The Flap

The Flap
The last time when I dial the flaperon, it only cause my plan float very shaky and a few times event caused hard landing on my plane. One of the reasons being is because my aileron is located at the outer edge of the wing. Thus when switch on the flaperon it will give a very unpredictable flight characteristics.

The real flap is located at the inner edge of the wing, and it suppose to provide more drag which slows down the plane, and give it more lift in the same time. The benefit is slower landing approach without sacrificing the lift.
So, I pick up my knife and start slicing my wing to give it a flap, a real flap. I spend one day to resolve the mathematical equation and the drawing stuff, and another day to source material and complete the modification.

Channel Mixing
The convention design is to use Channel 6 and a Y cable to connect the 2 servo which is attached on the inner wing to control the flap. But I don’t have an extra Y cable and I don’t like the way both servo have to facing the same direction, luckily I got an extra channel on my radio – Channel 5 for landing gear which I am not using on this plane. So the solution is mixing Channel 5 with Channel 6 according to the Flap.

Field Test
At first, I dial flap all the way to it limits (of course it looks cool, right). While taking off with full flap, the plane again shows a tendency of banging left, and eventually crash of course. I believe it’s due to the imbalance of flap join angle which cause the flap uneven when I dial it to the max (my bad craftsmanship). The next flight with 50 percent flap, and it takes off beautifully. With the extra lift, it quickly climbs to nearly reach the cloud. After some 10 minutes of fun fly, I start approaching for land. I slow down the throttle, and adjust the plane towards the landing runway, it glides smoothly. But the moment I dial flap, the extra lift makes it shoot up away from the ground, it wouldn’t make it with the remaining runway. I learned that it needs down elevator to compensate the extra lift. So I make a big circle to regain my landing position, but this time, I glide with the flap down so I can adjust the plane approaching pitch, at last it ended with a soft touch down.

to be continue...