I recently purchased my first plane an ARF and a 6EXA radio. Obviously I have never built a plane before and therefore have never installed servos. I have a rectangular molded plastic piece that came in the box. It looks like it has servo arms but these are "fatter". It looks like they are to be cut from the molding plastic skeleton surrounding them as if it were from a plastic model box. Anyway, the molded plastic part in question contains three triangle looking pieces within it that each have three holes and two straight pieces with 4 holes? What is all of this for?

Secondly, my goldberg eagle II arf asks for a servo with a straight arm and says that it "must" look similar however, the closest arm to a straight arm that came with the radio has 4 arms. Do I need to cut off two of the arms or will the 4 arm suffice? Now, the servo in question is for both ailerons. This question is for all servos in general. Should I try to center them by range of movement as much as possible before placing arms on. This may seem like a dumb question but like I said, I am ignorant about these things.

Lastly,
The manual writes about the 1,2,3,4 on the servo arms and says that the numbers represent how much off of 90 degrees they are. I don't quite understand what this means. If I have a arm with four extensions on my servo and point the one with 3 on it towards me does that mean it is 3 degrees off of 90 degrees. I don't get it. []

Thanks a bunch!!!

Hi Snoop,

The pieces that you are looking at in the servo tray ( V shaped an straight w/holes) are used to mount the servos into the tray. The V shaped one will be cut out, and once you insert the servo, you will use these on the underneath side, to "sandwich" the servo into the mount. You will insert the screws directly into these pieces and the mount.

For your servo arms, yes, you will just need to cut off the portions that are not needed to configure the servo arm as the manufacturer suggests.

The numbers on the arms do not represent degrees as much as they are telling you where you are off of 90 degrees. Lets say that you use number 1 as a starting point, number 1 is servo movment at 0 or 360 degrees. Then number 2 will be servo movement at 90 degrees, number 3 will give you servo movement of 180 degrees, and number 4 will give you servo movement of 270 degrees.

I hope you find this information helpful. You can also reach our Futaba support technical team at 217-398-8970, or via fax at 217-398-7721.

Sincerely,
Krysta
Lead Futaba Customer Service and Programming Technician
Also you may want to check our Website at (http://www.futaba-rc.com)

Being a beginner it would be nice to have this information explained in the manual or at least in a FAQ on the website as I'm sure this lack of information has been frustrating for at least one other newbie besides myself. Maybe this info is included with cheaper radios however, I doubt it. I think its hard enough getting into the hobby trying to learn things and spending money on this that and the other. I myself have not found many people to be open to new members or caring enough to pass the hobby down to new people so you might say I am a little bitter or have gotten off on the wrong foot because I know there are those folks out there who are eager to help newbies learn etc... I have met a few here. So, please for us new people, try to beef up the instructions so even a dummy can understand.