:thumb:
Happy to report more progress. I've been finalizing the elevator and rudder design in anticipation of the first flight.
So, I fitted the horizontal stabilizer and elevator servo mechanism into the fuselage for the first time, home made linkage horns, and push rods and servo in their proper location...RX and battery not!
Not that I'm surprised, but it works! It works, well, although the elevator horn is too long to get enough elevator deflection. Easy to fix that. Very little play, rapid response, plenty of power to drive the system. The push rod is stiff enough not to require any special anti-flex measure even though it is 15 cm long. I do need to put a simple stiffener in the deck to which I mount the servo to eliminate some energy wasting flex, but hey, that why we make mock-ups & test!
Assembly is a bit of a bear. You really have to build this model around the RC controls. I'll fix this later as I get more experience. The important thing is get into flight test quickly. Quick being a relative measure, especially mid-winter.
Some beer cam pics, cruddy as ever.
1) The fuselage with working elevator in place. Everything you see weighs 20 gram. I am cautiously optimistic about weight, especially in light of the thrust test! Length is 24 cm just to give you an idea of scale.
2) Servo and push rod are mounted on the upper side of the lower fuselage deck, just ahead of the cockpit cut-out (useful hole to place one's fingers in during assembly).
3) A view of the paper horizontal stabilizer. All paper except for a short length of music wire to link the left and right elevators and an even shorter length of wire to make the elevator horn.
On to the rudder!