Well I have been measurin' and figurin' to get some idea of how I could reduce the vertical stabs a bit on my new Su35. I won't bore you with all my math on how I ended up with the numbers, but I decided to reduce the overall height by 1/2" and then scale them down accordingly.
I did this by printing the vertical stab off using the tiled plans at 92% so that everything would stay in proper scale and proportion. I actually probably could have gone a bit smaller, but since stability was one of the things I wanted to change from stock in the first place with the first set of mods I did on the FRC Su35 MK2, I didn't want to go too far. I also needed to ensure I had enough surface area to still be able to have the 4"x2" rudder surface I discussed in my last post. I will still be angling them or "toeing" them in for added stability just like on the RC Powers Mig29 V3/V4, so that should still compensate for the down sizing of the surface I am hoping... :)
Here is a picture of what my new stab looks like compared to the stock plans. You might also be able to see the outline of the score marks I made for the rudder. I actually made the score line on the hinge line 4.25" long, so that once I cut it out and trim a bit off the top and bottom to prevent any binding, it should be about 4" long and 2 " deep. In that little thin area of the vertical stab at the inside top corner of the rudder, I will reinforce it with a thin strip of mesh drywall tape like I did on the Mig29 V4M3e3, that is working just awesome... :)
I still have to play around with position and size of the slots on the wing plate to get the vert stab aligned just right, but all part of the fun of modifying a plane... :)
I have also cut out my elevons, a bit more shaping and cutting may be needed to get them to fit properly as I am connecting the front angled part to the side of the wing plate to have conventional horizontal stabs like on the RCP Mig29 V4. As you can see in the picture below, there is a good reduction in total surface area and there will be about 10-15% reduction in total moving surface with the horizontal stab modification.
So the next bit of tedious work is to get the slots drawn out with the appropriate size to accept the tabs from the vertical stabs and angled properly so that I have that "wedge" effect like on the Mig29 V3/V4 which helps add so much stability. Then after that, the rest of the cutting of foam should go along quite well with a few tweaks here and there that I will discuss as I go along with the build.
Cheers,
Scott
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