Instead of the wooden dowel supplied in the kit, I attached 3/32" o.d. aluminum tube which had a piece of music wire crimped in its end. The music wire had the outside end shaped into a hook. I first taped the aluminum tube in place, and afterwards taped the carbon rod along the entire leading edge.

If I had to do it over again, I'd wrap and bind the carbon rod to the aluminum tube to keep it from bending, but otherwise this part worked ok.

This shows the wing's leading edge with the shiny foil in place and the .060" carbon rod wing support inserted in the aluminum tube.

Wing root with a rubber band attached to the wire hook and wing tip with carbon reinforcing rod, music wire hook and dihedral brace string.

The fuselage with the wing support rods attached to the fuselage. The supports are attached parallel to each other. To increase the win's incidence the front support should be raised up as needed.

More of the same. The support rods are unequal length and cut to bottom into the tubes. I cut the alu tubes with a K&S cutter and this forms a burr on the inside that is a good natural stop to keep the support rod from poking through.

Everything in place. The rubber band holds the leading edges together. No rubber band is needed for the rear support because flight loads (I hope) will keep the TE in place. Also, when the dihedral brace is in place the additional friction caused by the slight curving of the alu tubes helps the suppport rods stay put.

Note that the flexing to create the dihedral happens not at the fuselage as with the stock arrangement, but rather along the entire width between the wing roots. In order to not strain this area too much, I increased the spacing between the wing roots to about 3" (7 cm).

While I'm sure this will work well, it loads the carbon support rods in shear at the fuse attach points and where they exit the wing tubes. Carbon is a wonderful material, but it can snap quite easily. One possible remedy would be to replace the carbon rods with music wire, but this would be heavier and could bend. The option of using larger alu tubes and carbon rods wouldn't be too great because the thicker rods would be a lot stiffer and the bending loads would end up being taken up by the foam panels instead of the rods.

If bad landings cause the support rods to snap this will not be a huge problem because they can be replaced in less than 60 seconds or so - much faster than one of the stock bamboo skewers could be replaced. On the other hand if they snap under flight loads, well ... let's not think about that just yet (:-)

For this second plane I used slightly heavier HS-55 servos, a modified Deans'antenna. I also re-routed the pushrods for straighter runs and made them thicker (.050" instead of .040"). The total weight stayed exactly the same as with the first version - 7.3 ozs.

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