Hey thanks alot. Sorry taking so long getting back, I've been fighting aligators for a couple days. You're using different horns than the ones that came with mine. What I did was square off of the servo. In other words I set it 90* from the servo arm and now when the aileron is worked up and down, the horn isn't oriented correctly. I'ts because of the taper on the wing. Thats the way I always did my sticks but the wings aren't tapered. I would center the servo, put the arm on at 90* angle and use a straight edge to mark the position of the horn. When the aileron is deflected, the horn would move in a straight line with the servo. With the tapered wing the horn kinda rolls over on it's side. I knew immediatly that I'd messed up the positioning of the horn. With your setup, the horn can swivel a bit to make it work. I have some left over from my US 120..........nope..........just got back from checking, they're way to big for this plane. Thanks for the help though.

Hmmm.. I bought those horns seperate.... but I would think the movement with the provided horns wouldn't be too bad......

suitcase,

The control horns have to be perpindicular to the aileron, not the servo. It doesn't matter what type of horn you are using.

If you look at the control wires on the servos they don't travel down the sides of the servos, but at an angle. I think you're going to have to redo your control horns.

I don't have a close up shot of the bottom of my wings, but if you look at this pic closely you'll see the wires are angles off the servo.

You've probably re-hinged it by now. But .......another pic or two. First pic is mine when I was first building it and the one hanging belongs to ckangaroo70 I believe.
Have had few problems with mine so far except the wings are getting quite loose from normal flying and have to be shimmed during assembly everytime. And I tried to fly it the other day during high wind conditions (18 to 20mph) and it would duck and dart around because of wind sheer. It will handle 10 to 15mph winds and that's about as windy as I care to fly in anyway.
Need a new cowling. Mine has melted in areas from the Saito-100's heat. I have cut larger holes and directed the exhaust out the side now. Before I had it neatly tucked inside the cowl using an extention out the bottom.
(VF=John,, if your reading this,,,, and you have an Edge cowling laying around. Could you give a dog a bone ? Please?)

Again,, VF out does itself by contacting me first. Who else would keep tabs on us VF owners here at RCU and then email or call to give advice or offer help ?
Email from John at Vector Flight.

Plus I guess my cowling was too scale and less cooling than needed. I've learned a great deal recently about what looks good and what keeps your expensive motors cool. The scale look is just not worth it in the cowl dept . You really need plenty of air flow this time of year. I built my Edge in the late winter/spring when it was still jacket weather outside. The enclosed cowl worked fine then. But when the temps started getting up there plus the humidity,,,, it got hot inside there. I'm going to do it all differant on my VF Extra300 when I get it.

Thank you John !! And everyone at Vector Flight for the best of the best customer and after sale service.

My motor seems to stay pretty cool during these summer months. My bottom of the cowl is maybe a 3.5 x 3.5 square cutout with the two front openings open. Really my issue is cracking around my cutouts through vibration and by connecting the glow plug ignighter every time I start it up. Right now i have pretty much fiberglassed everything now to keep things together. The tape VF used to join the 2 cowl halfs on the bottom have pealed off on my second flight, so that is now fiberglassed together.

Hey guys,
I still haven't glued my wing joiners into the wing yet but I have gotten quite a bit done on the rest of the airplane.
In the first picture below, the wings don't look like they are at a 90 degree angle with the joiner/table. Looks like they sort of form an upside down V to a degree even though the center joiner is straight. It looks more prominent on the left side than it does on the right. Also, I seem to have a 1/8" gap in my template from these joiners not being able to slide far enough in (however when I put it on the airplane the top of the wing could not go in any more - starting to curl back the covering a little against the lip of the recess).

Anyone's look like that?

Also, the second pic there seems to be quite a bit of twist. Granted, that comes out when they slide onto the trailing edge dowel rod. Think that might be a problem?

This must be the new wing joiner. Mine looks like pic below.
Ask VF. You won't have a long wait for the answers.

John from VF responded last night. All is good

Well, dont keep us in suspense!! What was the response?

Manny

He said everything looks good to him. To get the twist out I need to sand out the channels more so that it lays flat easily. Nothing major.

Well, I have started on the Edge 540. I am working on the wing joiner currently. I was wondering if people are using the stock landing gear or switching to the Du-bro. Also, do you need to reinforce where you mount the landing gear inside the fuselage? Any tips will be appreciated on the build!!!

I have been talking to Shakes, reading this forum and asking questions to VF. Isn't great to have customer support like VF? I have emailed Chuck at VF (late at night) and in about an hour or two I have a response. Good going VF!!!

John
Proud to own VF Edge 540

I am so glad I went with the Dubro nylon gear. It is great not to worry about a bent alum LG anymore. You can look back here on the thread and see what a couple of us did on our gear blocks. I used standard 1/4" spruce firewall board doubled together. (If I used differant thickness or wood excuse me. Too lazy to scroll back through all the posts. LOL)
Then I tap'd the threads for the two 1/4" nylon bolts. No blind nuts . Example,,,,, three weeks ago I ran out of fuel while doing some low alt stuff. Had to get down fast and in the rough. Simply sheared the bolt heads off and my gear and plane didn't have a scratch. Grabbed 4 more nylon bolts out of the toolbox and was back in action .
I painted the gear red with fuel resistant paint and it looks killer. At least to me it does.

