Construction:
I originally received this plane as an auction item for a flying event
for my club. I opened and inspected the plane to be just
totally impressed with the wood work and graphics. I promptly
put in my order that night to receive my own kit by the end of the
week. The winner of the auction was a friend of mine in the club and we
hope to get some video one day of us formation flying. The
construction is balsa and light plywood. It is built light
but strong. The graphics are very colorful and detailed down
to the panel lines, rivets and gas cap. It does NOT come with
Pilots but I had some Hanger9 pilots I used for mine. The
website says 40-50 but .40 nitro 2 stroke is more than powerful
enough and a .52 4-stroke would be more than plenty.
46 electric at 700W is way more than you will need and you
could get away with 32 electric no problem if you want true scale
speeds.
Build:
This built like any other arf. Epoxy the wing together with the
dihedral brace and glue in the horizontal stab and vertical fin.
Just like any other arf, you need to plan ahead and dry fit
everything. Thin CA for the hinges. As usually,
take
the time to plan out the tail wheel bend and where it will go in the
rudder in relationship to the control horn and hinge. Sometimes CMP
gives you measurements for the bending of the tail wheel wire and those
measurements lead it to run into the hinge or horn so plan it out.
Since I was flying off of grass that sometimes gets long and
the
ground clumpy, I raked the landing gear forwards. To do so, I put the
landing gear in a vice and bent it. I then cut the silver
strut
covers shorter to accomodate the angle. I attached the wheel
covers with 3M 4011 tape cut to shape and a single tapped screw.
The kit gives you a nut to use to hold down the canopy.
Instead, I purchased some rare
earth magnets from Harbor Freight.
I epoxied them double stacked in 4 groups. so 2 are stacked
together on the cockpit, and 2 are stacked together under the plywood
in the fuse. If you were to drill holes to match the magnets,
you
could mount them flush and not double stack them. Use wax paper to keep
the glue from sticking to the surface and then epoxy them in place.
(use some imagination here). This makes the loading
and
unloading the battery go quickly. I used originally all EXI
standard size servos, but later put in some Solar Servo D770 into the
aileron. Those servos have GREAT centering. You should drill
out
new holes in the control horn to match the clevises you use. Sometimes
I like to toss the ARF's clevises away and use Dubro instead.
Your hole in the control horn should allow the clevis to move
freely but not be oversized to the point it has slop. Any slop will
cause instabilty in the plane and it will not hold trim. Slop
in
the control surface of ANY aircraft is the enemy here. I
loaded a
Monster
Power 46, Volcano 80A ESC and a 5S Gens ace 3300mAh 25C battery.
(Note, I later damaged my Monster Power 46 by dropping the plane on the
motor bending the prop shaft, I had a spare prop shaft but decided to
test out the bigfoot 46 instead. To my pleasure, the Bigfoot
was
more efficient and smoother so it now has the bigfoot. I had
to
put 3 quarter ounce lead squares in the tail to balance it out to the
proper CG as noted in the manual.
Flying:
It took off and flew like a dream. Really stable. It flies
just
like it is, a tail dragger low wing trainer. Scale flying is
nice
but loops and rolls and other simple aerobatics is no problem with the
46 electric. I originally had an APCe prop but later put in a
wood Zinger prop (less efficient but loooked more scale). No unusual
tendancies and it still floats in for a nice landing. It is a nice
relaxing plane to fly and looks great in the air with the sun lighting
it up.
