FT Explorer nose balance mod.

 Hello! This article is to put my FT explorer nose mod out for people to see. I created the mod to make the plane balance without adding lots of weight. This uses leverage to change the CG. I hope this can solve or at least help tail-heaviness issues in a FT explorer, or inspire someone to try something new.

 I scratch-built my FT Explorer and was balancing the plane when I found a problem.

    The 2200 was all the way forward, and the plane was so tail-heavy, it looked like an invisible cinderblock was pushing the tail down!

   How my mod started:  Me being cheap, I didn't want to buy pushrods. I used thicker, heavier wire than is usually used for pushrods. This is the major part of the tail-heavyness issue. The smaller part is that I made the plane out of Elmers foam board. (Elmers is heavier than DTFB) I wanted to make it out of DTFB, but I didn't want fifty sheets of foam from FT.  Although, if I had 50 maybe I could build a FT explorer capable of carrying me......       But anyway, I started thinking of a way to balance the plane. I figured I could tape a bunch of lead on the nose, or elongate the nose, giving me more room to push the battery forward, and using leverage to counteract the tail! NOTE: Pushing the battery forward may require a longer battery lead than you have. If you attempt to do this, please make sure your battery and ESC will be connectable.

Build

I started by cutting the battery/electronics tray (part no. 2) off at the edge of the fuse. The blue line in the pic is where I cut.

 I then made a 10cm extention of the base, and 10cm extension to the back of the nose.

 I cut two balsa beams and glued them down to the electronics tray to provide a flat surface, making sure I built the tray square and true. The balsa also provides support and strength. You could use paint stirrers  or really anything light and stiff instead of balsa beams. Even better would be to add 10cm before cutting the part out of foam, and getting rid of the breaks. The flatter the better because this is where you might want to velcro your battery.

 I then glued everything together and presto. The 2200 all the way forward makes the plane a little past neutral on the nose-heavy side.

       So that is how I got my FT Explorer to balance without adding lots of wheight.  Please comment and give suggestions, and take this idea farther.