RC-Aeromodeller: HobbyKing Aether 3.7 Review Part 3

Tail Section

The tail section remains mainly unchanged from V1. The vertical and horizontal stab are secured to the carbon fiber boom. The boom comes predrilled for this purpose.

The tail servo gets wrapped and glued with a small amount of Gorilla Glue to to the vertical stab servo cover. Alignment is important here so take your time and make sure the servo horns can be removed easily.

The servo cables can be easily routed through thew bottom of the assembly.
At this point is important plan how to route the servo cables all the way to the front.

The linkages provided need to be installed aligned properly and making sure that the holes in the horns coincide with the hinge line. The linkages provided are adequate. Is important to verify there is no play in the linkage.

The horizontal stab servo is not glued in place but secured with screws. The servo opening was too big for my servo so I had to add a small piece of hardwood on one side of the opening.
Again is a good idea to mock the installation and make sure that there is a good plan to route the servo cables to the front of the plane.

I attached the cradle to the horizontal stab using the hardware provided. Note that the screw holes are simple holes trough balsa. Some modelers may want to reinforce them with small carbon fiber tubes or at least soaking them in CA.

Is important to understand how the servo cables will make it inside the fuselage. My plan was to thread a string trough the pod openings and then pull the servo wires with it.

Here is where HobbyKing's provided hardware simply does not work. Given my servo the linkage is too long.
During this build I have tried to use the items provided exclusively but this is when I reached a stoping point. Given my servo I could not make this work. unless I moved the control horns way back. (which should have worked but I've always been told to keep the horn holes aligned with the hinge line)

Digging in my hardware left overs I found this linkage and it saved the day. The threaded rod provided by HobbyKing fits nicely into the linkage stopper.
It was a bit disappointed the provided hardware didn't directly work. But it was not a terrible thing. Those linkages are easily obtainable.

After the elevator linkage was acceptable I carefully removed it and went back to the task of mounting the horizontal stab cradle on the boom and routing the servo wires.
Initially I simply routed the cables to the back of the boom. Then moved on to gluing the horizontal stab craddle.

I used sandpaper to rough the carbon fiber tube in the area where the cradle would be glued.

The manual suggests using Epoxy but I used Gorilla Glue instead.

The Vertical stab screws and its concave cradle nicely align the Vertical stab. This is the reference to make the horizontal stab at right angles.

Since I'm using SBUS i attached both servo wires with a Y extension.
After the glue dried I inserted a piece of string with a small weight at the end through the tube (holding it vertically). And then used the string to pull out the extension through the tube to the front.