airhead

Hello,

Is it possible to "cleanly" to remove ailerons from wings (aka - can I remove them and reuse them)? How does one deal with the removal of the CA hinges? How does one go about removing the aileron from the control arm (attached via epoxy)?

Thanks!

Dan

00hex

If you want to reuse them that means you have a new wing right? Why not make new ailerons too? Often they're just a flat piece of wood with a beveled front (hint: if you don't want to sand in the triangular shape, you can just glue on a piece of triangle stock). That would probably be a lot easier than trying to get them off.

By control arm do you mean the torque rods? (piece of wire on the front of the inside end of each aileron, with a bend at the inside end sticking up for the pushrod to attach to)

dr_wogz

My Feedback: (3)

You can cut the CA hinges, and then make new hinge slots fo the new hinges.

As for the control arms, you can buy pre-made ones, or make your own. They are typcialy a rod in a braas sleeve. Remeber to put the sleeve on before bending the wire! You'll have a bit of a problem removing the rod from the aileron though..

As 00hex said, you might be better off to build / create new ones..

feihu

Dan -

Why do you want to remove the ailerons? Do you want to try flying without them? If you do, then you should be aware that using rudder for directional control can be disasterous depending on the airplane design. If you have a trainer type high wing airplane, you may be OK, as long as you have some dihedral in the wing for the rudder to be effective. You should notice that all rudder only airplanes have lots of dihedral, 5-6 degrees and sometmes more. Also, removing the ailerons reduces the wing area of your airplane.

If you indeed want to fly without ailerons, why not set your ailerons at neutral and disconnect the aileron servo? That way you can go back and use them if you want (without hassel of modifications).

feihu

FHHuber

The typical reason for wanting to remove ailerons is... to re-cover the wing. Its hard to properly re-cover without cutting the hinges.

feihu

Dan -

You can remove the aileron by first cutting the CA hinges and twisting the aileron around the wire that extends into the aileron. But first, firmly hold a couple of pieces of wood (like 1/8 ply 1x2 or 3 inches long) over the top and bottom of the aileron wire joint (sandwich the aileron to protect it from breaking) and while holding the torque rod firmly at the servo end, gently wiggle/twist the aileron around the torque rod portion that is inserted in the aileron until the epoxy joint cracks; then slide it off of the rod. The epoxy with balsa adhereing to the aileron end of the torque rod can be cleaned by scrapeing it off with a knife and finishing it off with acetone. The hole in the aileron is now enlarged but can be filled and redrilled; I would epoxie a piece of tubing in it to slide onto the wire end. If the aileron balsa was too soft and breaks, I would make a new aileron rather than make a new wing.

feihu AMA 80403

rctrax

Use your heat guun and heat the aera where the wire enters the ail. It will soften the epoxy so the wire can be worked out.

airhead

thanks to all for your thoughts/suggestions/tips ...

Juice-Dog

I did the same thing on my trainer when I had to recover the wing. I won't go into the details about why. He He can ya guess. Anyway I used Robart pin hinges to put the aileron back on and stagered them to be in different locations as the CA hinges. They really worked out nice. As for the control rod I just replaced the aileron stock, just a matter of a few dollars and inserted the rod in the new ailerons