Humidity

[shoujolivia]

Speaking to alumni of Wright Stuff,
When taking your planes out-of-state to competition, do you encounter any difficulties with humidity levels?
If so, how do you combat the humidity difference?
Thank you!

[bernard]

Going to less humid areas, tissue covering may shrink as it dries and cause unwanted warping. If you use tissue covering, consider making it a little slack or have a more rigid wing/stab frame. When going to more humid areas, tissue may expand, causing slack, probably no unwanted warping unless your original tissue's tightness was giving a wanted warp...

I'm guessing humidity isn't a problem with film covering, but temperature changes can cause stretching/contracting of film. Use a hairdryer on your film and you'll see it stretch easily.

And if humidity affects wood, your posts for adjustable incidence or attachable tail boom or any other clever use may shrink causing a loose fit. Not sure about how much humidity affects wood though, so hopefully someone knowledgeable can say...

[DoctaDave]

As far as my experiences go, I have not experienced any changes to the structures of my models because of humidity. I've flown models more sensitive and delicate than the SO models in the 90% humidity of New Jersey and the dry heat of California without having any issues of expansion etc. I do recommend retrimming the model when you enter a new flying site anyways.

Higher temperature can cause the rubber to release more energy though and in turn cause longer flights.

[Less_Incidence]

Extremely drastic changes in humidity can sometimes affect the weight of the model, but as long as you build your model a bit underweight and ballast it up, you can remove ballast to bring it back down to weight in high humidity very easily. I'd imagine that the effect on a Wright Stuff plane would be almost negligible.

As far as components shrinking and posts/attachment points changing, I've never had an issue with that nor do I know anyone who has.