UMX Turbo Timber rudder hinge

[jolfstn74]

Hi! It's rainy as hell,and I decided that's the needed opportunity I needed to rectify a surprising weak point in the aircraft. Unable to leave well enough alone,I decided to paint the plane,and before I did that,removed all the stickers. Much to my chagrin,I found it was stickers and stickers only that was being used as the rudder hinge! The plane is $130 so to a point had to be built down to a price,this must be one of those failure mode compromises. I sanded the body and wings, painted on a slurry of polyurethane matte and corn starch,sanded that,decorated the craft then used powerful Mylar tire patch discs to replace the hinge,then thought the better of it. Using tongue depressors, Kabab skewers a Dremmel with a variety of implements. A series of photos will follow my progress. Using the skewer as the pivot, I cut down the tongue depressors to use as hinge,and sealed each part with polyurethane. I cut the tongue depressors into about 1.5inx 1/4in little "fat matchsticks" (this will be obvious in the photos) and drilled holes the diameter of the skewer. The length of the skewer were determined by the length of the connection area on the tail. I glue the fat matchstick to the top inside of the rudder, not drilled through but indented, glued the skewer to this and made wood washers out of the tongue depressors, drilled through and then sanded to the outer diameter, assembled the whole mess and trimmed and adjusted for better, freer rudder response than I was getting with stickers. it looks a little crude and adds a tiny bit of weight, but overall I'm not entirely disgusted with the result.

 

[jolfstn74]

THIS IS A TERRIBLE IDEA! DO NOT do this mod! The plane is tail heavy,will not fly! I am completely replacing the tail & using the factory applied sticker hinges and praying that I can bring it back to life! Bad! Bad! Bad! (whacking myself with rolled up newspaper) anyone who actually went through with this please PM me and I'll advise on how it might be undone. I'm a relatively new pilot & don't know enough about these models,fluid dynamics,CG or the price of tea in China to be massively altering the planes, much less advising others to do so (what was I thinking? I liked the Gilligan's island Bamboo-esque aspect of the hinge, if that is your goal for some reason and you have a static non flying model,or a plane you wish never to fly again, then maybe this is appropriate) my apologies again,I'm too new to be advising others,I need to read and ask questions and NOT tell others how to alter their planes for now, thank you for permitting me to be part of the forum (providing I don't get booted for spreading bad information) and I commit to my newbie roll of student and not any kind of advisor, unless it's a specific situation I actually know something about.

 

[jolfstn74]

One good thing to come out of this situation,in order to remove then replace the tail,I had to dissolve glue,both hot glue and non foam friendly CA, & with the judicious use of a hypodermic syringe with a cut short needle I discovered Goof Off® weakens both types of glue and seemed not to damage foam! Now I was using tiny quantities & doing my damnedest not to get any on the plane,so I'm not 100% certain that it leaves the foam 100% unaltered,however, the miniscule amount that did get on the plane seemed fine,as compared to acetone for example which the tiniest drop disolves the foam,even 200 proof alcohol or lab grade denatured alcohol will damage foam I've discovered. I would avoid bathing your aircraft in Goof Off ® but then bathing your plane in anything should probably be avoided,not to mention kind of an odd compulsion,what drives you to want to give your plane a bath? It sounds provocative & Freudian and belongs in one of those websites you have to be 18 to join. But Goof Off ® will help dissolve glue.

 

[speedy7385]

I had used his method to repaired the micro Timber ruder.

 

[bisco]

that didn't work at all for me

 

[Bricks]

Easiest way and light to replace these type of hinges is get some braided fishing line, make a small slit across the hinge line push in the braided line into the slit and add some CA. I do this to all my foam hinge lines even for the FT designs.

 

[bisco]

Easiest way and light to replace these type of hinges is get some braided fishing line, make a small slit across the hinge line push in the braided line into the slit and add some CA. I do this to all my foam hinge lines even for the FT designs.

that sounds brilliant. do you have any pics? i'm not quite clear. i have been using blenderm, but it keeps coming apart

 

[Bricks]

No I do not but it is pretty simple make slit across the hinge line roughly 1/2 inch on each side, then stuff the braided line into the slit make sure it is just snug. The easiest way is leave tags on each end that you can sort of pull on while holding the line in the slot you cut then just use thin CA let it run in the slot wipe off excess then hit with kicker.

 

[bisco]

No I do not but it is pretty simple make slit across the hinge line roughly 1/2 inch on each side, then stuff the braided line into the slit make sure it is just snug. The easiest way is leave tags on each end that you can sort of pull on while holding the line in the slot you cut then just use thin CA let it run in the slot wipe off excess then hit with kicker.

thank you bricks!

 

[Bricks]

thank you bricks!