2 meter flying RC starship Enterprise

Step 7 Steering tail motor

To my experience a tail motor gives the best steering, better than using the main motors, and it is independent of the main motors position. The tail motor is yet another micro servo, glued to a piece of carbon rod. Actually I used rod with a rectangular section, but that is not required. The other end of the rod is sandwiched between a piece of foam sheet and some double side tape, before being stuck to the stern of the main hull. I attached a second, longer (40cm) rod to attach trimming weights (see next step), but actually it would even have been better to attach the motor to the long rod. Putting the motor more backwards would even be better for the steering.

The tail motor can be controlled by the electronics of a servo. But as this tends to give “restless” neutral position I use the following trick: I connect two servo electronics in parallel. Then I connect one motor lead from one board and one from the other board to the motor. By trimming both potentiometers I get a wider neutral gap (were both boards give the same polarity out of the used motorleads).