I purchased a swift from //www.falcongliders.com.au/ and it is my first non-foamie.
During the build, I took a few photos of the build - esp the tail set-up, and eventually got a short video at otford before the rain set in.
I thought I would share the photos/ build with you all as the swift is extremly cheap for what it is, and therefore is generally bought by beginners.
a big thankyou to Andrew from falcon gliders for his advise on set-up / building and for the supply of the elevator rod components.

For the wing , I re-inforced the skin for the servos (HS-82mg's) with 200gram carbon. The hole for the linkage is drilled right on the line between the aileron and the wipers ( note the wipers were removed), and the ball linkage was screwed and epoxyed in.
the wipers were removed as they became stuck at greater than 8mm of aileron movement. I was thinking of replacing them with tape wipers, but enjoyed the noise they madr without them

for the centre of the wing, 2 small ?6mm holes were drilled for the servo lead exit, and the cg was measured and drawn with masking tape = 66-67mm back from LE.
the servo's for the wing were taped, and glued with epoxy, and the covers taped on with crappy electrical tape for the moment.

The fuse was also re-enforced with 300gram carbon, from the nose to behind the wing saddle

I decided to install a ballast tube under the servo tray - just to one side, and used 17/32" brass piping for 12 one inch slugs (33grams each). The tube was plugged on one end with carbon / epoxy, then glued in being centred on the Cg.
the tray was then cut for one HS-82mg and an on/off switch. Note - this model won't have ruddder function

Hi Greg,

Good call pulling the wipers and making sure your aileron servo horns are epoxied in properly to the surface. I took my V2 out a few weekends back and found that the control horn was only attached to the wiper and wasnt positively secure to the surface. It seperated will doing a low pass and force my V2 into a spiral. Luckly, I was able to somehow flip it around and it landed belly side down. No major damage just some scrapes.

Good luck,

Ray

Rsteel,
funny enough - on one side of the aileron there was more balsa material than the other - so one of the ball joints is only half in balsa and glued in!

V2's pulling into spiral dives is their favorite "tendency". They need to be flown fast, and be real careful pulling aero with them. They do mean and nasty things...

Sam.

Hi Greg, ta for pics, I just maidened my Swift/V2 yesterday! Great plane for the price, stiff wing hey.
I re-inforsed the fuse with glass cloth to 2 inches behind the wing saddle, and guess what, a slightly grubby landing into a barer patch of grass had it do a slight tumble, the fuse suffered fracture cracks behind my glassing. So this is its weak spot between saddle and the carbon 2/3 of the way down (why, why didnt they extend that a bit more!-$) currently giving some extra carbon ribbon and light glass treatment to the rear fuse, it was slightly nose heavy anyway at a CG of around 64-65mm.



Good luck with yours, looks nice, I only wish we had some racing happening up here.

Atmosteve - I ended up moving my Cg forward to 64-65ish as well - seemed to be a bit better, but haven't flown it enough in good air to really find out.

Back to the build.
I used a single conv 6ch reciever by corona, and 2400mah batteries from Jcar in just a plastic battery pack- eventually taped up.
For the elevator rod, I got some bits from Andrew ( falcon gliders ) including some 4mm carbon rod, metal threaded rods, brass tube (slightly bigger than 4mm) and clevis's.
One of the clevis fitted snuggly and was epoxied to the carbon tube on the servo end. The carbon rod was then cut - and the brass tube epoxied on. I then measured and cut the metal threaded rods ad soldered them to the brass tube. The tail clevis then just screwed onto this end.
I hope the pictures explain it ok.

Ballast tube was epoxied in and re-enforced with fibre tape gooped to fuse. Servo tray was gooped in also. Note that you can't see the ballast tube in front of the servo tray from all the wires! - I don't think I have given myself enough room!

Onto the tail. the alignment of the control horns on the tail was quite tricky! They both had to exactly even. I used a 2mm drill bit to drill out 10 or so holes on the inside of the elevator from the hinge line back towards the tail. The control horns were then filed to make sure they would clear the end of the fuse with elevator down. They were then epoxied in with great care! I used a paper clip in the control horn holes to keep them aligned and eyed the rest. A piece of wood could of been used as a spacer between the horns as well, but I found this difficult to use.
Anyways it turned out ok. And the tail was glued and screwed on / clevis attached and aligned. Note I had a nut for the tail - but didn't end up using it - I think the wood that the hex bolt screws into was thicker than it used to be.

Nice work Greg but i hope your going to throw the battery holder in the bin and solder those batteries together i will never use a holder again all my packs are soldered now nicads and nmhi are shorter than standard AA and if you get just a little of dust or corosion build up on the springs they will not contact proparly so do your self a favor and burn the holder.

Shane Who also has a swift

The final product.... excuse the blue tape for the Cg alignment!
I spaced the trailing edge of the wing up 3mm or so - that tends to be the general consensus to help wing / tail incidence - a common problem
I was happy with how well it flew out of the hand - and I am looking forward to improving it further. It needed a tad too much stick up while inverted - I think I still have to fine tune the incidence.
I added spoilerons to help landing.
It makes a fantastic sound when going quick, or using the ailerons.
Overall a very impressive package for the money and time needed to get it into the air.
P.S can someone tell me how to add a video? through utube??
Cheers all,
Greg K

Originally Posted by r/c junkie

Nice work Greg but i hope your going to throw the battery holder in the bin and solder those batteries together i will never use a holder again all my packs are soldered now nicads and nmhi are shorter than standard AA and if you get just a little of dust or corosion build up on the springs they will not contact proparly so do your self a favor and burn the holder.

Shane Who also has a swift

What Shane said.

Sam.