Hi All,

While attending the Button Willows Flying last weekend, I have witnessed some great flying done by many jet pilots with very old jet frames. Some are over 12 years old with hundreds of flights under their belts. My old beater JL F-15 was also 200+ flights strong and had just got a new pipe after the old pipe finally fallen apart. I asked myself why some airframes can last so long and some are lucky to make it back on the maiden. After thinking about all the issues, I had contacted some of our factories, and also guys at the event, including Dantley for some advices. We all agree that it might be beneficial to all of us if we can collaboratively develop proper protocols or guidelines for jet factories to follow in construction of reliable airframes.

We can start from the most critical components of many scale jets - the stabs. I have contacted FB and they are willing to collaborate and works with us on establishing a proper guideline for stab construction.

Even though my background is in Aerospace and mechanical engineering, I am a bit rusty in offering expert advise in the establishment of these guidelines. I would like to seek a group participating in jointly developing the requirements for the project.

Let's start with the stabs.

My goals are

1. to help design well engineered stabs that are so strong that they won't fail unless they are damaged, or have bad servos, wrong linkages, or other flutter issues from other sections of airframe.

2. To establish a QA (quality assurance) for the critical components with documented, serialized construction records from factories as a proof of proper construction in compliance with our guideline or minimum requirements.

3. To simply make future airframes safe to fly by applying the guidelines on the entire airframes.

In the past, I had helped some factories build really strong wings and they work great. I can see the drastic improvements. For this time, I would like to try this open book approach in which we can have all the global talents participating in this project so that all things can be considered through out the phases of this project.

Let me know what you think and advise.

Here is the start.

I am working on the new tail for my MiG 21. Here is a picture of the molds.

The skin material is Airex foam.
The shaft is made of 8 mm Titanium.
The anti rotating pins (2 each side) are 2.5mm steel. - I told factory to double the length and use stainless steel 405 series?
Carbon fiber will be added to the skin - need to know the minimum area needed and location?
Spars - now the prototype is made of balsa, but I prefer using hardwood or carbon fiber plates.

What do you recommend to put in there to make it strong and rigid?

We plan to make some test samples, then they would be sent to a small lab set up in my company there to do some stress, torsion, and vibration test, then determine which configurations are the best choices.

Please no bashing or destructive comments.

Mike