- Home Page
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- May 12, 2002
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- Build Your Own Paper Tail With Working Rudder on Hinges
- by "Mudman"
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- My buddy, Mudman, wrote in from
north of the border:
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- The paper fin might serve as a rough visual model to provide
us with an insight to the forces acting on the tail and rudder
assemblies. Hopefully, the model along with the photographs will
aid us in understanding the sequence of destruction of these
parts.
From doing this I think that the first bit to go was the top
of the rudder. If the rudder was hard to the left/port the stress
on the top of the rudder must have been immense, as you can see
once you make the model ... the top foot or so of the rudder
is above the last hinge and not supported. If you examine the
pictures you see that the top part of the rudder must have broken
away when hard to the left as indicated by the lateral tear where
the hinge is on the left side. The right side would have been
in compression and the left in tension, as indicated by the longer
piece of material on the left side.
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- If you give it a whirl ... let
us know what you think.
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- (1) Print the instructions
- (2) Print the Visual
Cut Out Guide (you may need to reduce your browser's Page
Setup size percentage to get the whole picture(s) to fit on one
page)
- (3) Print what will be
your tail assembly (this is the piece you will cut out)
- (4) It should look like this when you're done .... (sorry,
neither U.S. Read or Mudman provide technical support )
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- Please jump
to the U.S.Read Home Page where you will see more links to
Flight 587 stories.
- Submit
your email to the Editor. Please
provide your full name, city, and state. Thanks for your comments!