Estes Tazz Follow-up

TIP: I already lost one of the rubber bands! The kit does give your four.
To retain the rubber band when it is loosened between flights -
Close off the open end with of the Part R Hooks a bead line of  white glue. It won't be permanent, you can pop out the glue bridge to replace the rubber band.



Bernard Cawley wrote on YORF:

"During the build I ran into a couple of little “gotchas”. The first one involves the fin-to-flap hinges.

The flaps are hinged on both sides with what amounts to thin clear sticker stock (shapes precut to fit). On one side, the hinge material just goes from the top of one part to the top of the other. On the bottom, however, the hinge material goes from the bottom of the fixed fin to the TE to the LE of the flap to the bottom of the flap. Those of you who have used tape hinges on small RC airplanes have probably seen something like this. However, if you haven’t (or if you forget, as I did) that some space between the surfaces needs to be left to make room for those two thicknesses of of hinge material, if you butt the two parts together and put the top hinge material on, you won’t be able to get the flaps all the way parallel with the fins after putting the bottom hinge material on.

(If you use both top and bottom hinge pieces)
Of course what one needs to do is leave about 1/32 of an inch gap between when putting the top portion on and then exercise a little care installing the bottom piece as it wraps from flap across the edges to the fin. Or, perhaps more simply, do the BOTTOM first instead of the top.

This is lots of words. The first attachment is a diagram I found with a quick search. If you imagine the “elevon” and the “wing” are both the same thickness and the “elevon” is not tapered, then you can see what I’ve clumsily tried to explain."

"The “gotcha” is that there is no standoff for the launch lug, so the launch rod rides on the the ring, takes advantage of the fact that Estes launch lugs are a fairly loose fit on a 1/8-inch rod, and then rides on the base of the nose cone. It doesn’t bind so much that the model wouldn’t get off the rod (though a rod that’s a full 1/8-inch diameter binds a bit more than an Estes rod). But still, that struck me as less than ideal.

Since my model was already built and painted, my solution was to grab a cordless Dremel tool, the small diameter sanding mandrel with a fine-grit drum attached and relieve the ring where the rod passes over it. See the picture to the right.

The obvious thing to do while building it is to cut a strip from the fin scraps the length of the launch lug and about 1/8 inch wide and use it as a standoff for the launch lug."