Added Ailerons...

[MikeM]

Based on comments received I added ailerons to my “Old Timer”. An interesting little project and like most things much easier to say than to actually do…..many details to consider. Anyway except for some clean up over this weekend its finally done. One servo located in each wing. Threading the wires through the wing “formers” was fun but greatly helped by the use of an unused flexible plastic push rod to find the way!
After some head scratching I realized that Channel 5 on the Futaba T6EX cannot be used as the aileron “Slave”…..have to use Channel 6 which works perfectly and allows easy, (mostly) independent aileron adjustments. Picture attached including “Before” and “After”. No idea where to set the aileron throws and whether up and down throws should be the same or different. There seems to be a wide range of throws used as shown on the Great Planes Tech Data webpage so I’ll choose something typical for a similar plane….and we’ll see what happens.
MikeM

[Tarek Hassoune]

nice you did good job

[beto9]

Excellent work Mike. I had the hinge cutters in my car for you but we didn't meet.

[MikeM]

Thanks Tarek.......not quite the same level of challenge as your Dogfighter/Kadet but its a start. This plane with its big OS 375 electric engine is capable of some heavy lifting if the simulations are accurate. So who knows what it can carry.....but next year!
MikeM

[MikeM]

Thanks Albert....believe me I was thinking about that hinge slot maker while I was cutting the slots...all 16 of them! Its a lesson in patience to do it with an Xacto knife. Using a fine Xacto saw blade helps but its always a risky business. It builds character... and I only cut myself once.
MikeM

[briankizner]

for the next time. two words- hinge points

[MikeM]

I learn as I go (hopefully)…..maybe these are “old issues”. Pls excuse the length of the post as I tried to cover everything I encountered.
Wanting to be sure all was ready to fly with the added ailerons I connected a Futaba 4Ch buddy-box to my Futaba 6EX Transmitter. The buddy-box had been used successfully on the first, pre-aileron, training flight.
When the 6EX hands control to the buddy-box the rudder and elevator looked like they worked ok as before but only one aileron worked. Obviously! Since I had set up the 6EX to have one aileron on Ch 1 and the other on a separate servo on Ch 6 slaved to Ch 1 it was now clear that when the Instructor transmitter hands over control to the buddy-box the “slave” programming set up on the 6EX is not maintained. So while I have 6 outputs on the 6EX receiver only 4 can actually be used when using a 4 Ch buddy-box.

To get round this issue its simple enough to use a “Y” cable on receiver Ch1 to drive both aileron servos which I then did……however, now both ailerons move in the same direction (both with the 6EX and the buddy-box)….I have flaps! When driven from ch 1 and ch 6 I could easily reverse the aileron servos independently but now with both on the same channel.…ch 1…that can’t be done. This issue was due to my wrong choice (or bad luck or Murphy’s Law) in physically mounting the 2 aileron servos with the same orientation and is easily resolved by rotating one of the servos. This is ok for the “Y” cable on Ch1 and also ok for the ch1 and slaved ch6 situation since for the latter case I can easily reverse either servo independently again.

There’s more…….the light bulb came on!…. if one bit of 6EX programming (Ch1 and 6 slaving) is not transferred when control is handed to the buddy-box how could other programming be transferred? Naturally the High-Low rate control is not transferred. The buddy-box always operates on “High” (or even higher) never on “Low” regardless of what’s selected by the Instructor. So if the Instructor is using “Low” rate and hands over control the student now has at least “High” rate….all the time! Obviously one then has to be sure that the rate the buddy-box has is moderate and appropriate for a training flight and both instructor and student have the same. In other words ALL the programming is held in the transmitter that’s doing the controlling at that moment. In hindsight this should have been obvious. The receiver merely follows the active transmitter; any other way could get seriously complicated. I suppose if one were using another 6EX or similar as the buddy-box one would have to be sure ALL its programming was set identically to the Instructor transmitter.

Trim, by the way, was previously set up on the buddy-box for the rudder and elevator easily enough to give no movement on handover when the controls are centered.

In summary no problem at all using the 4 channel buddy-box with the 6EX but its easier (and safer) to be aware of how these things work and avoid surprises.

Let me know if you see anything incorrect above. For better or worse I was unable to go to the field for the last week or so due to unexpected business activity so I had some time to think about it and have the misunderstandings on the ground!
MikeM