I just ordered a DX6i and want to set up my HAWKSky with flaperons or spoilerons or both?Can you set up for both? If not which is best to use? Spoiler up or flabs down?
Do I have to stear with the rudder when using flaperons or spoiierons when landing or will the ailerons override?

If you want both...

Set your flap switch on the transmitter in the middle.  Connect to ailerons and make sure they are neutral.

Then you get flaps at down and spoilers at up.

Tom

You will probably want to avoid spoilerons when you are landing. The purpose of spoilerons is to cause the wing to stop producing lift. So basically when you deploy the spoilerons the wing will stop creating lift and the plane is going to fall. For instance, spoilerons are used by glider pilots in order to make spot landings. They have a marked circle to that try to land in. When gliders land they will fly down to several inches about the ground and then when they are at the point they want to land they will deploy the spoilerons, which causes the glider to stop flying and will hit the ground. <div>
</div><div>If you use spoilerons on your plane when you put them out the wing is going to stop producing lift and the plane is going to fall. Since you are in a landing approach you won't have enough altitude to regain lift from your wing, which is going to result in a crash. </div><div>
</div><div>Ken</div>

That's basically what I want as I want to land in a tight area. Controlled crash! Can you just give it a "little" bit of spoiler action or do you have to go all the way?
My Hawk Sky is basically a glider and "coast" a long way.

Trust me, you really don't want them. Personally I don't like to see flaperons used either as they can create some undesirable situations, but they aren't as bad as spoilerons. If you are landing in a tight area then you need to learn how to properly land the plane. You should learn how to approach so that you can bleed off the speed of the aircraft and make your landing. If you are coming that fast and you hit spoilerons you are going to crash you plane. I'm not trying to sound harsh, but there really isn't any way to cheat on skill. Once you learn how to land properly you should be able to set the plane down where you want it with no problems at all<div>
</div><div>Ken</div>

Hawaiian Hawker

As Ken said, I also believe that they are a bad idea. Consider this: Ailerons control the left or right roll of the aircraft. The more aileron you put in, the more the roll rate is. Now consider you are landing, and are controlling the attitude of the aircraft to maintain wings level attitude using the ailerons. Now, you add spoiler or flap action using flaperons or spoilerons. Either way, you have just reduced the effectiveness of your ailerons just when small movements of the ailerons become more critical, during the landing phase. So, you add spoiler action and then try to roll to level, but you don't have enough aileron because you just used most of it up by the spoilers.

Good idea? For an expert, well, I'm sure they can handle it pretty well. But, for a beginner, (this IS a beginners forum after all), what do you have left? You don't know because you don't have enough experience and, as Ken put it. the skills necessary to recover from that problem as quickly as is most likely necessary.

My advice would be to learn to land the plane correctly and avoid the gizmo's until you have more experience.

CGr.

One thing many fail to learn is that to go down sometimes you need to pull up. As you increase your angle of attack you reach a point where the increase in drag far surpasses the increase in lift. Learn how slow you can get it and still have decent control and you will find if you maintain that speed with the power off it will descend steeper at a slower forward speed. One thing to note is if you are descending too fast just increase the throttle a little and it will stretch the glide, do not pull up more as you will likely stall or at least land even shorter.

Actually the Hawk Sky - IS - a "glider"... based upon the Easystar design.

Spoilerons work great on it to increase the glideslope and let the plane land in a tight area.

It may be sold as a glider but it is basically a floaty trainer. Spoilerons will increase the descent angle but will also mean you need to land faster so the roll out will be longer and the landing will likely be harder. Even a light wind glider like the gentile lady can be dropped into some very small areas with practce.

Nope... there is so much lift with the wings that spoilerons don't increase flight speed appreciably.

It does kill lift when you need to do so, permitting the plane to land in a very tight spot.

He can also fly without wheels so rollout doesn't factor in were it to be a problem anyway.


I've flow this plane this way and it can land in a 10-15 ft, area when done properly.... but it takes practice to do so.

I have two planes I have set up for fun. One is a Hots fun fly plane and I have the flaparons slaved to my elevators. In the wind it's a lot of fun but on a calm day if I forget to turn them off the plane likes to try to stall when landing. I installed the spoilerons on my CG Extra just for grins. I could turn them on and the plane would drop in for landings like a stone. That's OK if I remembered to turn them off when I got low. I love that old plane so I removed the spoilers right away. Sometimes landing with them turned on was a bit tough. Dropping that fast often increased the speed of the plane a lot more then I liked. Give it a try but make sure when your playing with them you have a lot of sky between you and the ground. You may discover you don't like them at all, you may also love them, they can be fun to play with.

Yup, some planes don't need them or it may be inadvisable.

