Adding CF Rods

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Carbon Fiber comes in many different forms and sizes: tubes, rods, strips, ect. CF rods are commonly used to strengthen the wings. You may figure, the more you add the stronger it will be. Yes and No. The placement is more important than the amount or type of CF you use. Lets look at couple examples:

Most of the wing load will be near the tip of wings so you could think of it like this: holding the plane only by the wing tips, then adding some weight to center of plane. This would be the same effect as flying a heavy plane or doing high speed turns. (wing bow) Using the center of fuse (thickest foam) as the fulcrum point we can transfer some the wing load to center of fuse to make wings more rigid.

The (right) pic uses less CF rods and is twice as strong as the (wrong) pic. Not only stronger wings but stronger motor mount area too. So placement is important. When installing CF rods you want to be sure the plane is flat cuz once the glue dries wings will hold its shape. Lay plane on table top so bottom faces up, install the CF rods then find something to weight down the area just above the vertical fin slots on each side. You only need enough weight to hold the rear of plane flat to table as glue dries, I use 2 rubber sanding blocks for weight. Glue is only as strong as what you gluing it too and foam is far weaker than most any glue you use. I use regular Elmer's wood glue cuz its real ez to work with and cleans up with damp sponge. So you dont need to use high tech or expensive glues for the CF rods. If your running a heavy plane (over 3 + lbs) you should replace the 2 stock FG tubes in wings with CF rods. The most likely place for a wing to show stress flying a heavy plane would be the center of wing inline with the servo slots, replacing the FG tubes with CF rods will minimize the chances of breaking a wing.

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