Century - Carbon Tail Blades

The following is a review of the Century Carbon Tail Blades for the Swift.

Overview

Century have released the tail blades as a direct replacement for the stock plastic tail blades supplied in the Swift kit. These upgrade tail blades are identical in length and shape to the stock part. The obvious main difference being that these blades a much stiffer than the stock plastic ones.

In-Flight

Having fitted these blades and done the initial test hovers the first thing I needed to do was to reduce the gain on my gyro. This was because the new blades had introduced a little bit of wag. This I took to be a good sign as it shows that the blades are delivering a crisper response and therefore the gyro gain must be reduced to allow for this.

Having reduced the gain I took the Swift up for some circuits and to do some pirouettes and fast stops to see how the tail system was now coping. The differences between these blades and the stock blades are actually quite subtle rather than being a dramatic change. The tail response is slightly crisper as are the stops but apart from this it feels very much like the old tail blades. There is slightly more power in the tail as a result of the upgrade and I'm sure this will translate into a better hold in backwards flight. However, it is very difficult to quantify how much better this is. Having done some fairly fast backward hurricanes with the Swift I have not experienced any issues with tail blowout and therefore I must assume that these blades are doing their job properly.

Conclusion

These are nicely made and finished carbon blades. They are modelled on the original stock plastic blades and therefore there is no change in the overall tail rotor disk area. This means that these blades are displacing the same volume of air as the stock blades. Any difference in performance would be down to the stiffness and efficiency of the blade rather than a change in the surface area or size of the blades themselves. In this regard the tail feels more responsive and the gyro gain had to be reduced to compensate for this. Therefore overall these blades are a worthwhile investment as they do improve the effectiveness of the tail rotor system.