For a slope racer I am OK with 60 on the flaps I think. When I did my Precision wing was marked for placement but I still had to adjust before final install to get what I wanted. I will be much more "scientific" on the Needle RDS install but still expect to do a bit of placement tweaking before final install.
Walter

My fs3 has about 60 degrees of slop, never mind travel!

My experience with RDS in F3B has been positive, I have flown 5 planes with self installed RDS systems since 2007 and I have never experienced any issues. After multiple seasons, the slop in the system is also not excessive, compared to my experience with conventional linkages. The planes have been under stupid line tension in strong wind and if there were any weakness or flutter, it should have shown then.

In contrast, I have seen many Ceres and Shooter with those mini flap and aileron control horns that fluttered violently on launch in strong wind conditions. To be fair I hate small control horns on any surface, so I am biased. But from what I have heard, planes with LDS have been solid so far, owing to the beefier linkage.

Nevertheless, if I want to hide a linkage in a competition plane, my preference is RDS. If I want a heavy duty linkage for big slope days, then I make a conventional linkage with large control horns on the surfaces. But to each its own.

Best,
Reto

I also swapped a servo at a contest within some minutes. The frames I have installed in my planes allow the servo to slide back when the screws are loosened, which makes a servo change extremely simple with RDS. Current LDS systems seem to be more of a pain to uninstall.

I got the frames from here:

http://www.rcsolutions.ch/index.php?show=64

Best,
Reto

I have the same experience as Reto. The slop (not too excessive) in my FS4 are from deformed pockets in the surface. I am thinking about shimming them, or heating them back into place and reinforcing them.

The slop in my Precision flaps is also no worse than conventional linkages on my other planes, their slop is very little as is the RDS Precision which is more than acceptable to me.
I am looking at purchasing a set of RDS where the servo will travel a bit to give movement. I was wondering on Daves RDS pockets being deformed......as I am going to soon be installing RDs pockets in my Needle, perhaps completely surrounding the top/bottom/sides of pocket with spooge mixture may prevent this?? Weight not as critical as the 124 will be used for slope/racing only.

Very little slop in my RDS Cyril, the tiny amount in one of the flaps seems to be from the Futaba 3150 servo gear train, the ailerons are solid (3150's all round). It has the least slop out of all my gliders which have conventional linkages and small horns apart from a D60 which also has very little slop running big horns on linkages with Hyperion DS095 servos. Going to try MKS servos on my next install.

Tom

Originally Posted by glderguy

The slop in my Precision flaps is also no worse than conventional linkages on my other planes, their slop is very little as is the RDS Precision which is more than acceptable to me.
I am looking at purchasing a set of RDS where the servo will travel a bit to give movement. I was wondering on Daves RDS pockets being deformed......as I am going to soon be installing RDs pockets in my Needle, perhaps completely surrounding the top/bottom/sides of pocket with spooge mixture may prevent this?? Weight not as critical as the 124 will be used for slope/racing only.

Don't use spooge, but rather carbon tow to remove any gap between the pocket ans skins, this will add stiffness.

I just fix some pockets on my ailerons for my Explorer. Yes I have a form of RDS built into the main panel that extends out of the end of the center panel and goes into a slot in the Ailerons. This was a Tuan setup. The pockets were sloppy to the rods and I had some thin carbon servo cover material that was just the right thickness. I used gage blocks to check the size of the slot and miked the rod and found almost .020 of an inch difference in size. So I cut a piece of the servo cover material that was .010 thick and smeared Vaseline on a gage block the same size as the rod and used that to hold the servo cover material in place on the gage block. I then added epoxy to the slot and and inserted the gage block with the servo cover material into the slot. Once the epoxy was dry, I slid out the gage block and had a solid pocket for the rod. This worked really well, and I have a solid link again from my servo to the aileron. Of course it helps to have some of these kinds of special tools to make this fix.

Bob

I have heard of using cheap feeler gauges from the auto parts store as shim material as well.

Originally Posted by djklein21

Don't use spooge, but rather carbon tow to remove any gap between the pocket ans skins, this will add stiffness.

Ok. So should I wrap pockets with tow until a snug fit in aileron then glue in place
or.......????
Thxs
Walter

That is not a bad solution.

Anything that you can do to prevent the pockets from spreading is a good plan...

I think that the Harley designed RDS pockets come with a mounting "blank" such as what Doc Holliday was talking about.
If you are going through the trouble to do a scratch RDS install, I would definitely go to the trouble of making these install blanks that hold the pocket sides parallel during the glue in process.

R,
Target

The Baudis RDS pockets are flexible. I will have to make sure they will not flex after installation. Instead of spooge maybe I could make a dam on either side of pocket, center pocket in aileron with shims, grind up the cf tow to make a cf/epoxy mix then fill in around pocket. I think I have used this cf/epoxy mix before and it was very strong. Still thinking on this.

Great comments from all. My RDS experience is strictly limited to the Radical and it is very well executed by MartinW. It is the stiff style but I get a reasonable amount of flap throw. Those airplanes have not generated any slop over the course of a couple years.

I know that he makes the pockets out of a CF sock that is molded around a mandrel. Then it is spooged in place when the wing is closed. It doesn't hurt that the skins are double carbon on the Radical. I think that combination of a beefy pocket and beefy skins, along with a really well polished rod make the whole thing work and fairly long lived, compared to others.

I too have a couple FS4's on order and Franz recommended the LDS for me. That is why I solicited opinions from others on the TUDM systems.