Cleaning Lines

[Peter in Fairfax, VA]

Is there a need to clean or lubricate lines, the standard stranded type?  If so, how?

[John Leidle]

  Peter ,
  If you run your lines out with a paper towel with some Rainex on the towel you will be shock to see the black gunk that comes off. The gunk can & will make them sticky .
     John L.

[FLOYD CARTER]

Unless you fly on fresh, gooey asphalt,  alcohol and exotic cleaners are not necessary.  Paper towel and water will be quite adequate.

[Brett Buck]

Is there a need to clean or lubricate lines, the standard stranded type?  If so, how?

   Certainly, clean them. I prefer lacquer thinner in general, and that is more likely to get the normal oil and tar off the lines. Clean them at least every other practice flight, and every single official flight. Lacquer thinner is better than acetone because it lasts long enough to actually still be present by the time you get to the handle. Use a clean paper towel (Bounty "Select-a-size" preferred) every time. Occasionally they will get something water-soluble on them, so use alcohol to clean that, but follow it up with lacquer thinner so no water is left behind.

   If you haven't been cleaning your lines, then you will be shocked at what comes off. For really dirty lines, I use the "flood method" , pouring the thinner on fast enough to keep the paper towel saturated to rinse off the crud. Then clean normally ( wet spot on a paper towel ).

   No lube.

     Brett

[Dan McEntee]

  Peter ,
  If you run your lines out with a paper towel with some Rainex on the towel you will be shock to see the black gunk that comes off. The gunk can & will make them sticky .
     John L.

     My son tried the Rain-Ex treatment when he was a Jr/Sr flier, and I think they made his lines more sticky. It's actually some kind of wax or coating for your windshield, and while water may be repelled, I don't know about grease, oil and dirt.  Watching him fly with those lines made me tell him to clean them with alcohol only. Solids are a whole nother story! Lots of war stories on here and Stuka about what guys go through to keep solids clean and not get sticky! It's enough to drive you to Spectra lines!!!
    Type at you later,
     Dan McEntee

[Dan McEntee]

^^

Another thing about lines, Tom Morris  showed me that removing the lines at the handle and wiping them toward the plane takes out the windup that tends to come into the lines
[/quote]

    Hey Ty;
    Just rereading this, and do you actually have to run down the line from handle toward the model? The lines have no way to untwist. If you unhook from the handle, and run the lines from the lead outs to the handle end, then the line will be able to untwist. It's amazing what happens to what you THOUGHT was a nicely wound set of lines until you get them out again to use them!!
    Thanks a lot,
    Dan McEntee

[Trostle]

I would strongly NOT recommend Rainex.  Back when there was a movement to use stainless lines, there were searches to find something to use on the stainless lines to make them useable in high humidity or rainy weather.    I think what was found, at least in my experience and hearing from others, one application of Rainex worked great.  If that worked so good, then another application should be better.   

WRONG!

That second application made the lines stick even when there was no rain or moisture on the lines (like from laying on a wet pavement or wet grass).  The consensus is that if two applications are not good, the first application is not so good either.  It does leave a coating on the lines and will build up and the stuff is hard to remove.   Like it takes steel wool to get rid of it.

Brett's solution to use lacquer thinner is by far the best.  He does not recommend acetone, but acetone does work if the cleaning pad is well saturated for the whole duration of running down the lines.

You will be surprised on the amount of material that builds up on the lines, from flight to flight, whether on solids or stranded lines.  There is no such thing as lines that are too clean.

Keith

[Brett Buck]

Brett's solution to use lacquer thinner is by far the best.  He does not recommend acetone, but acetone does work if the cleaning pad is well saturated for the whole duration of running down the lines.

   Oh, certainly, my problem is that it always evaporates before I get to the other end. Otherwise, anything in the lacquer thinner/acetone family is the way to go, better than alcohol/water (ionic solvents) and better than oily covalent solvents like Stoddard solvent/mineral spirits. Or, as some people use, *fuel* which has both alcohol and oil!

   In any case, they get absolutely filthy pretty quick in most conditions, and cleaning them until the paper towel comes out clean, I consider mandatory. By the way, while it should be obvious, I once assisted a *very highly experienced* modeler, whose name you would certainly recognize, who was complaining that his (stranded) lines were still feeling sticky, even after he cleaned them. Seemed hard to understand, but then I saw he was using a rag that looked like it was found in the dumpster at Jiffylube - absolutely black. I said, "hey <<Mr famous name>>, try using a fresh paper towel"  About 10 passes and half a can of lacquer thinner later, clean, and hey, guess what, it doesn't hunt any more.

   Stainless solids, that's another story, I tried everything and then gave up, as have most people. ANYTHING, repeat, ANYTHING left on the surface will cause it to either lock together, or drag. The two things that I put on them that didn't drag them up - graphite powder and dry teflon spray, won't last an entire flight. Real music wire is better at not hard-sticking than the super-polished stainless, but it's a huge pain to keep from rusting - without, again, using something like oil, which makes them draggy.

    Brett

[John Leidle]

  Found in the dumpster at Jiffy Lube     

[John Park]

As always, Brett is dead right - cellulose thinners is best.  Back in the old days, we used to clean our Laystrate lines with a rag dipped in a motorcycle's fuel tank. This sort of worked, but I seem to recall somebody once using a BSA Bantam for the purpose: the Bantam was a two-stroke, and the fuel was a 1:16 oil/petrol mix.  After a couple of loops, control was, shall we say, distinctly limited.

[Perry Rose]

I have been flying electric and glow powered planes for a few years now. I asked the question here someplace why does the electric planes lines get as dirty as the glow engines lines? Still no answer. But both sets of lines get just as dirty after only two flights. I fly off grass. I use a small piece of cloth and alcohol. Most of the heavy black stuff is on the first 30  feet of the lines, starting at the plane.

[John Miller]

Perhaps because of Static charges building up on the lines during flight.

John Miller

[john e. holliday]

After reading this I go back to the days when I first started flying with the Flying Eagles of KCK.  Was told to wipe lines down with a clean dry rag.   As you walk the lines out getting ready to fly.   Later years while fly with a person I flew with said that was a good idea as you are not removing any kind of lube may have gotten during manufacture.  Of course with my skill I just make sure lines are not twisted while walking them out and can't tell if they are dragging/stiff until I do about a dozen loops in one direction.

[Brett Buck]

After reading this I go back to the days when I first started flying with the Flying Eagles of KCK.  Was told to wipe lines down with a clean dry rag.   As you walk the lines out getting ready to fly.   Later years while fly with a person I flew with said that was a good idea as you are not removing any kind of lube may have gotten during manufacture.  Of course with my skill I just make sure lines are not twisted while walking them out and can't tell if they are dragging/stiff until I do about a dozen loops in one direction.

   That is possibly true/relevant with music wire solids. however, it's not just a matter of not stripping the manufacutring oil, it's accumulating other oils, dirt, etc. so you *have to* clean it with something, and that will probably inevitably remove anything beneficial, too.

   You *do* have to do something to lube or otherwise protect the music wire lines from rust, so at the end of a flying session, some sort of oil seems mandatory, or the next time, they will be a nice bright orange. But, you have to remove it before flight because it makes the lines draggy .

   SS lines don't care about this too much, they have other issues. All this is why almost everyone has long since *given up* on solid lines of any type for stunt, too much hassle and the occasional lockup can be disastrous.

     Brett

[Howard Rush]

I lived near John in those days and used solid lines because they were only 70 cents a set.  I finally got some stranded lines, $2-something a set, and thought they were pretty fancy.