Well I just finished the conversion today and im very pleased with the ending result since im just a begginer =D. The gear being moved up made it sort of nose heavy and im not sure if thats going to be a huge problem or not? If it is what can I do to fix it? Thanks for all of your help by the way!

Tyler

You do need to rebalance the plane. While it may not seem like much weight, get into the habit of checking the balance anytime you make an alteration to an airframe. Since you moved the mains forward, you also removed the nose wheel which was further away from the CG, and added a tail wheel even further away from the CG. Your Alpha may not be affected by it too much, but other planes could have more serious consequences from and out of balance condition.

Hogflyer

Being nose heavy isn't neccesarily a bad thing...it's better than being tail heavy, since recovery from stall will be easier. I'd have to ask - how much weight will you have to add to the tail to center it? I wouldn't add too much weight, more than 4 oz's, I'd stop at 4. But given that you moved the wheels forward, it shouldn't be too much. I have an Alpha 60 with a 4 stroke .91 on it, and added 12 oz to center it- I took out half that weight and I like the way it flies right now. It's easy to recover from stalls, and it flips over on the rudder from a vertical pretty nicely.

With an Alpha 40, if you need to add more than 4 oz....you need to look at putting a smaller fuel tank in it. If I had a 40 with a .46 size engine - I wouldn't hesitate on reducing it by 4 oz....given I've seen people fly that plane for 20 minutes on the stock tank and still have half a tank in it.

I have an idea! If you cut your hair and put it all in the tail I bet it would ballance perfectly[sm=thumbup.gif]

Just kidding. I used to be young once too and I had long hair to go with it. Enjoy it while you can. I would hessitate to add any weight to the model. You should be able to achieve ballance by moving the battery back inside the plane. And it is my strong opinion that adding significant amounts of weight to the tail of an aircraft (ie. 12 oz AKA: 3/4 Lbs.) is just lazy. Build a battery hatch. The lighter the plane is the better it flies. I have never added more than 1 oz (4 squares of that stick on lead) to ballance a plane.

HAHA I had a feeling someone would bring that up. My parents always say the same type of things but for some weird reason or another I like my hair long =D. It almost sounded like you were my mom saying that . I am going to just try to fly it like it is now and see if I like it or not. I just hope it doesnt nose-over when I land. That will take some getting used to.

(PS: If I cut my hair and put it on my plane it would be a flying shag carpet )

Tyler

How nose heavy is it? If you mark the recommended CG on the wing, how far ahead of that does it actually balance? I imagine that it can't be much since you did get rid of the nose wheel but it is worth checking just to be safe. Regardless, you are likely going to have a trim change so be ready for that.

Enjoy the hair. You may just hit your 30's and start finding it all on your pillow, in the shower drain or suddenly growing out of your shoulders & back instead of your head. It's not a good feeling. Just don't get it caught in the propeller...

Hey Rocker- could you please take more pics of the tail-wheel set-up? I am doing one similarly, and I would like to see what you did with it.

Thanks man!

I agree with Chuck. You probably won't need much weight to balance if any. You moved your mains ahead but also removed the nosewheel and added a tailwheel assembly at the rear of the fuse so I doubt it will take much BUT check the CG anyway to be sure. I did a taildragger conversion to me NexSTAR a couple of years ago and I had to remove a couple lead weights on the tail after going from trike to taildragger. Here are a few pics of my setup some with the dihedryl removed from the wing also.

Cheers
Curt