Top layers of parts removed (above left) and the fuselage assembly as it came in the kit but removed from its protective bag. Highly finished and detailed and very light. Rear quartering view of two Nieuport 17s (above right) built from E-flite kits. The left one is far more elaborate with lots of additional detail and
ailerons. The one on the right is the stock kit-built aircraft. Battery retainer completed detail components (below left) and the eye fasteners found at the hardware store. The completed battery retainer assembly (below right) and 720 mAh 2-cell flight pack used in this review.
spiration to keep a project like this going you might try the recent movie Flyboys that was released in 2006 which features several re- productions of Nieuport 17s that were built specially for the movie. If you can get past the use of Richthofen’s markings being used on almost all the Dr.1 triplanes in the movie and a few other movie making liberties, it is very well done and captures many of the re- alities of an aviation still in its infancy, but growing fast during the grim realities of WW I. In fact, you will probably want to find a
copy of the 2-disc DVD if you can. The sec- ond disk is a treasure trove of information on the Lafayette Escadrille and other as- pects of the making of the film. There is also a very good article in the October 2006 issue of AOPA Pilot magazine starting on page 121 on the making of this film and some of the surprises the flying of these reproduc- tions posed. Back to the review. The contents of the package were all neatly laid out and easy to inventory. Wings, tail surfaces and fuselage are all formed from a Depron® type foam and some vac-u-formed styrene plastic and all beautifully painted and pre-finished and protected in their separate plastic bags. So foam friendly CyA and epoxy adhesives will be a must. This model will also be much
FLYING MODELS
more susceptible to the tearing and break- ing kind of damage than the EPP type foam models are and so the model is a bit like bal- sa and tissue in that it is a brittle construc- tion material. The thin cambered airfoil also means that
the thread rigging is not just for looks. It is structural and that also means the model cannot be easily broken down for transport. Once assembled and flyable it will need to stay that way. Because of this characteris- tic, you will want to build some sort of stor- age and transport container for your fin- ished model to preserve it in pristine flying condition. Because the instruction manual is very
easy to read and comprehensive, I will only go over the trouble spots I ran into with this kit, otherwise everything is straight from the kit and right according to plans. Origi- nally my plan had been to set up the model with a E-flite Park 300 brushless motor that I already had along with some Hitec HS 50 feather servos, but as I started reading the very comprehensive instruction manual and making some measurements I quickly came to the conclusion that my original plan would only lead to folly. The motor was meant to be of a smaller
size and meant to be mounted in an entire- ly different way than I was used to. The ser-
vos also would need to be the ones specified in the instructions as the mount for the mo- tor went right beneath the servos and would just barely clear the bottoms of the E-flite S- 60 servos specified. I would be able to use the 10-amp ESC
and full range receiver as planned, along with the 720 mAh 2-cell battery packs used on my K.I.S.S., but that would be about it. This airplane was a tight fit both from a space and c.g. limits point of view and would have to be built mostly to specification to meet its promise and yield the most satisfy- ing result for the average builder and the most trouble free and flyable model. So I proceeded to follow the instructions
as closely as possible with the only devia- tions being to make the model more robust and serviceable. Notice also that the motor, servos, ESC, Rx, battery and most of the other “dense” components are located up as far forward as possible in the very short nose of this aircraft. This was done for a rea- son. The full sized aircraft was also this way and if you want to have any hope of getting this aircraft to balance correctly you will need to keep everything up front. Resist the temptation to add a lot of decoration aft of the c.g. and you will be well on your way to success. As an aside, I ran across another modeler
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