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| My thanks to aircraft-world.com for the supply of the blades for this review. Hyperion have just released their 'diamond' carbon blades, this is I believe Hyperion's first product specifically aimed at the T-Rex. The blades also came with carbon paddles and tail blades but I will test these separately. Shape : symmetrical Length : 325mm Width : 32mm Weight : 38.3g / set |
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| The Hyperion diamond carbon blades are a carbon fiber cloth in a hard glazed
diamond-resin. The first thing I noticed about these blades was the finish
on them, they are beautifully finished with a real quality feel about them.
The carbon weave fades to a black edge on all sides (except the trailing
edge) of the blade and the edges are all perfectly finished with no rough
bits. These are the best made T-Rex blades I've seen, certainly better
than SABs which are also nicely finished but not in the realms of this
new blade. The next thing to strike me was that these are thin blades, only 4.1mm thick according to the documentation. This makes them quite a bit lighter than other makes as well, sitting at only 19.15g each. This is going to be interesting as lengthwise tip to tip they are 325mm, which is quite long. Blade shape is symmetrical, so these should perform equally well whichever way up your heli tends to spend most of it's time. The blade hole is reinforced with a brass bushing and the blades thicken at the root to fit Align blade grips. Blade stiffness longitudinally is very good particularly given the fact that these are thin and long blades. Chordwise stiffness is also excellent with little or no flex. Blade balance was extremely good with only a very slight difference between the blades, certainly not enough to warrant trying to put some tape on one blade to balance perfectly. Here are a few pictures of the blades (which really don't do them justice) followed by the flight experience and summary.... |
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| Flight Testing Conditions were favorable for blade testing as temperatures were about 8C and the wind was blowing at a steady 5 mph with no gusts. All in all good conditions apart from the fading light due to the very early onset of darkness this time of year. First job was tracking, which was just one turn on a ball link to get them spot on. I could see the light starting to fade, so as usual it was going to be a rush against time to get the flights done and results recorded. Initial hovers were stable no issues or concerns. So I did a gentle climbout into circuit to have a cruise. Attitude was good and stable, no excessive pitching up or down and collective control was nicely accurate, flight tracking was also very dialed in with little deviation from a set course.. Moving into a faster circuit and harder turns the roll rate is very quick, these blades are fast. Power through the turns is very good and again stability in this flight mode was accurate with no unwanted characteristics. Blade noise was also noticeably lacking, so these blades must be flying very precisely. Back down into a hover and some climbout tests ensued. Power delivery is very strong, these blades are long but light, so this is light weight is helping reduce the overall power to swing the blades but the length is producing good lift. Moving onto aerobatics / sport flying. Rolls were snap like with the whole thing being over very quickly and needing quick collective timing to keep them flat. Loops were controllable in diameter and very large examples could be produced using collective to push the model round. Pushing on into 3D and flips were easy and quick to complete, collective control easy to predict. In fact these blades have some of the best collective response I've flown, making stationary flips with no height loss feel a lot easier than usual. I tried some inverted flight and tic tocs just to finish off, inverted produced no unwanted characteristics. Tic tocs were also relatively comfortable as the collective response on these blades is quite crisp in comparison to others I've flown. Overall the whole flight experience was very much like flying a set of SABs and I would be hard pressed to separate these two blades aside from the Hyperions definitely being quicker on the cyclic, which no doubt is down to weight. Lastly I decided to throw in an auto at the end to see whether the weight would upset the auto performance and was pleasantly surprised to get half a second of hang time at the end of the auto, usually there is nothing left. Conclusion These are a very fine set of blades and I can't imagine anyone would be disappointed after purchasing a set. Fit and finish is outstanding and the flight characteristics are hard to separate from the very popular SAB blade. Cyclic response on these blades is very good, collective is crisp and blade noise seemed to be reduced over previous blades I have tried. All in all a very positive experience, Hyperion have certainly produced a good product for their entry onto the T-Rex market. Pricing also looks to be very competitive and I expect that these will be very popular. Overall these are excellent quality blades at a great price and highly recommended. If you have these blades rate them using the TrexTuning rating system....... |
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