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Taking the plunge with a SkyWing Edge 540 74"


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I strapped the ESC to the mounting using a foam pad and plastic ties. Helpfully there are a series of 6 holes on the motor wall facing which just require pushing out the plugs depending on what holes are required. The ESC power leads were covered in plastic protective tubing and fed through into the fuselage. 

 

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Next the throttle lead was fed through the motor mount wall, also covered in protective tubing.

 

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That looks tidy enough.

 

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Next job was to fit the rudder using Gorilla glues on the hinges.

 

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Interestingly, this is the only working surface requiring gluing as the the elevators and ailerons are pre-glued and all joints are also sealed which is a good move by the manufacturer.

Edited by Adrian Smith 1
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While that was drying I thought I would fit the U/C cuffs. There is some supplied rubber tubing to fit to the cuff tops that requires cyano to secure. The cuffs are fitted to the U/C legs using clear bathroom sealant. Crude but effective. 

 

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That's it until the next session which I will probably fit the tail wheel and U/C wheels and spats.

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I have started to think about servo installation and before I start there is one thing I have noticed that I can't understand. There are ply tabs in all of the servo cutouts for what function I can't explain. They push out to accommodate the servo quite easily, but why design it like that? Just a thought.

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Now for some work on installing the elevators servos. Simple enough you would think. Nah! Bit of a faff in the final analysis.

There are a couple of c/f covered thin ply servo mounts to be used. I started off by cutting back the covering to allow gluing.

 

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mount added.

 

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There are some pre-threaded servo leads installed which is fine, but they are tied internally with a wire tie which was an absolute pain to access and untie to free up the leads.

 

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Used heat shrink tube to keep the leads connected. All well and good.

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I then discovered that on fitting the servos, because of the narrowing of the fuselage here, the servos stood too proud to screw in. Grrrrr .......  So out  they came.

 

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I then had to add a thicker ply servo mount to provide the servo height for both servos to fit. I managed to lever off the C/F mounts to add to the top of the new ply mounts as follows.

 

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Back into the workshop to do some more work. The rudder is to be tackled next I think. There is a comprehensive pack of fittings including wire, couplers and heat shrink.

 

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The space between the rudder horns and the coupler fixing holes is 7.5 cms. I have a spare rudder servo arm that will provide 7.5 cms between mounting holes which will keep the rudder wires in parallel.

 

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I did contemplate crossing the wires within the fuselage, but apart from being too fiddly I just i would keep it simple. I used a long piece of carbon fibre rod the thread the wire through the fuselage.

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My normal method would be to hitch up the servo end with the arm free of the airframe and connect up the rudder last as it is all out in the open and easier to do. For some reason which I can't fathom I started at rudder end. I can see now why I usually started at the servo end now!! Bit fiddly and all done now.

 

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I secured the rudder in neutral with some clips and got to work.

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Finally, hitching up the servo end couplers. I did add a couple drops of cyano wire rings before squeezing them with some heavy duty pliers.

 

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Edited by Adrian Smith 1
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The tailplane wings are an interesting one and something I haven't encountered before. Each wing apart from the aligning tube has a screw proud to the former.

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the fixing itself on the fuselage shows a up/down lever and magnetic bolt hole.

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One the wing is fitted the lever is lowered to engage on the screw on rib one. The magnetic bolt is then inserted.

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The idea I guess is for easy removal of the tail wings, not something I am likely to do. I do hope this arrangement is secure!! ? 

 

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On to the elevators now. I neutralised the each elevator the same way as the rudder.

 

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The gap between the elevator horn and the servo arm was around 8 cms before final adjustment. The are four push rods (2 each of difference sizes) , but no indication which were for the elevator and which for the ailerons. A ruler and guesswork was required and I was surprised to find the shorter pair were for the elevators.

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seems to line up ok before final bolt tightening and fine tuning.

 

Next job is the ailerons where after a quick look the cutouts will need enlarging to accommodate my servos. More next time.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Onto hitching up the aileron servos. Two things here. I had to slightly enlarge the slots to accommodate my servos. There were 4 push rods provided with the kit for the elevators and ailerons, however two of them are too big for either working surfaces. Therefore I had dig into my spares boxes to find a couple of shorter rods for the ailerons. Finally, I had to use the servo arms provided with the servo as the spare alloy ones I had earmarked for this job were way to long. The ailerons were clipped for alignment as per the rudder.

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Next I decided to fit the wheels and spats. I hit a problem with the spats which I will cover later.

The wheel axles were good quality and I liked the threaded end with a lock nut to stop the wheel falling off. Much better than the dreaded collets which eventually loosened after successive landings despite using threadlock.

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The spats have a nice indentation that fits the U/C legs perfectly.

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However, there are no fixing holes with claw nuts for securing to the U/C legs.

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With no claw nuts/bolt provided I guess these screws were meant to be used for the job, but I don't like that idea.

 

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I am going to have to order some M3 claw nuts from ModelFixings and inflate the order with a few other bits to be able to complete the job.

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Just a quick update as I have not had much time to do any work on the Edge. I managed to fit the t-nuts on the spats although they required some filing down so as not to foul on the axles.

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Anyway all fitted and pressed in.

 

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I found some M3 bolts for the job. Hopefully I should get some more time next week to finish her off. Electrical connections and setting up next.

 

 

Edited by Adrian Smith 1
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On to the business end of things. Because I get mesmerised by motors turning I taped the prop driver to check the motor rotation safely without the prop.

 

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All good here. Tidied up the motor wires with plastic ties and put plastic wire protection on the throttle wire to RX where it is fed through the fuselage.

 

 

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Now to fit the cowl. The predrilled holes seem to line up nicely. I did like the added cooling channels pre-fitted to the cowl internally.

 

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Cowl fitted.

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One thing I had to do I decided to change the cowl M3 cowl fitting bolts that were provided as the they didn't fit very well. I used my own with a fractionally different head which allowed a proper fit with my allen keys. My bolts are on the right hand side.

 

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On to the spinner. Firstly, it seems to have a very light cone (carbon fibre lined) which is screwed to the alloy face plate. Looks up to the task and very life like.

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The slots for the prop blades are quite large so no problem fitting in a 20 x 10 prop. One thing I need to do was put a brass insert in the spinner plate to stop slop as the holes was somewhat larger than the prop driver.

 

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A dab of threadlock on the bolts and the prop driver and away we go.

 

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Next I decided to assess the battery positions. The manual such as it is suggests CoG is on the wing tube. Adjusting the batteries set the plane with a slight nose down attitude for first flights.

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The initial battery positions will be put as per the photo.

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Edited by Adrian Smith 1
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Bit of tidying up of the wiring, switch and RX although there will be some more fine tuning.

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Next I will set the EPA on all surfaces and tighten up the linkages. However, reading some build blogs on this particular model the suggestion is that the EPAs should not be set too wide as the plane is lively enough on lower rates! I think that probably says more about the CoG, but I will see. Next thoughts are on how much expo to dial in.

Edited by Adrian Smith 1
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