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E-Flite Carbon Cub w/ Magnetic Wing

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A few notes:

This one is not super-easy to do. But if you're flying the CC, then you've got a few mods and rebuilds under your belt, so as long as you don't get too crazy and you take your time you should be fine.

None of the steps required are complicated, but some of them are a little "dainty":

The carbon rods are .050-.060" thick. You need to sharpen the ends of the carbon rods so they will slide in easy, and you need to pre-drill the holes with a matching drill bit. This whole area is fragile and it has the flap linkage in the way, so take your time, go slow and just turn the drill bit by hand. If you use any power tool you'll mess up. Gluing them in is tricky -- CA (odorless CA ONLY!!!) does not give a lot of working time, and since CA and carbon set especially quickly this step has to be FAST and PERFECT. Aliphatic would be nice and easy, but since the area does not "breathe" it would take several days do cure fully. Ditto for Ambroid. Epoxy is heavy, messy, and too thick for such a little hole (IMHO), but it might work for you. The next time I do it, I plan to use CA, but I will have it sitting in the freezer for a few hours ahead of time which slows down the cure time. If you think of any better choices please let me know.

The little black handle lets me grab the wing to lift it up from the back. I put mine in from the top, into a slot I made to match the center "toothpick". The handle is glued to the "toothpick", and you're not just yanking on weak foam when you pop the wing.

I used 2 carbon rods about .060" diameter and about 1.5" long at the front of the wing. I was able to glue them to the wing, right alongside the flap servo so they fit underneath the roof of the forward edge of the canopy roof. No cutting / shaping was necessary, everything looks like this was meant to happen this way.

If you look at the bottom center of the wing, you will see a square depression about the size of a Chiclets. I am convinced that the CC was meant to have a magnetic wing, and that the magnet went into here, but for some reason it didn't make it into production (possibly the weak trailing edge section). My hard drive magnet is larger than the depression, but it seems to work ok. The matching magnet went inside the cabin right underneath where the wing one goes. MAKE SURE YOU GLUE BOTH IN PLACE WITH THE CORRECT POLARITY FACING EACH OTHER. Also, there are small drives with extra-large magnets that may be too strong and place too much stress on the wing when trying to remove the wing. If enough people want it, I will try to locate a reasonable supply of suitable magnets.

You need a 5- or 6-pin lightweight connector. I used header strips which you can get from several rc sources (let me know if you have trouble). 5 connections are required, but I used 6 so the thing is keyed and I don't put it in wrong. (If you don't know what "common bus" means, please look it up for a more thorough understanding, but basically it means that in "common bus" RC systems all the red and black wires are tied together, so for instance, to make a quick-connect for 4 normal servos, you would only need a single set of red / black wires, and 4 orange (or white) signal wires, for a total of 6 wires. YOU DO NOT NEED 4 X 3 = 12 WIRES (although many will argue with you on this one). You need a signal wire for each of the 2 ail servos and for the flap servo. The lights come with a signal wire installed, but I took this off and just left the red / black and it's all fine. THIS PART IS TRICKY TO DO IF YOU WANT TO BE SUPER-MACHO AND DO IT WITHOUT REMOVING THE TOP OF THE CABIN LIKE I DID. I was able to do it, but it was a little scary (ok, A LOT scary).

Also, because I was rushing and failed to fully document where each servo was connected on the board, I was left to poke around and hope for the best. Recommendation #1 - make sure your soldering it up to snuff, #2 - note the locations of each plug before you disconnect anything, #3 - make sure you're well-rested, in a good mood, and take your sweet time doing this, #4 - take off the top of the fuselage so you have room to work. I will do a separate video for this connector at some point, but no promises on when.

The other mod videos are all listed HERE.