Decathlon came with surfaces pre installed with plastic pin hinges. Rudder was hinged to stab, and installing the stab required epoxying the bottom hinge into the tail of the plane. This hinge broke and needs to be repaired or replaced as the rudder now moves laterally instead of just pivoting. The hinges have a pin (looks like) securing it to both the rudder and stab on pre installed hinges, and pin in rudder but not tail on bottom hinge.

thanks. ok im doing this from phone and hit poll by accident, no poll here

Ok just found out it gets worse; vertical stab is also cracked. Still need to fix that hinge, and will check things over with incidence meter before deciding what to do to stab - not sure if tail will be torn down and rebuilt or not another thing, elevator halves were misaligned, after bending back the one side is not as tight, how do i fix that too?. More to come...

gaRCfield,

Sounds like a Robart style hinge setup on your airplane. The Robart hinge however has metal pins. Your hinge pin may have failed because of misalignment of the hinge line causing binding and stress on the hinge pins when the rudder was moved.

Is it possible to replace just the hinge pin itself with a metal replacement? Could maybe be made out of a straight pin or T-pin material depending upon the diameter needed. If the old hinge pin can be removed its probably the less problematic way to go.

Otherwise you've got to remove the rudder, and if you have to go that far I'd replace all the hinges with a better ones. Epoxy breaks down around 300-325 degrees F so its going to be tedious task removing the old hinges. Depending upon how much room you have you may want to cut the hinges off flush and cover over them. Then install new hinges next to the old hinge positions.

Do you have a single servo running the elevator? If so when the halves were joined most likely the holes for the crossbar arrangement to join the elevator halves were not drilled in perfect alignment or there was too much slop in holes allowing one side to glue up slightly up or down from the other.

You maybe able to bend one side or the other to make the halves match. If that isn't possible open up one elevator half cutting the balsa where the connecting crossbar enters the elevator, free the metal and re-glue it in the proper position or alignment with the other half with epoxy.

Thanks Steve. On the rudder, the plastic broke, not the metal pin.

On the elevator, the halves were lined up properly and became bent after a crash. I will look and see if when I bent the elevator I softened up the hole where the cross bar enters (maybe just inject glue into the hole?).

Are the halves loose on the wire connecting them? I've repaired a problem like that by carving away the balsa on one side and exposing the the wire inside the elevator. I flooded the area with epoxy, put a piece of balsa in to replace what I carve out, sanded everything smooth and patched the covering. It worked pretty good.

Chuck, yes that appears to be what's happening. Sounds like a good solution; don't want to remove the whole elevator.

well, if you ever had the verticle stab just wanting to hang on instead of just taking off. It's different.
Just cut the hinge and rehinge next to it. You have to repair the verticle stab anyway.


If you don't want to remove the elevator just wack the metal rod with a drimel.
Then run a Y linkage set up. Just wrap another rod linkage with threads to the dowl and bend it accordingly.

Just drop threads/string with a needle into the linkage exit holes and CA/and tie the string to the rods to help you pull it through.

Just make some hinges from strips of covering and slip them through the slot - no rudder removal necessary

Make sure you won't need the remove the rudder to fix the vertical stab. It would suck to fix the rudder only to need to remove it a few days later. If you need to remove those hinges the best way is to use a Dremel cutting wheel and cut them in half. Then sand them flush to the surface and mount another right next to the old one.

I voted for hit by accident! Sorry, I had to.

Great, thanks guys. Won't know about stab until I figure out what's up with the incidence (see related thread).

Post pictures of the damage. It would be much easier to figure out what you might be talking about and you might get more ideas from people who can see and assess the damage.

I dont understand what all these choices has to do with fixing your plane


Another how do I fix this thread

No poll
Hit by accident
Using smart phone
Small screen
Computers out of service

N19htmare, I don't have a camera yet. I keep spending my extra money on planes and related gear

Metallicajunkie, I started this post on my cell phone and hit poll by accident, and was all confused, tired, and being silly. Wasn't meant to be a poll, and the choices have nothing to do with the plane, but with me using my phone.