EFlite Night Radian Servo Plate

thingiverse

The stock EFlite Radian and Night Radian have a less than ideal servo mounting setup, with short travel and long servo arms resulting in a unnecessary flex and a loss of control resolution (short servo travel uses only a fraction of available steps). This servo plate mounts a pair or regular or updated servos, measuring up to 28mm x 13mm each, side by side and more rigidly. The stock servo pocket in the foam needs to be enlarged (green rectangle in image), the original pocket for the elevator servo needs to be removed (blue rectangular area) and a small piece of foam added (green rectangle) for extra rigidity, glued in with E6000 or similar. Removal of the original servo pocket (blue area) also improves access for threading the wing LED wiring into place, which is otherwise a pain. If you are fitting this to a Night Radian i recommend making a small depression/channel in the rear wall and floor of the new servo pocket to run the wires for the tail and fuselage LEDs under the servos. I hot-glued the LED wiring to the floor of the pocket. The servo plate has four bosses for servo mounting screws. The holes are undersized (2.55mm) to be tapped out to 3mm threads. The rectangular feature on the vertical section of the plate is for servo wire egress. The servo plate should be glued in with E6000 or similar and left to dry for 24hrs before mounting servos. The servos swap positions so that the starboard side servo now drives the rudder and the port side servo drives the elevator. Shorter servo arms are necessary in order to fit within the bay (I cut down the stock HiTec arms to suit) but this is desirable in order to maximise the servo throw and use all the resolution available. If you balance the Radian/Night Radian correctly (about 3" to 3.25" CG position aft of leading edge at the root) then the control throws available (by selecting the correct linkage/control horn position) should be sufficient. Version 1 of the plate should fit standard Parkzone servos. Version 2 is updated for the HiTec HS-82MG servos and to provide a little more space for wiring egress. Thanks to https://www.thingiverse.com/clough42 for the inspiration, although i felt that this design goes beyond a simple remix as there are some comprehensive differences.