Dyke Delta
At this point the whole plane can be painted in its final color (above left). Then all that is necessary is the final assembly. In this case the servos, motor, ESC, receiver, pushrods and pushrod stabilizing fittings and battery mount. Closeup (above right) of radio and ESC installation. Closeup (below left) of battery
mount
installation.The final product of your efforts (below right). Although not of a fine scale like appearance, looks are not this type of model’s basic objective. The idea of this type of model is to provide an almost indestructible platform for performing indoor trick and aerobatic R/C flying.
weight at full throttle with a 2-cell pack. With the ESC reprogramed for a three-cell pack and using the 315 mAh pack shown the result was quite different. The model will literally climb straight up vertically acceler- ating as it goes. Although the battery warns against a burst current above 7.87 amps it is capable of continuous output at 6.3 amps. On my Watt meter the completed model showed a peak reading of 6.5 amps with the three-cell pack which provides about five minutes of flying on a fresh charge with the various throttle settings required for this type of flying. As can be seen from the photos of the fi-
nal aircraft, I kept as much of the installed weight as far forward as possible for good balance. This means the pushrods to the elevons and the rudder are of a fairly good length and prone to buckling as formulated by Leonhard Euler. Close inspection of the finished product shows the pushrod sup- ports about half way between the servos and the control horns. I used the DuBro #923 Mi- cro Pushrod Guide units on the market as
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they are light and convenient to install, but you will need to have the holes opened up to pass the shrink tubing and .032 diameter pi- ano wire ends. The best way to install them is to install
the pushrod guide onto the pushrod and then install the pushrod between the control surface and the servo and then mark where the support will need to be installed. Then glue the support in place as the very last op- eration. Once installed you can probably for- get about removing the control rod as you won’t be able to undo the “Z” bend from the control surface horn. An alternative would be to use DuBro
#920 micro E-Z Links instead of the “Z” bends, but I’ve found that most of these type of planes, once set up, rarely seem to need any maintenance and the parts tend to be application specific enough that the parts tend to stay with the plane for life, including the servos. Most planes in this class, when sold used, sell with the servos still installed. A quick word about the prop on these planes. These molded plastic props all seem
to need a small amount of balancing and, at the speeds they will be turning on a three- cell pack, any little imbalance will show up. I’ve been using pieces of Scotch™ tape on the back side of the light blade near the tip. It usually does not take much on a Robart Prop Balancer but makes a big difference on the flying model. So don’t neglect this part of the aircraft. The black props are fairly durable and not that prone to damage. But I keep a couple of spares in my flight box (pre-balanced of course) in case the prop saver is not up to the task. They are easily replaced and relatively inexpensive. The day of first flight finally came on a Saturday in February. It was freezing out- side and there was snow on the ground (I re- ally wanted to try this plane that badly). The wind was only about 7–10 mph from the south, so it was warming up. After hooking everything together (controls on full rate) and checking the equipment it was out the back door to the east hay (snow) field. Once set in a good area with as few ob- structions as possible I simply faced the
JUNE 2012
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