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12-24-2012, 12:34 PM | #1 (permalink) |
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Join Date: Nov 2012
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Tail exploded during hover - Still waiting on Century tech to call back
I was doing some hover tests with some light pitch pumps and slow piros last Friday when a tail blade came off.
Now, the tail blades have never been in contact with anything other than air but it failed. Needless to say the heli sustained more damage after the blade failed. tail box failed landing gear is ruined feather shaft bent I am lucky I did not have a boom strike I called Century and got a lady on the phone told her I had a safety related part failure. Her 1st response was "Are you sure you put it together the right way?" That should never be her 1st response as a customer rep. I asked to let me talk to someone about this failure and she said should would give my name and number to a tech who would call me back. I have called customer service 3 times trying to get to talk to someone and I am not able to get past this person. Who can I get a hold of at Century? When I look at the break on the tail blade it is not a clean break as you would expect from glass filled nylon. Normally when glass filled nylon breaks and you reassemble the parts they fit back together with a minimal crack being visible. In this case I can see the edges of the break have a slight rounding to them. This would indicate to me that there was some flexing happening prior to complete blade failure. Has any one else had a similar type of blade failure?
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Phil Liggett DX8, Goblin 630, Compass 6HV |
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12-24-2012, 01:28 PM | #2 (permalink) |
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Join Date: Apr 2004
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How cold is it when you were flying? Plastic blades don't do well in cold weather...Lean lowend not good either for tail....
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12-24-2012, 03:45 PM | #3 (permalink) | |
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Thread Starter
Join Date: Nov 2012
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Quote:
It was 65 outside and I am running the engine rich since I am still breaking it in.
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Phil Liggett DX8, Goblin 630, Compass 6HV |
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12-24-2012, 07:50 PM | #4 (permalink) |
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By last Friday I am assuming Dec21 ? If this is correct I would not expect much back for several days as I do not know if they are open today as it is Christmas eve and I am sure the Friday before them being shut down for 5 days may be a little wild.I am not sticking up for them but just saying that you cannot expect allot to happen fast this time of year.Plastic blades are what they are cheap blades.I have run them on my Centurys a fair bit before but I am always a little uncomfortable until I get some R/T mounted.There are allot of so called high end helis that come with plastic tail blades but no one ever installs them.I have some Logo ones and they did not even fit in the Logo grips without sanding down the inside of the blade hub (they got RotorTechs).Sorry to here about your wreck though, really a bad deal.
Take Care
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Rycroft Wings & Blades (MAAC Club) Rotor-Tech Blades |
12-24-2012, 09:37 PM | #5 (permalink) |
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If you have a belt you might want to run it tighter in the cooler weather. I have snapped the tail hub 2 times because the rear case slide on the tail tube (I have it pinned now and not gonna happen again) and the belt got too loose and caused some vibes then the belt got real loose and next thing I know the tail blade went zipping by. Both times I managed to auto and get her down in once piece but it looks nasty with the tail shaking that hard.
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12-24-2012, 11:10 PM | #6 (permalink) |
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Join Date: May 2009
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I had similar thing with the belt loosening up no matter how tight I made the t/r housing or roughed it up or even some ca. once I pinned it with a screw no more problems with that. as for the tail blade coming apart it happened to me on another Heli with kbdd blades if there is a knick on the edge of the blade it will rip from there.
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SRW, EFC,RCRCC AMA 930196 IRCHA 3540 Skookum support pilot |
12-25-2012, 02:08 PM | #7 (permalink) | |
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Join Date: Jun 2010
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12-25-2012, 09:05 PM | #8 (permalink) |
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Well I am kind of glad to hear others had a problem with the back clamp coming loose. It was driving me nuts and since I put a couple of set screws in I could not have asked for a better set up. It is strange how the front holds so good. It must be something with vibrations being that far out maybe.
The only part I have had that I thought was junk was the metal tail clamps. I picked those up right before IRCHA this year and one of them cracked and the tail stated to slide after 6 tanks. I will admit I was chasing a vib. problem at the time so it may have been fine if I would have know what was causing my random vibes at the time. Speaking of this, if you have a intermittent vibration you can not track down, check the bearings on the clutch bell pinion. It would run smooth if I was loading the disk hard, but nice casual flight I would get a fast tail vibration. Anyways tip for G20 and G30 guys. |
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