ORIGINAL: wjcalhoun
John
Sounds like a nice setup; your weight is right about where mine is. Why did you surface mount rather than internally mount your aileron servos?
Let us know about your maidens. What prop do you swing on the DA-50?
Great questions. To be able to use the carbon rods, needed a little more distance between the control horn on the aileron and the servo arm. The only way was to cut a servo-sized opening, add some plywood reinforcement and drop the servo in. It's a little more visible, but makes everything very serviceable and easily to change servos, arms, things like that. On the two elevator servos, had to flip them so the output of the servo is pointed forward on the aircraft, again, allowing for the use of the carbon fiber rods. With the servo's aligned in the stock configuration, the servo output arm and the control horn are too close. Because each titanium 4/40 rod end is over an inch long, there is not enough "length" in the stock setup. A view of the geometry when each elevator half is working shows no discernable problems or differential throw.
We will probably be using Xoar 22X8 props. I've used this size before on the DA-50's and it works well. I even have a Xoar 23X8 and may experiment with that as well.
Unfortunately, maiden flights here in SW Michigan probably won't take place until late March or early April. Warm weather up here, like we had last week, is brough on by pretty breezy south winds, and winds between 12 and 20 kts makes for poor flying weather. Besides, my trailer is in storage over the Winter and I won't have it out until near Toledo time!
I'll take some photos of the interior. I have the two LiFe batteries mounted just ahead of the wing tube, in the fuselage. The center of the CG range is at the rear of the wing tube, with the center of the wing tube itself being near the front of the CG range. Balancing with some strong nylon line around the wing tubes, the aircraft balanced spot-on. Nothing needed to be moved.