hello. I am new to the r/c heli world, I got a blade 400 for Xmas, and have been flying it everyday since. Got 6 batteries charged up at all times. the closest i have ever been to flying a heli were in sims like realflight and Flight sim x. I was doing good until i started playing with the idle up mode. I got about 2 feet off of the ground and a gust of wind moved my heli. I went to go land but forgot about the negative pitch. well, long story short, i hit the ground and broke a wooden blade, and put a dent (mild, compared to what i have seen) in the boom. Went to the hobby store, picked up two booms, and a set of wooden and Carbon fiber blades.
got everything fixed. btw, carbon blades are the best, i highly recommend them.
I checked everything, no missing teeth on the main gears, no damage done to the head unit. The heli was flying fine, just like new, not a single problem.

3 days after, i was flying around, and the heli decided to pitch forward or back really hard... not my doing. thought it was the batteries in the controller. nope. outdoor temp? nope.

any ideas on what is causing this? I think its a bad servo (the one at the front that controls pitch for forward and backward movement), it seems really slow and doesn't move quite like i remember. or is it the main shaft? The heli works fine, its just the hard pitch forward and back that is bothering me.
Someone here must have done a boom strike at least once right?

I would think you may have stripped some servo gears. These are easy and cheap to replace, but be advised that most everyone agrees that the stock servos with plastic gears are junk. You will be replacing gears constantly. What is worse, the actual servo can fail in flight causing a really bad crash. I replaced all 3 swash servos with HiTech 65MG. These have metal gears and you will not strip them, but they are costly. Figure on spending about 100 bucks to replace all 3 servos. You must replace all 3 at the same time.

Have you checked the servos to see if they are stripped? I agree with Gino, you probably stripped off a couple of teeth from the servos. Just about everytime one of these helis crash, they will strip at least one servo. Replacing them is well worth the investment.

metal gear digital in that size for the Blade 400, I do have quite a few flights on the stock servos, but the stock servos will not take much of a crash and i did break a gear without hitting anything.. The LHS guy said he had a digital servo that would fit but it has the plastic gears, any thoughts ? I am kind of thinking the tail servo does not have to be so durable. Oh on a side note,, seems this hitech servo does hold the tail more steady, but i wouldnt swear on it.

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This post was last modified: 06-19-2010 08:02 AM by Tombo242.

Gino,
I am thinking of going with the same MG servos you have. Did you make any changes to you Tx program? Did you change your tail rotor servo as well? If so what servo do you use?

Thanks
moe.