What you need

One sheet of 3 mm hard balsa wood.
1 mm drill
4 mm drill.
Fine grain wood sandpaper.
Solarfilm to cover the blades.
The black plastic rotor grips of the original blades.


How to make your own main rotor blades for the Walkera #52

Take a 3mm thick sheet of  hard balsa wood and cut two pieces exactly 157 mm x 30 mm ( Fig 1 ).
Mark the points on the root of the rotor blades so that you can drill the holes for the black plastic rotor grips ( Fig 2 ).
The best drill to use is a drill press, otherwise make sure that the hole that you drill is perpendicular with the rotor blade if you use a normal hand drill.

It is very important that the holes to be drilled are spot on the marks that you have marked. First use the one mm drill and then the 4 mm drill. Mark 1.5mm on all four sides of the rotor blade and draw a line on the sides with a fine point pen. Your rotor blade will look the same as in ( Fig 1) of my presentation that I drew. Mark 7 mm from the leading edge on the top and bottom of the blades ( Fig 2 ) and draw the lines on the top and bottom. These lines represent the point of maximum thickness of the rotor blades airfoil.

The rotor blades have a symmetrical airfoil, so now you can draw the airfoil shape with a fine point pen ( Fig 4 ) on the sides of the rotor blade tip and root. This will be your reference when you start shaping the rotor blade. Take a wooden block and wrap a sheet of fine sandpaper around it so
that you have a nice flat sanding area for precise sanding.

In ( fig 4 ) you will see the areas that need to be sanded away so that you have a nice airfoil shape. Make sure that when you sand along the blade from tip to root that you don’t sand over the lines on the trailing  and leading edge. It is important that the leading and trailing edge are perfectly straight when the rotor blades are viewed from the side.
When you are finished with the airfoil shaping of the rotor blades, you can mark the rotor tip and root for shaping ( fig 3 ) . Sand the rotor tip so that it looks like the original rotor blades. Do the same with the root of the rotor blades. When the shaping of the rotor blades is complete, just make sure
that the black plastic blade grips fits well and take them of again.

Now it is time to cover the rotor blades. Cut the correct size out of solar film. Start at the bottom of the trailing edge and work around the top of the blades so that you end at the bottom of the rotor blades
( Fig 5 ). Trim all the excess solar film away with a sharp blade. With the covering finished, you can fit
the black plastic blade grips. The finished rotor blades need to be balanced before they can be tested on
the Walkera #52.

Before you fly, make sure that the blade tracking is correct. You will be amazed how strong these little blades are. They are quite crash resistant to…