I'm not from Missouri (The show me state), but I am one of those people that has to check things out for himself.
No matter how many of these posts I've read were people said they Carbon Fiber props aren't as stable, to just stick with the stock DJI ones........
In the back of my mind, I always figured they had to have done something wrong.
I mean, if the blades are the same size and pitch.....with the exception of being stiffer.....there's no reason the CF ones should be less stable.....thus I just assumed the people who experienced problems with theirs were not balancing them properly.
So, I ordered a pair and they were advertised on Ebay as being already "balanced".....the shipping was fast, and to my surprise they actually were fairly well balanced right out of the package.
With that being said.......they immediately felt actually heavier to me than the stock 9450s that my Vision 2 V3.0 came with.
In addition to Photography, I'm also into archery and fletch my own arrows....so I have an extremely accurate scale....and started weighing them.
Not only were they on average 46.05 grains (about 3.02 grams) heavier than the stock DJI 9450 props.....but there was a huge variance from one prop to the next.
Here's what they weighed in grains from heaviest to lightest:
249.2 ---- 16.4 (grams)
248 ---- 16.32 (grams)
246.6 ----- 16.23 (grams)
242.2 ---- 15.94 (grams)
That's a difference of 7 grains (nearly a half a gram) from the heaviest to the lightest.......and not a single one of them was within a half a grain of any of the others.
Compare that to my stock props: (DJI 9450s for Vision 2 plus v3.0)
201.2 ------ (13.24 grams)
201.2 ------ (13.24 grams)
200.2 ------ (13.17 grams)
199.6 ------ (13.13 grams)
Since they were at least balanced......I was curious how much difference it would make to the flight characteristics that the individual props were not well matched to each other.....and I threw them on the quadcopter and gave it a short test flight (just went up to 30 feet and attempted to hover in GPS mode with 12 satellites)
It was extremely unstable......wobbling badly and bouncing all over the place...someone with less experience likely would have crashed it......I had to coax it in very carefully and hand-catch it...because there's no way it could have made a gentle landing.
I have to say it DID make it more "responsive".....vertical takeoff was much snappier...and corrections I made when it wanted to fly off in one direction or the other, were indeed more immediate.....but it wasn't suitable for video or for letting a beginner fly your craft.
There's a part of me that still wonders, if I were to sand down the heavy ones to make them all match....and give the balancing an even finer tune than what they currently have...and make a few adjustments to the gains....if I might get something that flies as well as my stock DJI props......but then there's the smarter side of me that asks...what's the point?
I'm returning my CF props and will stick with authentic DJI props going forward......Part of me is glad I at least tried them for myself so I can say for sure that I know why I prefer the stock ones...instead of just because that's what everyone else said.
However, another part of me is very grateful that I didn't crash it.
If my wife, or another inexperienced pilot had been at the controls, I doubt it would have come down safely...that's how unstable it was.