I have a question guys about the phenolic control horn installations....because the pivot point is on the top edge of the control surface..does this mean that the phenolic control horn should be mounted in such a way that it is not exactly over the hinge line(as veiwed on the bottom side of wing or elev)...for it appears to me that the seam between the aileron and wing is in a slightly different position ...(top and bottom) so,perhaps a 2mm rearward offset of the contol horn fixation point...would be correct...??? or am I just out of my mind???
just go with the seam???

On the past few Integrals I've built, I took the time to measure the hinge line location and transpose it to the bottom of the flying surfaces, and it ended up being right where the cutout is on the bottom side. Your mileage may vary depending on how the surfaces were cut free on the bottom, but on the last two that I did the hinge lines were in line with the bottom cutout.

RYAN..Thanks for the comment...What EXACTLY do you refer to..when you say"cutout".....I have another question for you,since you have a lot of experiance with this airplane...
do you feel its worth the extra effort to run pushrods for the elevators?....have you flown both setups?.....In theory...less mass in the tail should make a diff..however some very sucessfull pilots have the dual servos in the tail...what do you think?? Thanks! Geo

When I refer to the cutout, I mean the cut line on the bottom of the wings and stabs that frees the control surfaces.

I have only built the airplanes for other people, I don't own any Integrals. I do fly a similar design, the Partner, and I've always run dual elevator servos in those. I think Carl Veit has an Integral flying with a DEPS system or something similar, however I can't comment on how much difference it may have made. I've never had a problem with dual elevator servos, and prefer that setup. Different strokes for different folks, I suppose.

I don't have an integral and I've never owned one, but my uncle had one brand new and he landed it first time on the maiden flight and the fuse over top of the gear plate broke in half. I wrote a post about it, but I still haven't been able to contact Jason about possibly being a factory production problem.



Matthew L.

I flew mine all last season, and about half way through I noticed a 4.5 inch vertical crack on one side of the fuse behind the gear plate, just in front of the wing pin hole. The fuse was completely cracked through except for the finish on the outside, so I took it home and fixed it from the inside with BVM carbon fiber mat and CA, and so far it looks like it's holding. One of the things I noticed however, was that the carbon fiber reinforcement from the factory extended all the way past the wing pin hole on the uncracked side, and was about 25 mm short of the wing pin hole on the cracked side, so my theory is that this is what caused my problem. If I get any more Integrals, this is going to be one of the first things that I check. There are other things I going to do as well:

1/.. As above, make sure that carbon fiber extends past the wing pin hole.
2/.. Reinforce the fuselage sidewall area between the gear plates with carbon fiber skinned nomex board and epoxy to prevent the fuse from buckling.
3/.. Reinforce the air hole in the bottom of the fuse with carbon fiber mat and CA to prevent the fuse from buckling at the edges of the hole.
4/.. Reinforce the eges of the air hole in the front of the belly pan with carbon fiber mat and CA to prevent the edges from cracking at the creases on the side.

Hi Matthew,
I think the main contributor to cracking (there have been other incidences of this reported in this thread) is that the gear supplied with the airframe is very rigid, they don't flex at all which means in a harsh landing the impact is transferred to the weakest point of the airframe which is where the CF mat on the inside of the fuze terminates.
I replaced the supplied gear with a set of Bolly gear which is heaps more flexible. I have had 160+ flights in my Integral and all is well (other than damage casue by an idiot pilot - me!).
Repace the gear with something with more spring (unfortunately you will find Bolly gear hard to get now) and the load on the airframe will be greatly reduced in landings.
All the best, Simon

Sounds like a good theory, i'll look into it.



Matt

Good theory, except that I've had Bolly gear on my Integral from the start, and I still had my fuselage crack on me. It took about 150 flights before it showed up though.

Which Bolly gera are you guys using, please?

