Top blue light
Tip light and bottom green light
Lit blades
Lit blades
Top blue light
Tip light and bottom green light
The finish on these blades it's very nice indeed, also the lighting is very nicely done and incorporated into the blades with no rough edges or cause for concern over the quality of the blades. In fact my own thoughts when initially looking at these blades was that they are higher quality than I was expecting. I have held various versions of align blades and have always felt that they could be a bit stiffer. These blades are certainly stiffer than any of the other align blades I have tried and this should bode well for the flight characteristics.
Neither set of night blades we had to test were balanced perfectly and small amounts of balance tape were required to make them good.
Flight Review
These blades have given me my first opportunity to try night flying, in this regard I would like to make some initial observations. Firstly, everything seems to happen a little bit faster when night flying. This makes it difficult to compare the night blades to a standard set of main blades. Therefore to combat this I have flown the night blades during a normal day's flying. Secondly it is fair to say that there is very little competition in the night blades arena. The only ones I can think of that compete with these blades are the M.S. composite night blades. I have had opportunities to fly these M.S. composite blades and all I will say is that the competition for these new align blades is less than robust.
I also involved Trevor Burley in the testing of these blades and the results of his flying can be seen in the video below.
One recurring issue we have had with the blades is them not tracking too well. Whilst the problem is not bad enough to warrant not flying the blades they do seem to be a lot more sensitive from a tracking perspective than normal 'day' blades. Any issues in your dampers will immediately be shown up by these blades as a tracking error. However, regardless they do fly well and perform nicely as a night blade.
The blades have very good power delivery although here is a little 'flapping' in very hard cyclic moves. They do appear to be a bit pitch sensitive, making them a little touchy in the hover to collective corrections. For 3D they perform plenty well enough and are reasonably accurate to fly. Overall not bad but also not an outstanding blade in comparison to say Radix or Maniac 600mm blades. However, for night flying they are plenty adequate for a lot of fun.
| Pros |
|---|
| Relatively cheap for night blades |
| Good flying characteristics |
| Very visible LEDs |
| Cons |
|---|
| Didn't balance without some balance tape |
| Not the best tracking blade I've flown |
Conclusion
All in all I would recommend these blades for anyone considering night flying. They are relatively inexpensive for a night blade and do offer a good 3D performance. The two identified issues of balance and tracking although an annoyance were not serious enough to warrant not using the blades and in fact they did perform very well once in the air.
|
|
|
|||||||||||||
|
|
|
