The past few years, for TD ships I've built removable G10 plug-in nose skegs. The blades weigh about .30 oz, which means that if I wanted to occasionally fly without one I'd have to add a bit of weight to the nose to compensate. In addition, they're kind of a pain to build and install.
Building a new ship now and thought perhaps using a 1/4" carbon tube, which would plug into a brass tube embedded in the nose and protrude about 1-1/2", would be a cleaner solution. The actual skeg weight is negligible (.05 oz) so flying without it would require no rebalancing, plus it's a near no-brainer to build. Might be just a tad less dangerous, too.
Anyone noted any detriments of using a carbon tube?
Kinda brittle. Make several.
A straw in the wind? Noisy and possibly lots more drag, noise is consumed energy in an audible form.
Try it, other than looking like a TD plane with a drippy nose/head cold, it might work just fine. ;-)
Bill
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