The kit construction is guided by a photo-illustrated assembly manual (above left) which offers step-by-step building tasks through all of the facets of framing up the model. This V2 version of the kit offers excellent quality laser-cutting
Building the model The fuselage is put together with the aid
of “registration pins” consisting of two 21⁄2- inch nails and two fiber blocks. These very helpful tools make laminating the forward part of the fuselage an easy and accurate task and assist in squarely gluing the dou- blers in place. The registration holes in the fuselage are a bit disconcerting initially, but if the model is covered with an opaque cov- ering material they will be concealed. Since I chose to use transparent UltraCote Lite, they can be seen in the photos of the com- pleted plane. I take comfort in the fact that when the plane is 100 feet in the air, no one will notice!
The ply formers, battery tray, and firewall snap in place very accurately on one fuse- lage side, and then the second fuselage side is simply set in place over the substructure. Once the fuselage “box” is formed, the laser cut tail pieces and the landing gear mount can be installed very precisely in their pre- cut slots and glued in place. The two-piece wire landing gear fits accurately into the provided holes and is clamped in place with laser-cut ply straps screwed to the landing gear mount plate.
The tail surfaces are built over the plan with a combination of laser-cut pieces and excellent quality balsa strip wood. The con-
(above right) which allows the plane to be assembled accurately even by less experienced modelers. The kit is a combination of laser-cut parts and high quality balsa strip and sheet wood.
trol horns for the tail are laser-cut from 1⁄16- inch ply and fit precisely into pre-cut slots in the rudder and the elevator.
The tail wheel assembly was a bit differ- ent. The tail wheel wire was not pre-fabri- cated and had to be bent from a piece of .047 wire according to the plan and then inserted and epoxied into the rudder. The provided
soft foam tail wheel blank (approximately 3⁄32 inch thick) was to be faced with two small ply bushings and then placed on the axle portion of the tail wheel wire. Neither the instructions nor the plans addressed how the wheel pieces were to be held together in any substantial fashion, so after a couple of tries with different types of glue, I simply discarded it and used a spare plastic tail wheel I had on hand, holding it in place with a small wheel collar.
The eRC BL450S motor was an easy mount since elongated holes for several sizes of motors are pre-cut into the firewall. The plans call for the firewall to be braced on the front with cheek doublers. Being a “belt and suspenders” kind of guy, I added triangular stock to the rear as well, and fed the motor leads into the ESC/battery compartment through an elongated horizontal slot cut pro- vided in the bottom of the firewall. The ESC/battery hatch is a clever hook and magnet affair that clicks into place
with a satisfying sound and makes into a horizontally split windscreen by being faired into the fuselage top block. The hatch is assembled from laser-cut ply and does show its slot and tab construction through the transparent covering. A club- mate, seeing the assembly from a short dis- tance away, said it looked like it had been stapled together. As in the case of the reg- istration holes mentioned earlier, that will not be a problem if opaque covering is used, however.
The wing is nicely engineered to be both strong and warp-free, but does not sacrifice lightness in order to do so. The only unusual features are the use of vertical spar webs, di- agonal truss rib bracing and top sheeting— all on a relatively small wing to keep it strong, light and straight.
Built carefully, the wing should present no problems, even to a first-time builder, since the two panels are both completed be- fore they are joined together by a center ply rib and two locating dowels. I liked the pre- cut “hook” on front of the center ply rib that slips very accurately into a slot in the front fuselage former. The wing is held to the fuselage by the hook in the front and two long nylon bolts at the rear. With the joining of the two wing panels, the manual states, “This concludes the wing assembly.” Unfor-
These alignment tools, consisting of a right triangle and two “register pin” assemblies (above left) are supplied as part of the kit and are useful in creating
FLYING MODELS
an accurately assembled model. Here the two supplied “register pins” (above right) are used to accurately seat the laser-cut landing gear mount bracket.
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