Please help with this challenge:

I am almost ready to maiden my twin F18 and cannot figure out this programing challenge: I have tail rudders on rudder port on receiver, and I have nose wheel on Aux 4 and slaved to rudder channel on program mix 51. When the gear is retracted and the nose gear retracts, the pull pull direct cable linkage remains tight. The nose gear retreats nicely, but if the rudder command is given while the nose gear is in its up position, the nose steering servo now puts extreme pressure on the cables.

I would like to disable Aux 4 (steering servo) when the gear toggle is put into the retracted gear position. Is this posible and if it is please explain how to do it step by step.

Thanks

Kevin Marks

Hello Kevin, Just goto the next page on the mix program and select the gear switch and this should turn off the slaved servo(steering) when the ger is retracted. Scott

S Harris is correct. On page two you can select the switch that turns the mix on and off.

Here's another trick that I do. I plug the nose wheel into (I believe Aux 5, the right hand dial on the radio), I then mix rudder-->aux 5, with gear switch down to activate the mix. I turn off the trim link so that the rudder trim does not affect the nose steering servo. The dial on the radio is now your nose wheel steering trim!

This works great because you isolate the centering and trim of the rudder and nose wheel, this becomes very useful as your steering cables break in and start to stretch because you can always re-center the nose without affecting the rudder position. Its great because as you taxi the jet out, if its pulling slightly, just tweak the dial slightly until it tracks straight and you're set!

Mine is the same as Lt.Dans, but I put it on the right slider.

Interesting. I put my wheel brakes on the right slider. The dial felt more natural for me when taxiing. (ie, turn dial right, nose steers right, like an RC car)

Another thing that is nice having the gear switch turn the mix off is that the nose wheel centers just as the gear retracts, greatly reducing the chance of snagging the cables on the gear if you are giving a rudder input as you retract the gear.

Thank you Scott, I got it to work.


Kevin

Hi Lt. Dan

I'm with you, I put my wheel break on right hand slider, and I use AUX 4 the upper right hand dial to control steering trim, and leave rudder trim to only rudder. I think this saturday will be the day for my F18.

Kevin

good luck with the flight Kevin. she's a good flying bird.

don't forget to count the clicks on the power when making adjustments in the landing pattern.

c'ya

buck

Good luck! Be sure to get us some pics!

another suggestion I learned recently is put the rudder on the aux and the steering servo on the rudder channel (4).

This gives you full deflection of rudder on takeoff and landing but with rate switch for steering.

To trim your steering? Hit the rudder trim button. You'll likely never use that dial to trim the rudders. That's pretty much a one time operation.

Have Fun, and Good Luck,

Sean

The only problem is that aux 4 and 5 do not refresh at the same rate as the primary channels not a good idea on a primary flight surface.

Good point, the tip was given to me from a Futaba man. I don't know that they have this problem. I always forget about that till I try to hook something up to those channels

Last time I did it, was getting creative on my Eurofighter and put the canards on aux 4. Boy was I scratching my head trying to figure out what was going on [:@]

It finnally dawned on me. As I have not setup that configuration yet, but was going to, and would have found the problem again lol. Interestingly, I've never noticed the refresh rate problem on my nose gear steering servos and they've always been plugged into Aux 4.