Repairing and maintaining is a skill you'll want to have in your metaphorical RC toolbox! This article aims to provide you with some advice and inspiration for looking after your radio controlled planes so that you can have great experiences and memories with them for longer.
Before we begin, here is one of our past episodes on 'crashing and repairing' that you may find useful!
What we'll be covering:
Flight critical:
- Control horns and flight linkages
- Motor mounts
- Battery velcro/attachment straps/ elastic bands
Aesthetic:
- Airframe scratches, dents and gouges
- Landing gear issues
So what are we waiting for? Let's get started.
Flight critical issues and how to deal with them
One area that's an absolutely critical part of an airframe are the control surfaces. If one fails during flight, it's game over!
Make sure you use good quality control horns when scratch building to avoid them degrading over time. Here's a good option on our store.
Check any linkages and tighten them every so often. Sometimes loose ones can shake themselves even looser with vibrations from the motor.
Make sure that all of your servo horns are screwed in. This is important as they can pop off the servo unexpectedly! This yellow control horn is not screwed in to demonstrate.
Also, make sure that you occasionally check to see that your motor is not becoming unscrewed from its motor mount through vibrations.
Another area of the plane which can be a problem over time is the place that your batteries attach to.
Sometimes velcro can become detached from your airframe as batteries are regularly pulled out from your plane. If you do some high 'G' manoeuvres, you may find that the battery suddenly ejects!
This can cause accidents so make sure you check your velcro every so often.
Aesthetic damage
Airframe degradation is one major reason that we end up scrapping old planes and building new ones. The thing is, with some maintenance every ten flights or so, we can drastically increase the lifespan of our models. This FT Simple Scout, for instance, hit a wire fence and sustained some damage to the wing, but this can be repaired. Thankfully it didn't take the whole wing off!
All that's needed is to squeeze a little hot glue into the gap. Some coloured paper could be glued over the top and, from a distance, no one would ever know anything had happened! Also, you can just call it battle damage if anyone does ask.
Tah Dahh! The Scout is ready to fly again.
Dents and scratches can be an irritation, but as long as they don't affect performance, they're not too much of a biggy. This P-40n from Durafly was weathered to blend the real damage with simulated battle damage. Metalic paints are great for this.
Weathering like this was done with paint being applied to both panel lines and areas of ripped foam.
Also, landing gear and gear attachment points are areas that undergo stress after many takeoffs and landings. They should be checked fairly regularly and reinforced if found to be getting weaker.
As a closing note, I hope you found this little insight into repairing and maintenance helpful. There are a lot of ways your planes can be damaged and repaired but hopefully, this article has shown you that, in most cases, it's not a big deal to fix things. Fly hard and have fun!
Article written by James Whomsley
FliteTest.com Editor
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