So, the silver P-38 sitting on my bench has one flap servo that appears to have the servo arm incorrectly installed. See my previous post on this topic for details. Motion RC P-38 – outboard flap issue
I was gathering the necessary tools to slice into the plane as described but decided to do a bit more research and found that others had pulled other servos out of the P-38 and reported that they were glued to the paint, not directly to the foam. This gave me a bit more confidence that it would come out without tearing up the foam.
My first thought was that I would have glued the servo in directly to the foam… which would have made this worse… so good thing no one asked me! So with this new information I went back to the shop and made a careful incision all around the edges of the servo where any glue might be holding it and then with a pair of pliers I just grabbed on and started yanking and wiggling…
As advertised… the paint stuck to the glue and thus to the servo but the foam is largely undamaged. With this I was easily able to then remove and replace the arm into the correct position and things then lined up nicely!! Another hurdled cleared. Glad I didn’t get in a rush about cutting into that wing!
We are now much closer to flight on these two birds and I’m starting to get back closer to the initial excitement to fly them that I had when we placed the order. Just another session or two at the bench to get all the throws and rates set up and we should finally be in a flight worthy status… just in time to wait on the weather…