I meant "gear"

Bolly-F3a electric-

F3A Electric

Bolly F3A "Curve Back" on mine

Cheers, JB

Well this was after one flight, it cracked right behind where the carbon fiber stops above the gear plate. On the maiden flight and it wasn't a rough landing, I think it might have been a mess up at the factory.



Matt

As promised, some results from flying after all the mods on my Integral. Flies like a totally different airplane. As much as I fought it last year, it is now effortless and very close to neutral. I flew the P09 several times last week and frankly the plane made me look good. The plane snaps much better without "burying" itself in the snap.

Here is my final setup (which is very different from stock);

Engine YS170DZ , APC 18x11WPN @ 8100RPM static with CP30Heli fuel, NMP Velocity Stack installed.

Engine set at 0 degrees
Wing set at +0.6 degrees
Stab set at 0 degrees.
CG at 158
Elevator throw at +/- 12.8 degrees with 80% expo
Aileron throw at +/- 14 degrees with 80% expo
Rudder to max but 90% Expo

Rudd/Elev mix of 3%+/- to correct pull to belly on KE (adjust a bit differently left and right KE)
Throttle to Rudd mix of 3% to offset engine in pulls and pushes (could put a bit more right thrust at engine eventually)

The stock stab tube/socket is sloppy and results in inconsitent pulls and pushes. I painted thin CA on the inside of socket and honed with dremel tool the tight fit the tube. Takes hours to do but worth it.
The stock wings can vary in weight by as unch as 10 grams and the variance is in the tips (mine were). I trimmed weight so both wings were same weight, but also that the wings balance separately at the MAC. Made a difference in loop tracking.

After many flights (almost 50 or so), inspection shows no fuse cracks, although my plane has what appears to be an extra wide kevlar overlay strip that goes from firewall to turtledeck. I imagine it was added in later models, and distributes the stress along the fuse better than the straight CF specimens. (I haven't seen an earlier one to confirm that the first ones don't have the kevlar, but I am presuming so).

Very happy with it now. This setup mirrors very closely (on purpose) the Carrier and Mueller setup, so I don't think it is a coincidence that I found it to work well.

Regards,

John

Hi John

I like your colour scheme very mush, it is different form what we usually see.
Infact it is the opsite of what we usually use for patern planes, the dark colours are inside the wing and the white colour is on the leading edge and on the wing tips.
Can you show the bottom side of the plane ?
How good is the visibility of this scheme on sunny days and on cloudy days (compare to the normal colour scheme) ?

Regards,

Isaac Najary,
Isarel

Isaac,
It works very well for me and is very high contrast under all conditions. The bottom is simply the outer 30cm of the wingtips in red. Gives the illusion that the plane changes wingspan during rolls and spins.

This top scheme is not mine, it was originally used by Ivan Kristensen in the '80s. I add the bottom scheme on my planes during the '90s.
With amber sunglasses, the contrast is stunning.

Thanks,

John

Finally I maidened my Integral.......I'm very happy!

Some pictures:

Nice colors vey simple and i bet very visible in the air.

brillante!

After reading all 34 pages here ( rainy NJ Sunday , as usual ) , I'm ready for a nap. Not because the plane or the comments are boring ; quite the contrary.

Has anybody put one together using Pull-Pull on the elevators ?

Thoughts?

What are the reasons why you would want to consider a pull-pull elevator system? Are you thinking that you could save some weight? Would you go with just a single servo instead of two mini servos? Which servo would you use, and would it be lighter than two mini servos? What about CG location? How would you prevent the plane from being nose heavy?

Since so much was said here about balance issues, I thought it might make the CG less of a problem since a single servo would be located not far behind the wing tube. It would also save weight. I don't own an Integral so I can't say for sure. As far as servos go , a robust JR (like the 8611A) might be enough.
Had pull-pull elevator on a Pursuit 120. It was a very nice setup with a great feel. A few will say pull-pull on the elevator is sensitive; but my experience was different.

Hi,

Has anyone used Futaba S9154 servos for the ailerons on the Integral?