Hi Bill,

I thought you'd be interested to see the latest news on my LE flap installation.

I created a test rig to configure and test the mixing and to use for aerodynamic testing to confirm the torsional rigidity of the LE flap and whether the servo would handle the loads.

So far, so good. The control is torsionally stiff and the servo was able to actuate the control at 75% of the maximum speed that the model is expected to achieve.

I've made a few changes to the wiring. Instead of using an external mixer (EM2) for the flaperons, I'm using the internal mixing. I'm also tying the flaperons to the elevons through the transmitter's internal mixing rather than the "Y" cable shown in the schematic above. This allows me to couple and decouple the elevons/flaperons with a flip of a switch.

I've also created a short video showing the mixing operations. If you'd like to see it, I'll post a link once I've put it on my web site.

So, the next step is build the wings that will be used on the model. There will be minor revisions to the LE flap linkage to make it easier to use and more precise. I'm also going to make changes to the servo hatches to make those lighter and easier to adjust the linkage.

The last two pics illustrate the camber changes to the wing when LE and TE flaps are deployed.

FWIW, in reviewing some video I have of some Flankers, I discovered that the Flankers use both elevons and flaperons which appear to be coupled all the time in the roll axis. So, I will be duplicating this on my model. (See: [link=http://savagelight.com/video/Su-27Elevons.mpg]Su-27Elevons.mpg[/link])

Dan