Cecil, I'm not sure where that attachment came from. I posted the message eariler today from my Daughters Mac. So, you didn't miss anything.

One of the young guys at the field pulled the rudder off his 3D plane getting ready to launch it. This is an ARF, kind of hard to guess what it started life as since it is covered with duct tape, with an OS 91 four stroke. The hinges pulled wood, but only for the first 2mm or so. I think he may have glued them with med or thick CA as there was zero penetration. If you had wood and stiff hinges full length, it is more likely you tore them out in the crash. Still, they should have held.

Also, along those lines, if you had lost the hinges in flight, I would think you would have seen the aileron flaying around on the servo linkage, or fluttering to the ground a long ways from the plane. They may have loosened up enough that the hinge line was way open and that would have put a lot of down aileron on that wing. It could have then just finished comming off in the crash. Just a guess, but it is one possible reason.

Take a hard look at the hinges again. Is the hinge material really stiff from a good soaking with CA, or is there some flexability other than at the hinge line? Also, is there hunks of wood, or just some fine fibers along the hinge. The CA should have soaked into the wood quite a ways and as such, it should have pulled all that soaked wood out when the hinge pulled out.

At least you got enough back to allow a little detective work. I lost a plane about two months back that I never found. No way to even guess what went wrong. My instructor at the time said it was dumb thumbs, but his wern't any smarter, because when he took control, nothing happend from what I was trying. It went in like a lawn dart from about 700 ft and landed in the creek bed that is full of bramble so thick you can't see more than a couple feet into it. I really liked that plane, so I built an exact clone of it and am now flying it.


Don