Super Cub becomes Super Super Cub…

What a summer Ontario is having… WOW… just great weather, today was sunny, warm, no humidity, just perfect around 30 degrees.

Last night little Gwennie showed everyone that there are two sides to the coin, as she had a bit of a rough night, not be able to settle, and crying a bit, and not wanting to feed properly, all the things that baby’s do!

She was a lot better behaved today, but Kristina was exhausted, so Judy went in and spent the day with Chris, tending to all the little whims and needs that babies have!  Kristina got to kick back and try to catch up on some sleep!

I spent the afternoon washing up our Jeep that had a week of dust on it, and then took on  a long thought out project on my Super Cub.  For a while now I have wanted to install ailerons on the wings and today was the day!  I set my work table up outside, and Patra joined me as we enjoyed the afternoon sun.

Ailerons make it real nice to turn your plane left or right during flight.  You can use the rudder, but ailerons do a much better job of it.  I want to learn how to fly properly with ailerons, so I can retry flying my P-47 Thunderbolt.  The problem I had flying it was lack of skill using ailerons! 

You can see in the first picture below where I made the two cuts on each side of the wing.  Measure TWICE, cut ONCE!

Here is a little closer look at the piece I cut out.  this is very dense foam, and is very easy to cut with a razor blade knife… (box cutter)

The little black motor you see with the white cross on it, is called a “servo”  It receives power from the receiver and that white cross actually will move back and forth to make the ailerons function.

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The servo is attached to the aileron with a piece of control wire, that I am bending into shape here.

I cut a little hole in the wing, so the servo sits in it, and is screwed into place so it won’t move.  You can see the control wire in place now.  There is one of these assemblies on each side of the wing.

And presto!  It is completed.  I used clear hockey tape to hold all the wiring in place.  The ailerons worked perfectly.  I had noticed that when I bought the plane, there was enough capacity on the plane’s receiver to be able to add ailerons in.  It has to be a separate channel on the radio to run them.

So below is my radio transmitter.  It has two big sticks in the middle of the unit.  These are what you use to fly.  It is now 4 channels.  The stick on the left controls the throttle when it is moved up and down, and when moved left to right it moves the rudder.  The right stick controls the elevator when moved up and down, and when moved left to right the ailerons operate!  Simple… right?

You might wonder why it says “DX5e” on the transmitter.  It is actually a five channel radio, and the 5th channel is used when I want to drop my parachute guy, or one of my fake bombs!  This one transmitter works for both my planes.  All made by the same Company, Hobby Zone.

Now I just have to build up my nerve tomorrow to take it out for the first flight with the ailerons.

Till tomorrow…