On glider type planes, such as this one, they sure are handy sometimes when trying to bring the plane in.

That said, this plane flies SO slowly as it is, methinks that the problem lies not with the plane, but rather a lack of practice with this situation....

Taking it out to an open area and doing stalls and stall landings will probably solve the problem.

I guess I have to much weight in the nose as mine sure doesn't land SLOW. No doubt I need more practice also tho.

Take your index fingers and put one on each wing at the point the wing contacts the fuselage.

Put your fingers about 1/3 of the way back from the front of the wing.

This is where the plane should balance, showing no preference for the front or the back. The nose may drop, or the tail may drop, but each time you try, the plane should not favor one or the other.

If it always drops the nose, it is too nose heavy ( too much nose weight ).

The Hawk Sky will practically land at a walking pace when pointed into a headwind.

I think there is a bit of mis-information on this thread at this point. TD, F3J and F3B sailplanes do use spoilerons for landing but use them in conjunction with inboard flaps that are deployed 80-85 degrees. This is refered to as ' Crow ". When the sailplane is in this mode it is pretty much locked in and it takes almost an act of God to disturb the wings attitude. The ailerons having about 10 degrees of up deflection are still quite effective. Normal operation of this landing mode is to use it to slow the sailplane, control rate of desent and speed. As one nears the landing target you would either drive the nose into the target or bring the wing to nuetral and the sailplane will drop to the ground. Obviously when using either option the sailplane is a foot or less off the ground. It does require lots of practice and timing to get it right.

As for the OP question and his particular aircraft. The ailerons are too far inward to be used as spoilerons. Doing so would make the outer wing panels stall before the inboard wing. Not a good situation with any airplane. They could be used as flaperons but would need to be deflected 45 degrees in order to offer any real speed reduction. Read this as drag. At that point you would use a good amount of aileron authority. The solution to that would be to mix a fair amount rudder to aileron while in this landing mode but i'm not sure your TX has that capability.

Agreed, particularly from people who have never flown this plane.

Ever try it with this particular plane?

I have.

Because of it's design, spoilerons are not problematic at all.

If anything here, spoilerons are less prone to wing tip stall than flaperons are.

Care to explain this to me? The way I see it, using spoilerons on this airplane would be the same as setting it up with wash-in.

There are tons of threads on this subject.

Flaperons tend to INDUCE tip stall, spoilerons have the exact opposite effect, while decreasing lift which is exactly what the OP needs to land in a small confined area.

You would be correct if the ailerons were on the outboard panel. On this airplane they are inboard and will reduce the AOA, effectively increasing the AOA of the outboard panel, thereby creating a wash-in condition.

The ailerons do start on the inboard side but extend out to the start of the upsweep of the wings.

High flaperon angles DO NOT cause tip stall on this plane. It's just too stable.

Raising the flaperons does not change the plane's attitude in flight.

This is probably one of those "theory conflicting with reality" situations.

We were not arguing that this plane will tip stall, just your general explanation of the effects of flaperons and spoilerons.

I think as you said before, and most here would agree, that practice would be the best start. Learn to slow it down before the landing and it should drop right in. It has worked great for me on some very light floaty gliders, but does take practice.

I wish my airplanes flew in your reality, mine seems alot less forgiving to improper airplane setup.


Jose, your theory on this subject is mostly correct however as we have stated before, it's just not applicable to this particular model.

Flaperons have been used in sailplanes for decades. For launch it is standard to drop the entire trailing edge 8 to 10 degrees. launch angle is usually between 70 to 85 degrees so yes very high AOA. While thermaling one usually drops the entire trailing edge again about 5 degrees and I even mixed flap to elevator so that as I worked the thermal and " pumped " the elevator, the whole trailing edge would droop when up elevator was applied. The reason why there was no danger of tip stalls was a combination of light wing loading and the flap/aileron cord tapered as it ran from root to tip. The only models that really use spolerons are hotliners. If you notice they pretty much all have their ailerons running to the wing tip.


Agreed that the OP should play with CG and technique, But with that much poly in the wing he could easily set up a mix to drop the ailerons 30-40 degrees and fly it in using rudder and elevator.

From the beginning we've been talking about THIS PARTICULAR plane, which is why I asked if you tried it with this plane.

Maybe you missed that part.

I never said you were wrong, merely that it doesn't happen with this plane.

The OP first wanted to use flaps to "slow down" the plane in an effort to get it NOT to glide as much, so he could bring it down within a confined space.

Have you actually tried it with this particular plane?

I have and I saw NO wing drop what-so-ever even at high spoileron deflections.

It may be that the loading is so low the response normally seen with most gliders does not appear.

Deploy the spoilerons, the plane slows, looses lift and plunks down, which is what the OP has asked for in many threads.