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Prop balancing

I’m quite pleased you found it useful. As you observed, blade imbalance can vary greatly and the tool provides excellent sensitivity. The only way to know a prop is balanced is to check them, regardless of any advertising statements.

As the tool ages, a drop of 3 in 1, sewing machine, or fishing reel oil on the wheel axles is helpful. A purist might prefer a graphite or silicone lube but it’s not necessary to go to that extreme. Once or twice a year is usually adequate. Same applies to the threads on the stand up shafts.

For those that like to fight the law of diminishing returns they can do an adapter hub balance too, generally with little effect. Short version for that requires removal of the pop un button to fit on the balancer. Do the blade balance the flip the prop through a few 180 rotations to determine if one side of the prop hub always ends up on the low side. Cut a small strip of self stick fuzzy Velcro the width of the adapter and apply it to the light side/edge of the adapter. Check balance and if the heavy side is still going low use thin CA glue and accelerator to add weight to the light side. Add a small drop of CA to the Velcro, hit it with accelerator for a fast dry, check balance. Repeat as necessary. If you mess up peel away the Velcro and start over. When perfect the prop will stop in any position. To maintain balance for that prop the blade and adapter have to remain joined as they were when first balanced, forever.

Someone really getting into the weeds might think about balancing the motor.....[emoji849]
 
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@PatR I took the 920+ out this morning to test the balanced props and the new Olympus M.Zuiko 45mm. It would have been more scientific of course to test one change at a time but I tried both together. This was a structural inspection test on a stone/brick chimney looking horizontally and a slate roof looking down.
It was quite windy as it was last time I tried this at the same location, previously I have had lots of soft images especially on the zero declination ones. I was never quite sure whether to put this down to vibration or the fact that the 920 drifts so much in the wind but as most of the roof shots were sharp I had put it down to drift as the altitude was stable.
This time every image was sharp, or sharp enough to present to a client anyway. I'm not sure how much was down to the lens and how much the prop balance but either way I am happy with the results though I do wish the 920 was a bit more stable, it would make getting a series of images of a roof or structure a lot easier.
 
The Zuiko 45mm is a really good lens so that may well be a large part of it. The fact that you didn't have to zoom is another factor as the CGO-4 always has a soft shimmer at the top of the image when fully zooming the 12-42mm lens. Glad to read it's working for you.
 
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