porthole200

I sent away for a set of plans and am scratch-buikding a F-117 stealth fighter. It is a rather large plane-55 inch ws length 53 inches with a .60 size engine. The plans call for mixing the ailerons and elevator and also mixing the rudders with the elevator. I was wondering if anyone has built such a plane and if so, how did they mix their control surfaces. Can I just use the V-tail as an elevator with regular aileron controls? Or could I use the elevon setup and use the V-tail as an elevator. When it's done, I will have quite a bit of time invested and really don't look forward to crashing it on the maiden flight. Thanks in advance for any help.

Tall Paul

The F-117 needs elevons. The rudders may possibly work mixed with the elevons.
Personally, I wouldn't bother with that airplane, without a good autopilot.

bbbair

What make of F117 is it?

I made up a Parker F117 a few years ago and it flew well but I had some issues with the control rods.

With my Parker design, it used Elevons and the twin rudders worked as 'Rudders' - no problems.

My plane was a 40 sized bird with the engine inverted - which was a part of my problem - too little clearance for my liking when putting the glow driver on the engine... but it worked well.

The big reason that the plane fell out of my grace was the large control surfaces... and the 4.40 rod that I had moving them...

The plane had to fly fast in order to develop lift, but the faster it flew the more air was moving over the controls and the 40 rod twisted under the pressure - so I had reduced control... slow down and the control returned but I lost lift. []

So I had to upgrade the rods which ment major surgery and I got angry at the extra work - so I put it aside for a while...

Other than that - it worked well.

Charlie P.

I think you would need to set it up as a V-tail with ailerons. The original requires several flight computers as it is radically unstable (as many modern fighter jets are). Hopefully the plan designer has worked conventional control surfaces in. Doesn't he give a recommendaton for set-up?

Tall Paul

I tried a true-to-scale F-117 as a sloper in a couple of sizes. Both were miserable failures. The pitch-up when turning would become a departure almost instantly as the speed bled off. I got tired of walking down the slope to pick them up.
The speed on these things MUST be kept high. Don't even think of tight manuvers!