Really glad to see activity on the Excelleron thread. I built and flew my Excelleron this past summer and used a lot of the previously posted info. However, all was not correct. Probably a lesson there. I would recommend that anyone not experienced in building and trimming a Pattern plane get the Excelleron review written by Dean (it is Dean) Pappas and published in the Sep 2005 issue of MODEL AVIATION. I did not see the article until recently and intend to follow many of his recomendations to prepare the plane for next year. These are some of his recomendations: Dean used Futaba S9202 servos. Quite by accident, that is what I used in mine. They are not digital but as he says were once frontline Pattern equipment. Mine worked great. He used a Futaba S3004 on the throttle. He subsituted Du-Bro Heavy Duty Hinges (item 257) for the metal ones provided. He mounted the cowl with 4-40 screws and blind nuts. Dean found that for Pattern flying, the aircraft trimmed with the CG 7.25 inches behind the LE at the root. He subsituted the 3/4 inch control horn linkage from a Du-Bro control horn package, item 867. A picture of this is in the article. (I broke a control horn when the wind caught the wing. To the best of my knowledge, horns are not available separately. I am in the process of changing all control horns to the Du-Bro's.) Additional trim adjustments included inserting a 1/16-inch shim at the wing trailing edge and one degree of downthrust.

I recommend getting this article if you have an Excelleron, there is a lot more info in it. Also Dean has written very good articles on trimming aircraft in MODEL AVIATION and currently in FLYING MODELS. Hope some of this helps.

John D.