I have an old F-16 from BVM with a BVM 91 in it .. the ailerons are damaged and would need some surgery to get reinstalled and hinged properly ......

I would like to set the plane up for tailerons only (like the Spider jets one has [i think])


has anyone done this ? any coments or recomendations ? I land BVM F-16 without flaps, so thats not an issue ...



brg,

WOjtek

Wojtek,

One of my friend did this mod to a yellow F-16, which is about the same size as the BVM's. It justs fly as well as any other F-16.
I have a Gleichauf F-16 that flies with just tailerons for control ( Byron size) The throw for the tailerons , when used as ailerons should be about 70% of the elevator throw. You will fine tune this after your first flight.
If you are still in dount just think how well an Avond's F-15 flies...
Brg
Florent

Of course, you will loose any flight control redundancy.

I landed one of my BVM F-16's with one elevator control broken cleanly in two. Took a little cross control, but landed fine.

That is a FREE airplane!

David

I have an AD F16 and she flys great on just tailerons, this is the way Eric Rantet designed this F16, as mentioned above the Avonds F15 is the same.
Its interesting that in the US it seems accepted that this mod is OK yet it is compulsory (as per AMA) still to have a rudder.

Marty, in my opinion (With almost highest flying scores at the latest F4C scale world champs at Canada.) the guys who made these rudders on jets obligatory didn't really knew what they where talking about!!! Not to attack you on this, (I guess you're on the right side!) but I flew several jets with functional rudders and they are nice to play with during your displays, only at those very low take-off and landing speeds they do not bother very much. (Some people come with the story; "On my full-size aircraft..." this is crap and a whole other ballgame! We use totally different airspeeds and relative air thickness, just read the books about Reynold numbers...!) Instead it's very important to maneuver the complete model in such a way, high angle of attack and gentle wing drop against the crosswind, to give the model the desired heading. (Most jet jockeys already do this automatically without knowing!)

I fly my Avonds F-15 and F-16 on tailerons only and they are a dream to fly and I can position the models in the air exactly where I want them to be. I've also seen very small jet models doing this so there would be no problem to configure your BVM F-16 this way, WOjtec.

Gerald Rutten

The biggest problem with walking down the "taileron path" (i.e. no ailerons) has been pointed out by Dave Ribbe above....ZERO REDUNDANCY. If you lose either taileron servo or linkage, your jet will be an instant lawn dart. Been there, seen that, done it :-(

I used to keep a running total of all the Avond F-15's and AD Mirage 2000s that had made smoking holes in the ground after a taileron/stabilator failure, and lost count a while ago.....
In my opinion, removing ailerons in favor of stabilators/tailerons for a jet larger than .45 DF sized (and especially if it is turbine powered) is not a smart move.

Peter

Hi Gerald, I do agree with you re- having rudders for competition and more flexibility with flight control set-up. My question is based on second guessing the model designers as to necessity for safety purposes?

Gerald, I hope you enjoyed your visit to Canada for the Scale Champs, and also I must say I enjoyed your RCJI review of the Avonds F16, awesome landing gear you designed as well... have you finished painting your F16? any pics.

Cheers-

since its an old beat up plane, and has a .91 in it , im going in the path of using only tailerons ...

My other F-16 wich has a P80 in it will of course keep its ailerons as they are perfectly fine as they are ...



thanx for the info guys .. !


Wojtek

Glad I could give you some help Wojtec, good luck on the conversion.
As far as the redundancy aspect on switching over to tailerons Peter, If only you know how MANY weak links a sophisticated turbine powered jet has... All my models have one common philosophy; simplicity. Just run through your model and count all the pins and sockets from all servo connectors, I think you might have more than a hundred which can all destroy our model when contacted badly on a single pin. What I mean to say is that all the extra's on board are additional things to go wrong (And they will, sooner or later!) Therefor I'm also the type that doesn't think of using electronic gadgets, gyros and other flying aids. When properly set-up has done ALL models will fly like a dream (Statement!). In my experience most crashes have a ghost-like atmosphere where very often a "probable" cause had been found, but could never be traced back because a hundred of other electric things reacted to the "probable" cause!
I fly model jets with taileron set-up back in 1995 and after a huge amount of flights from that date I have never had a single accident related to this.

Gerald.