I have finished carving the vertical and the sub fins. They are now ready for their .5 cloth and epoxy. I will be making these items out of fiberglass so these will just be used as plugs. I really am not saving all that much weight by doing that, but it does make them stronger and less prone to dents and hanger rash. And the left vertical and sub fine both have a NACA scoop in them and that will be much easier to represent in the hollow glass item. Also there are things sticking out the back of the sub fin. Don't ask me what it is or does?
"Rudders on a RC Jet".
To me they serve the same purpose as "Wheels on a Battleship".
Let's see now: We are not dealing with torque or "P" factor and there is no prop blast over any control surface on a jet.
Ever seen a jet that did not have trike gear? That is because you don't have any of these things. When you accelerate with a jet, by the time you have enough speed to get any response to rudder input you would be sideways to the runway already. The nose wheel steering is what you have, be it a real jet or a RC model.
I can't think of any maneuver I want to do in flight that I would need a rudder for except maybe a knife edge and that isn't a good enough reason. This is scale flying. If you want to do tricks, go fly pattern or IMAC.
OK what does it take to make functioning rudders on a Jet?
First off, unless you are planning on spanning that distance between the nose wheel and the rudder, or rudders in this case, you are needing another servo or maybe even two. You are going to need some sort of control rods from servos to rudders. In most cases you are going to wind up with control horns sticking out of your nice scale model on the rudders.(ugly)
And when you are all done, you have added all this more weight to you model to get these wheels on this battleship. And a good portion of it is going to be way back of CG and that will require even more weight to balance this battleship.
Are you getting the picture?
Now just off the top of my head, I would say I probably have as much Jet time as anyone else in this hobby. And I would also say I have probably produced as many jet kits as anyone else in this hobby.
None of my kits, other than the A-10, had functioning rudders and in all it's flights, I never touched it. And I never put a functioning rudder in any of my personal jets.
And it also makes building the model simpler and less time.
Think about it. So many thing when making a model are just done because one has done it that way before.