Assembly Part-4

Tail Section

At this point we do a dry run of pushing the tail section into its place.  See if it fits ok, trim / adjust as needed.  We want to make sure it fits snugly and is parallel to the wing saddle at the front of the fuselage.  The fit must set exactly 90 degrees to the tailplane.  Don't use activator here, as it will set too quickly.  The fit is usually snug enough to not need the activator.  See Figure 9 for the after photo.

Figure 9:

Motor and ESC installation and Tips

Now we get to the installation of the Xtra 2829/10 motors and the Thunderbird 18 ESCs.  See Figure 10 for photos.  We will use the original brackets meant for the stock motors, combined with the screws from this kit.  Orientation of the motors in the nacelles is very important.  It is very difficult and causes issues if you try to run the wires on the underside of the motor mounts, therefore look at the pictures below for proper positioning.

I did the soldering of the wires from the motor to the ESC before putting the motor inside the nacelle. 

Figure 10:

Wiring and the Y deans cable

As you can see from the last photo, I've chosen to go ahead and use the bullet style connectors that came with the brushless motors.  This will make it easier to swap motors out if needed.  Try to strip back only at most about 1/4" of wire before soldering on the connectors.  You can basically heat up the connector where they go together, causing the solder to pool up in the little cup and then attach the wire.  The bullet ends go on the the battery wires coming off of the ESC.

In order to connect the two ESCS to the battery, it will be necessary to make a Y cable or adapter for the two sets of wires.  In this case its  a deans cable with male on the single end, for connecting to the battery deans and then two sets of male deans on the other end.  I used matching 26 gauge wire obtained from the local auto shop for the deans cable (same gauge that comes with the ESC).

Note that I used about 9" of this wire to make each ESC battery deans "end" for each ESC (figure 11).  It has been suggested that the total battery to ESC wire length not exceed 12 inches.  This can also go beyond 12 inches by using resistors or higher gauge wire.  In our application, combined with the actual Y cable, the length becomes more like 16" or so, but in testing it works fine, so we didn't worry about shortening the length.  The same rules apply with soldering on the wires to the deans connectors, I left about 1/4" wire bare, soldered that wire first (pre-tin), then using either a set of plyers or a vice grip (because the deans connector gets very hot) I then soldered the wire onto the appropriate positive and negative locations per Figure 11. 

TIP:  Be sure to use heat shrink on all soldered connections, you can obtain this from your local hobby shop or radio shack.  I also used some black electrical tape to make the bond even more secure.

Figure 11:

Gluing the motor mounts and tidying up the wires in the nacelle/wing section:

We then move onto putting the motors and the mounts in the nacelles.  Here we can use activator fairly easily, note the final position of the motor and prop/nut once glued (This position may vary, but balancing will be a little different) See Figure 12  Note:  It was necessary to cut away at some of the foam in the nacelle so the whole length of the motor mount would fit.  We also cut some of the foam where the ESC fits in and also applied some CA to ensure the ESC and the wires don't come loose, this included CA'ing the motor wires (via the electrical tape around them).  You can also see how we ran the wires in the wing panel and applied CA or hot glue in spots to secure those wires, leaving room for the wing insert. 

In Figure 12 you can also see the wing spar cover after its been glued.  I did not glue it via the instructions, I simply inserted the cover (after first etching out most of the spar covers extra foam, to fit the cover snugly with the wires below) then applied glue and accelerant in the cracks.  This worked well and there were no overly raised edges, it was nearly perfectly flush.

Figure 12:

Next... Wing wiring organization and the flight box lipo setup Assembly Part-5