I had a sturdy landing the other day, not a really bad one but bad enough. I have to get another LG for the Edge now. I may go with the Dubro gear, have to find one to see if it'll fit. I'm also going to put some extra ply in there. The fuse didn't break but it does show some stress fractures. A lil epoxy and a block of wood should do the trick.

Going to do something like what Sturtz did; page 35 posts 868 - 872.

I did the same thing as sturtz did. Just took a piece of scrap bass wood i had laying around and epoxied it too the bottom of the LG block. Drilled 3 holes and tapped them for a 1/4 x 20 wing bolt. Very sturdy, even one of my hardest landings the LG stayed put. The landing gear was a differant story. Instead of the dubro LG I went with the CF landing gear from graphtech. Granted CF is brittle, but it forces me learn to land softly.

Thanks for all the advise. I remember reading about the land gear, but there is too many pages to remember where it was at. I have used the Dubro landing gear and it worked great. I am going to beef up the insides of the fuselage and replace the LG with the Dubro and 3 wing bolts. http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin...&I=LXNM65&P=ML Is this gear you purchased?

We need a table of contents we all the great comments for this thread. I have another question and I know it is here in this thread - the fuel tank. How did you guys do it?

I think we need a table of contents.

Also, do you epoxy one joiner at time regarding the wings? I am at that point and I was wondering if I should do that. I see you have to make a template, but if you make a mistake with the template. You can correct it when you glue the other wing into the joiner.

There were some good discussions earlier back in this thread about mounting and securing the gas tank that would be worth finding. You are right about needing a table of contents Manny. Maybe someday someone will come out with the complete VectorFlight Edge 540 build Tips and Tricks Manual based on this thread. Glad to see everyone enjoying there VF edges so much. They really are very nice Planes, and a great company to deal with.

Ray: long time no type... I can agree there is some very good tips and tricks on this thread. Hey maybe when im extremly board i can scour this thread and put everything on one page. That may take months.

Manny: Well there was a couple of people who differant setups for the fuel tank. For my plane what I did was epoxy some balsa stock and made a small shelf where the fuel tank will sit on. Of course make sure the centerline of the tank is inline with carb before tacking everything down. Covered the whole tank in foam and placed it on the makeshift shelf in the fuse. And to keep the tank from sliding backwards in extreme manuveres use 4 eyebolts and attached rubberbands to them in a criss-cross fashion.

Yes,, that's the one. Your gonna like it first time you land. Really soaks up the energy and reduces bounce.

On my tank I used those zip tie hangers and a few ties. You can get them from some computer stores. Online or local.
They have adhesive strips on the back with four slots surrounding a hole where you can use a wood screw to attach it. Easy.

Sturtz, is that a 3 line tank or do you have it T'd?

I did something similar to your zip ties except with rubber bands on my P-51. I used those 3M key hangers/picture hanger type things. Mounted one on each side using medium CA and stretched a thick rubber band across it. Very simple, very sturdy and the tank doesn't move back at all. That's what I had been planning on doing with the VF

It's a two line system using a T Shakes. As you can see from that old build pic I had mounted the fill line too low inside of the fuse.
I now have it mounted higher in the cowling away from servos etc.

I came up with an easy and quick fix for any joiner slop in the fuse . I used two small squares of metallic tape on the bottom of the joiner slots in the fuse. Then I took some red vinyl tape and covered it. Was just a tad bit harder to insert the wings the first time,,but the gap was gone. I usually never noticed the slop till after the first flight. I always check it before each flight along with the other usual items we all look over before takeoff. This seems to fix the wear problem and is cheap and clean. No epoxy. No CA. Painless.

I also included a pic of my bruised wingtip. I have written VF asking if there is a way to repair it. Doesn't seem to impair flight. Thought maybe one of you might have an easy fix for getting a wrinkle out.

Sturtz: When foam gets dented its really hard to get back to shape. You could probally use some filler to bring everything back to shape but, that may require some work. Balsa filler should be fine and sand to shape but, probally there is better ideas.

I received this from VF and it worked quite well. I used an old tee shirt and a sock on my iron.

"However there is a very good fix for the dents and they can be fixed almost to perfection! The way to do it is as follows.

Place a soft cotton cloth over the dented area and apply a hot iron gently right over the dent, giving it localized heat. Start with a low temperature and proceed to increase temperature slowly. At some point when enough heat is transferred into the dented foam, the foam will expand and push the dent out. Stop heating immediately when this happens and rub smooth with a soft cloth. Do not touch the hot iron directly to the red covering as it may melt or get deformed, this is why some tempering of the heat is required by placing a soft cotton cloth between the iron and the wing. Once the dents pop out, leave the wing in the hot sun for 3-4 hours, to help dry the glue which might still be damp inside the wing skin. These airplanes are being shipped immediately and often the aliphatic glue used to glue the wing skin to the foam core is not cured for some time. It does not affect the overall strength, but basically renders the skin soft and susceptible to local dents. Once all the moisture inside the wing is gone, it will be lighter and have a harder skin."

Grelker: That is a great tip, if there was a way to mark that post for future use it could come in handy. Ain't VF great. They have the answer for everything.
I know on my combat ships, which is an all foam wing with no sheeting, once its get dented its very hard to get back to shape again. Then again these planes can go through hell and back and still fly. Not well but, enough for you to finish your round.

Has anyone used flapperons on the edge yet? Im thinking about doing it because we are having issues with our feild and landing downwind is the safer way to land. Thinking flapperons could help out slowing this plane down with the wind. Granted its not quite the best thing to do but im not trying to risk flying my plane in powerlines.