1045 vs 1047 vs 1050 propellers Which is best for 980kv motors? And balancing?

[TheEdge]

Hello

My quadcopter:

FY450 Flame wheel frame
Crius AIO Pro 2 Flight controller
Sunnysky 2212 980kv
Skywalker 20A 2A-BEC Brushless ESC

Using 3S batteries. It came with 1047 propellers.

I have balanced the engines by moving bits of electrical tape around to find the spot with least vibrations. Have also balanced the propellers using a magnetic balancer and sanded the heavy blade, and adding glue to the light side of the hub. According to my balancer, I got the props somewhat balanced, both the blades and the hubs. But when I mounted the propellers on the engines, there is still vibrations. Tried with rotating the propellers a bit at the time on the engines to even out any imbalance between the engine and the props, but did not get a good result.

What I ended up doing, is mounting the props on the engines and moving bits of electrical tape around on the propeller until I found the spot with least vibrations. So, is it any point in balancing the props at all in a prop balancer, or just dynamically balancing them with the engine?? Or maybe my prop balancer is not perfect. I suspect the rubber cones is not properly centered or out of balance even though I have tried to balance them and check for proper centration. Have ordered alu cones..

Anyway, since my prop balancing skills are probably not the best, I ordered some balanced props off of ebay. But after 5 weeks of waiting I suspect they are not coming, so I got them refunded and I am now looking for new props.

On Helipal they however do not have 1047 carbonfiber props, the closest I find is 1045 and 1050. So, what would be the difference between 1045,1047 and 1050 props on my 980kv engines running on 3s ?? I guess my quad loaded with the camera and the 5000mah battery is about 1200-1300 grams..

My first flight after balancing the props and the engines, did not end too well. I mounted the camera and the camera mount in a bit of a hurry to catch the last bits of sunlight on a beautiful autumn day, and from the recorded on board video I suspect a rubber band might have come loose from the camera mount and hit one of the propellers and broke it midair. I crashed into the ground from around 20ft. No damage from the crash :)

If any interest, video from the short flight with crash:  Quadcopter crash due to propeller failure.

[guest325]

Hi, you shouldn';t notice much difference between the three - in real terms there is very little. 10" being the diameter and 4.5", 4.7" & 5" being the pitch. The 5" will take roughly 11% more amps to rotate them at the same speed as the 4.5" in real terms 2-3 amps.
I would get the best quality ones rather than be too concerned about the slight difference in pitch.

[TheEdge]

Hi, you shouldn';t notice much difference between the three - in real terms there is very little. 10" being the diameter and 4.5", 4.7" & 5" being the pitch. The 5" will take roughly 11% more amps to rotate them at the same speed as the 4.5" in real terms 2-3 amps.
I would get the best quality ones rather than be too concerned about the slight difference in pitch.

Thank you for the reply.
Ok, so the 1050 takes more juice to spin, but I guess that one also creates more lift so it would not have to spin as fast as i.e the 1045..??
How will those 3 different pitches affect flight time on a charge?

[guest325]

Thank you for the reply.
Ok, so the 1050 takes more juice to spin, but I guess that one also creates more lift so it would not have to spin as fast as i.e the 1045..??
How will those 3 different pitches affect flight time on a charge?

Correct but it';s marginal, flight times will not be affected very much really. it depends how you fly more than anything else.
I';m using 9 x 4.7 Gemfan Carbon reinforced nylon props on my 450 Flamewheel - they are very good; but I am next going to trial their 10 x 4.7 to see if I get better flight times. I tried running on 4S batteries instead of 3S and you do get quite a performance increase but not any appreciable increase in flight time.
In your specification you do not say if the esc';s have been flashed with SimonK or BLHeli firmware (Specialist settings for Multirotors), this makes a big difference to your flight performance!
http://www.multi-rotor.co.uk/index.php?topic=1079.0  - have a look at this thread.

[TheEdge]

Correct but it';s marginal, flight times will not be affected very much really. it depends how you fly more than anything else.
I';m using 9 x 4.7 Gemfan Carbon reinforced nylon props on my 450 Flamewheel - they are very good; but I am next going to trial their 10 x 4.7 to see if I get better flight times. I tried running on 4S batteries instead of 3S and you do get quite a performance increase but not any appreciable increase in flight time.
In your specification you do not say if the esc';s have been flashed with SimonK or BLHeli firmware (Specialist settings for Multirotors), this makes a big difference to your flight performance!
http://www.multi-rotor.co.uk/index.php?topic=1079.0  - have a look at this thread.

I do not know if the esc';s have been flashed with some other firmware. I have seen the SimonK firmware mentioned, but I have not had a lot of flight time yet due to various problems and waiting for things, so I have not wanted to mess around too much with risking updating firmware. I think its performance is more than good enough for me, I am mainly interested in aerial photo not so into acrobatics. But maybe the optimized esc firmware also helps with more steady flight for filming. Thank you for the link.
I have not tried different size propellers so I do not know how these compare to your 9" props, but with my setup I have gotten up to 20 mins of flight on one 5000 mah battery, calm flying though.
Maybe I will look for Gemfan props..