Ben my son just got himself a HotStick. I have couple of questions about assembly. The plane has flaps, four servos in the wing. It gives three ways to set up. Flaps and alierons, Y-harness them together for alierons only, or mix them for flaperons. With the wing loading no more than what it is I can't see how you would need flaps. Do they aid in some of those crazy 3-D moves or somthing, which he is starting to do? Thanks for your remarks! I guess my question is how would you guys set up the wing?

Yes they will aid in "crazy 3D moves" if you set up the plane to use them.

A lot of this will depend upon your radio.

If you have a good multi-channel radio with an appropriately channeled receiver you can do some amazing things with this combination.

For instance, with a switch set one way you can have the flaps and ailerons operating in unison for very fast rolls.

Flip the switch the other way and you can have "Crow" where both the ailerons and flaps are thrown out... e.g. ailerons UP, flaps down, to bring the plane to a halt quickly during a dive or in the air.

You can mix aileron/flaps to elevator for increased looping capabilities.

Differential aileron flap mixes, etc.

Under ideal conditions you would put each control surface ( including each elevator half ) on it's own seperate channel and use the radio to mix and syncronize everything.

Yes on the 3D and its fun to get max flaps into a head wind and fly backwards too.

Thanks for the reply opjose. It sounds like his radio is going to be the limiting factor here. He uses a 6 channel computer radio, but it doesn't have all the mixes your talking about here nor enough channels. His flying abilities are there but his equipment is not. Maybe as the 2.4 gig stuff grows in popularity the 72 mh will continue to drop in price. He might just find hisself a nice 9C or somthing. You know a poor man has poor ways

With a six channel computer controlled radio you could use one channel for each of the following.

Throttle
Aileron Left
Aileron Right
Flap left
Flap Right
Elevator
Rudder

All you would need is a six channel receiver.

His radio is the Tower 6 CH EX (Futaba) with an 8 ch reciever. It has pre-mixes for flaperons , elerons and V-tail plus one free mix. It has no programable switches. Is there any way to get the mixes you are talking about with this limited set up ??????

You should be able to use the Flaperon mix for the flaps and the one free mix for the other aileron or flap.

It sounds like you'll do fine.

Play with the mixing. You'll end up finding out that your TX is capable of doing far more than you've ever had it do.

Usually you can re-assign the channels used for the pre-set mixes.