Ok I broke my stock Sky Surfer wing spar. It was the first part that broke on my plane... so I ordered a couple replacement wing spars from readymade and just went out and flew with a new spar.

Broke it on the first flight on landing. Now I'm down to 1 more wing spar and I'm starting to get worried that I'm going to need a new wing spar everytime I want to fly. Does anybody know where to buy a stronger wing spar that fits the sky surfer online? This would be very much appretiated because I don't want to keep paying $5 for thin plastic rods.

Wow, that was a badass cloverleaf antenna...

Huge!

Originally Posted by TimeTrave1er

Ok I broke my stock Sky Surfer wing spar. It was the first part that broke on my plane... so I ordered a couple replacement wing spars from readymade and just went out and flew with a new spar.

Broke it on the first flight on landing. Now I'm down to 1 more wing spar and I'm starting to get worried that I'm going to need a new wing spar everytime I want to fly. Does anybody know where to buy a stronger wing spar that fits the sky surfer online? This would be very much appretiated because I don't want to keep paying $5 for thin plastic rods.

There is a modification that strengthens the stock 4mm spar by adding to smaller 2mm solid spares inside the bigger one. Be sure to roughen up the surface of the smaller spares with sand paper then you can use hot glue or CA to glue the 2 smaller ones inside.

Another way to help you not break your spar would be to power down at the top of a loop. Let gravity take it back around. If you power through the loop you will stress the spar trying to pull out of the dive which could fold your wings.

Originally Posted by polyfractal

To play devil's advocate:

I've spent many, many hours crawling through these forums looking for information. Not everyone has time to read the whole 1000+ page Bixler thread, or 150 pages in this thread. I had a banking problem on my Sky Surfer which took days to hunt down. I asked and no one responded, so I was left to digging through years of posts here at RCGroups. I eventually found the problem in some old post, buried in the middle of the massive thread.

Don't get me wrong, I think the forums are a great resource. But there is something to aggregating all the hard-won knowledge, removing all the myths, superstitions and misinformation, and packaging it into a friendly format.

I think it would be a great resource personally.

I'm very curious as to your problem and the solution?

God d*mnit!! I lost the prop adaptor thing on my stock sky surfer today. I flew it up like 45-50 feet in the air and it was slightly windy out. All of a sudden I try and turn using the alerons and some wind comes at the same time and rips both wings right out of the fuselage. Then somehow the prop adaptor came off and the prop flew off too. I found the prop no problem but couldn't find the prop screw thingy after an hour or two of searching.

Does anybody know where I can buy a stock sky surfer prop adaptor?

Originally Posted by TimeTrave1er

Ok I broke my stock Sky Surfer wing spar. It was the first part that broke on my plane... so I ordered a couple replacement wing spars from readymade and just went out and flew with a new spar.

Broke it on the first flight on landing. Now I'm down to 1 more wing spar and I'm starting to get worried that I'm going to need a new wing spar everytime I want to fly. Does anybody know where to buy a stronger wing spar that fits the sky surfer online? This would be very much appretiated because I don't want to keep paying $5 for thin plastic rods.

Buy this CF tube (or equivalent size somewhere else) and insert it inside your stock spar. It fits perfectly, although you may need to gently tap it with a hammer to slide it all the way in.

Originally Posted by antennahead

I'm very curious as to your problem and the solution?

It was a pretty rookie mistake, which most people probably would have noticed immediately. But since I'm new to RC planes in general I didn't think to look for it.

Basically, my tail feathers were not straight. They were angled to one side, which was causing my plane to gently bank. I glued a thin CF rod to the tail feathers and the whole assembly returned to being parallel to the wings. Banking fixed

Originally Posted by TimeTrave1er

Ok I broke my stock Sky Surfer wing spar. It was the first part that broke on my plane... so I ordered a couple replacement wing spars from readymade and just went out and flew with a new spar.

Broke it on the first flight on landing. Now I'm down to 1 more wing spar and I'm starting to get worried that I'm going to need a new wing spar everytime I want to fly. Does anybody know where to buy a stronger wing spar that fits the sky surfer online? This would be very much appretiated because I don't want to keep paying $5 for thin plastic rods.

There are many solutions to this ongoing problem. I chose to go to walmart and buy a CF arrow. These are extremely strong, built NOT to break and made to withstand huge amounts of force. To make it fit into the stock spar hole, I took a small piece of coarse grit sandpaper, wrapped it once around the end of the arrow and glued it. Then slowly reemed out the hole until it fit the arrow. You might have to trim down the arrow, use a band saw or cut off wheel on a dremel.

[QUOTE=polyfractal;23258681
It was a pretty rookie mistake, which most people probably would have noticed immediately. But since I'm new to RC planes in general I didn't think to look for it.

Basically, my tail feathers were not straight. They were angled to one side, which was causing my plane to gently bank. I glued a thin CF rod to the tail feathers and the whole assembly returned to being parallel to the wings. Banking fixed [/QUOTE]


Your not alone, on my first one, I didn't have the horizontal stab square to the wing, And since the rudder is glued to the h stab, The rudder was crooked and caused the plane to the go left all the time. Took me a long time to fiqure out what was wong!! and after having to cut both the rudder and H stab off twice to get it right, I then started to mod all of my planes to have bolt on tails so that I can easily add shims if needed to cure any alignment problems.

Chasing Dad's MX2 with the SS

My Bixler was my first REAL RC Airplane, first FPV experience, and really has a lot of centimental value to it, but it appears my Bixler will be being retired quite soon as an FPV ship. My Super Skysurfer is quite close to maiden, and once I have it dialed in how I like and get all my test and dial in flights out of the way all FPV gear will be transfered over.

I will still fly my bixler, but not FPV anymore. I will use it as my testbed for ideas or quick and easy grab and go flyer.

However I do plan to squeeze in a few more FPV flights on her before that of course .

Here is the last FPV flight I did, video is from my new 808 #16 v2 (For $40 you cannot beat this camera!), the flight was pretty tame and close just to test out the 808 cam, I can't wait to get a bit more flights in on this camera.

FPV Over King Salmon, CA - 11/10/2012 (15 min 11 sec)

For anyone interested in my Super SS build you can visit the build log at http://fpvlab.com/forums/showthread....urfer-Buildlog

This is the final FPV flight of my Bix, FPV gear will now be moved to the SSS now that I have maidened it!

Final FPV Flight of the Bixler (13 min 5 sec)

Parlin park (5 min 25 sec)

Made it to the shore after hurricane (4 min 50 sec)

Originally Posted by nakelp86

https://vimeo.com/53375824

Hope you and your family are doing ok after that storm. I have see pictures and video showing the Seaside Heights boardwalk and can't believe how many times I have been there while I lived in NJ and now see the destruction that Sandy did to it.

Thanks for the video. Take care.

Vince

I lived in Seaside until I was 18 years old (live in Cali now), it's quite odd to really see it like that...