My dad is flying a nexstar and he hates the way it just floats like a kite. what is the best way to flatten the wing. He has a extra wing that he can play with. Thanks.

The best way is to buy a different plane.

Have him look at the Tiger 60 or Four Star 60. They are more like low wing performance trainers.

A new guy in our club said he took the metal rod, heated it, then unbent it. He said he didn't do anything else. I didn't know the rod was bent, but that's what he said he did. It was obvious to anyone watching the plane flew much better and the instructor that's been flying over 40 years and has always hated the Nexstar said it was a completely different and better plane.

get a Tiger .............. BINGO.............

but the original question was how hard to flatten a dihedral wing..... not easy, not easy at all

According to Tower, the wing joiner rod is aluminum. Even if you straighten it, the wing center will gap open. A tremendous amount of the strength at the center comes from the contact of the sheeting of both sides. Make a filler for the gap? Not too hard, but not simple.

If you have a band saw and know how to do accurate work with it, taking the angle out of existing built up wing halves is possible. It isn't exactly easy to do accurately, but a sanding block can fix most everything. You'd still need center ribs. Again, not super simple, but not too hard to make.

You know, the TigerII takes a .46......................... So does the Calmato Sport.

Lol on my alpha i just waited till i crashed it the wing snapped in half for me and i just took a power plane and sanded the angle out of both halvs of the wing until they would line up to make a flat wing then epoxied it back together. My friend and instructor had done the same thing with the alpha he trained me on. Only he didnt do it after a crash he just sawed the wings in half with a hack saw blade, then he made a 15 degree angle wedge out of hard wood that also was the shape of the root rib. Then he laid the two wings flat and fitted the wedge root rib inbetween and epoxied the whole thing together, in both cases afterwords we wrapped the new center joing in fiber glass before recovering. I love my alpha now with the new flat wing. It flys almost like a sport plane now, I can hold a much better knife edge now, not a true edge but much closer than i could before. also its much more resistant to cross winds.

I think its a great mod and you should try it out, I really disliked the v shaped wing.

Well, never mind on the wing mod. He flew it today and the wing bolt striped and the wing came off and the fuse is a lose. I know he can replace the fuse and tail, But I think we're going to look at something different. Thanks anyways.

It's cheaper to just replace the plane then buy replacement parts and do repairs. There are much better trainers in Kens thread for first planes anyway. I'm one of the instructors that doesn't care for the NS.

For anyone still interested, there is a lot more to it than just unbending the steel rod if you want to remove the dihedral. The wing roots need to be reshaped, or the gap should be filled, then the wing bolt holes would most likely need to be adjusted, etc.

You know this for sure on the NexStar or are you just generalizing from most planes? I would have said the exact same thing, but two guys at my club have made the modification and it works fine. One of them did it last year and has flown the plane for almost a year. The other did it a few days ago and I asked him about it on Saturday. The Nexstar has a plastic center piece that the wings fit into. Apparently this center piece has no dihedral. So unless you know something these guys don't or they lied to me, unbending the rod is in fact all there is to it.

I tried to do a search on straitening the Nextar wing on RCU, but the search function is so laim at times I couldn't find the threads, this has been gone over several times, by multiple authors over the last 5-6 years,I don't recall any of the previous posters being one of them who have done it.

its a simple modification, bend the rod at the center of the wing, so that you have removed the dihedral from the wing, the wing joiner needs to be modified so the 2 wing halfs fit together snugly on the bottom of the joiner there is some plastic stops that need to be cleared out of the way to allow the wings to slide into the joiner, a dremmel works well if your carefull.

then slide the halfs together and screw the joiner back into the wing, then your going to need to redrill the hole where the forward pin slides into the fuse since you have raised the center section a bit make sure you reenforce the new hole in the fuse on the backside of the fuse former, you can lower the wing saddle, but you run the risk of changing the wing incidence, most just drill a new hole.

this process is from the guys who have done it to there planes, I have a Nextar but haven't done the mod yet, mines a float plane now and I hardly fly it anymore, I have so many other projects going it sits on the back burner, I will get to it eventually

I fly my nexstar on floats. The rod is straight and you need to put a bend in it to take out the dihedral. Simple as that. Measure total distance and mark center point. Place mark on something and bend down a little at a time. I put a few drops of CA on both ends to keep the rod from turning in the wings. Mine flies great off the water.

Dihedral will not effect how it "floats". Mechanically raise the ailerons a few turns on the servo linkage clevis connectors. Try 1/16" at a time. That will reduce some of the lift (by altering the angle of incedence). It will also fly faster with less tendency to climb at higher speed.

yes the Nextar is a floaty plane but my plane is on floats LOL really, I also installed a OS 61fx, which I am swapping out for a OS 91Surpass 4stroke, the 61 is going into a FW190A ARF from Kyosho

I had the Nexstar and considered doing the mod. Maybe you can hack it and just bend the rod, but the way I would have done it would have been more involved. There have been posts with people talking about doing this that I read last year, and it entailed everything I mentioned above. There were pics, too, and it looked decent.

Sourkraut was the one I remember with the mod, and talking about shimming the gap between the wing halves:
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_71...2/key_/tm.htm#

Not really. He had a couple balsa shims in the plastic part, not even epoxied in and as the quote below shows, after 50 flights had no problems. Structurally, there's no reason to even put those shims in there. The metal rod will keep the wings from folding, just like they do on all the 33%-40 airplanes that have aluminum tube wing joiners. Those wings aren't joined on those big planes, theyjust butt up against the fuse, but I can guarantee you the fuse is doing nothing to stop the wings from folding. All the stress is on the tube.

So the metal rod keeps the wing from folding and the plastic centerpiece keeps it from twisting. That's really all the forces you need to worry about.