SmokinJoe

Can anyone give me any tips on mixing aileron to elevator to keep the wings vertical in the turns around the pylons?

I've added about 2oz to the left wing and my Quickee is still tending to roll out of the turn unless I hold the wings vertical with aileron. Its got to the point where the left wing is starting to drop on take off.

I am about to experiment with the aileron to elevator mix and thought I'd see if any one has been there before me and can give me any tips.

daven

My Feedback: (1)

Yes it works. Start small (5%) and adjust in small increments until you come out of the turn straight. Mix Aileron to Elevaton as the Aileron as the Slave. I was concerned the plane would want to roll on takeoff, but I can't notice it at all.

DMyer

My Feedback: (2)

Are you positive the travel of the elevators is equal? Two oz in the tip and still rolling out of turn is a hell of a lot.


Dan

dwbebens

Something is really wrong with that airplane. Search for the real reason it's doing this. Is the tail on straight? Do you have a lot of built in rudder bias? Is the wing twisted? Is the fuselage banana shaped? Are both wing leading edges clean and evenly shaped. Do you possibly have some kind of span-wise airflow "trip" just back of the top leading edge of one wing and not the other, such as wrinkles in the monocote, thick paint lines, or some such things as that? Are both ailerons equally flush with the surfaces of the wing? When you support the plane in only two places, by the crankshaft and resting on it's tail skid with the wing level, do the wings balance?

I agree with DMyer - - 2 oz seems way too much to balance a Q-500. Something else is wrong. Mixing in aileron may fix the symptom and get you flying knife-edge turns, but will not fix the root cause and will probably slow you down.

Doug Bebensee

65010

Joe - is this a problem with the T-Tail configuration???

SmokinJoe

I've got two T Tail Quickees that have both tended to roll out of the turn. They are fully moulded and are straight.

I got rid of all the excess tip weight today and tried mixing aileron to the elevator to hold the wings vertical in the turn. Finished up with about 20% which seemed to do the job. I also mixed some left rudder to the elevator to hold the tail up in the turn. I've got more experimenting to do, but I think the mixing is working. These planes have tended to roll out of the turns and pitch up on me - which I think the mixing is counteracting.

My aim is to get the mixing sorted before the Nationals next week. So much to do and so little time.

Terryoc

Joe
when you were at our Albury meet you did seem to be turning very hard at No.1 pylon slowing the plane a great deal , you may have also been stalling the tail to a degree
Just another thing to look at and think about
Terry

garys

It could also been the fuselage/tail twisting under load in flight. I've seen a lot of T-tails, that when viewed from the front or rear while in a turn, the wing and horizontal tail are no longer parallel due to twising/flexing. If it twists such that the right side of the stab is lower than the left, it will tend to balloon.

SmokinJoe

Gary,

You are the second person to make that comment to me lately about T tail stiffness. One of the old hands here recounted a story to me about a T tail pylon racer he had - where the tail was not stiff enough and it would not fly through turns properly. He overcame that problem by stiffening up the end of the fuselage, tail fin and stabiliser support.

Part of my problem is that I'm not an experienced enough pylon racer yet to know how much of the problem is due to me rather than the model. I have got 100% expo on the rudder to elilminate inadvertent rudder movement in the turn. I've had the plane porpoising around 2 and 3 pylons in the past, which was probably due to shaking rudder thumb syndrome.

Funny thing is that I have a T Tailed Tempus F3F slope racer and it is absolutely rock solid in turns which can be as hard at times as we what do in pylon racing. We get some great winds to fly in off the cliffs along the south coast of Western Australia. The tail on the Tempus is quite flimsy and flexible in comparison to what we have on the pylon racers - but it certainly has no adverse effect on the Tempus.

DMyer

My Feedback: (2)

I think you are on to something there... the rear really needs to be stiff. I used to build a lot of t-tails years ago and I never experienced any tracking problems with any... they may not have been the fastest planes I ever flew... but in handling and tracking they were top notch. My designs were based on the old Pauls Flying Stuff Thunder Quickie II. One thing to note from that design was the rigidity of the fuse and especailly the V-tail. The Vtail was made of two pieces of 1/8" balsa with the grain running 45 degrees to the fuse. Sandwiched in between was a layer of 1/16 ply with the grain running 90 degrees to the balsa grain. I glassed the outside of the whole assembly in addition. I would manually twist your whole deal to visualize how easy it will twist in flight.


Dan