Hercules Tailplane setting

[hobby]

Can a member please tell me whether, from a side view, the tailplane of the C-130E/H is set higher than the wing?
I have no good drawings of the Hercules and searching the images on the web has not helped.

In some photos the chord line of the tailplane appears to be level with the leading edge of the wing, in other views the tailplane appears to be a little higher or lower than the wing. Difficult to judge because the wing slopes down from leading to trailing edge at the angle of wing incidence.

It would be useful to know what the vertical difference in ft &inches is between the leading edge of the wing at the fuselage joint and the leading edge of the tailplane at the fuselage joint.

[Garry Russell]

Hi James

There is a Hercules three views on post #2 of this thread

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthre ... 1&t=557457

[hobby]

Thanks Garry.
I have printed out an enlarged image and both wing and tailplane chordlines appear to be at the same height above the groundline.
The drawing you pointed out to me is better than the images I had previously found.

Somehow the FS9 Hercules model I am working with does not seem to match the shape that appears on the screen - e.g. I have had to move the nav lights position 'forward' in the aircraft cfg to make them appear at the correct places when the aircraft appears on the screen.

The refrence point of the aircraft when unzipped (poss the CofG) does not appear to be in the position I expected and that has the result of making the CofG when seen in the FS9 Aircraft "fuel and load" diagram appear forward of the wing box. Most FS9 acft that fly well in the simulator have the CofG about 25-30% from the leading edge of the wing box. Perseverance and a bit of fiddling the numbers needed to ensure the proper 'sit' of the aircraft on approach at the real world speeds.

Many thanks for your help.

[Garry Russell]

Pleasure James

The position 0f 25-30 percent back from the LE is correct for an FS model if not it will be difficult

Another common error is the tailplane of the flight model too high or too low relative to the visual model also thrust lines are often in the wrong place causing the model to pitch up when power is reduced and down on application...in other words opposite to what it should be.

FDE's are often the Achilles heel of a model.