The unpacked Proud Bird is a very complete and high-quality ARF (above left), even including all the hook and loop you will need. The only miss is how poorly the color of the molded plastic pieces match the white MonoKote. Great
Finishing up the tail feathers includes mounting the vertical stab to the fuse with epoxy, followed by fitting the tailwheel wire to the rudder. The pin hinge on the tailwheel wire requires you to drill a hole in the fuse to accept it, and the rudder assembly is then glued into place. The Proud Bird is really coming together at this point and I found myself contemplating color schemes. The rudder and elevator servos are in-
stalled now, which in my case were also Futa- ba S3115’s. The pushrods are then run through their respective tubes and control horns are mounted. Note that the manual has you insert the pushrods into specific holes in the servo arms to get you the exact travel you need. Again, Great Planes’ engineering prowess shows through as everything lines up perfectly for zero-bind movement. Now it’s time to give the Proud Bird some teeth. Eight plywood motor mount spacers are included to get you the proper spacing no matter what your motor choice. In my case, I was provided with the more mild sport set- up (Electrifly Power 15). All eight plywood spacers are needed with this motor to get the required 2¾ inches of firewall to thrust washer spacing.
My Great Planes Silver Series 45-amp ESC was then hooked up and temporarily powered up to ensure proper prop rotation. The ESC is then held in place in the fuse with the included hook and loop straps. With this suggested sport setup no soldering is required, but that will vary with other mo- tors and ESCs.
Assembly of the landing gear is next. In
order to get the most aerodynamically clean design, there are no exposed wheel collars or screws. As such, it is a bit tricky to get each gear leg assembly together. I found a
Planes offers two power package options, with the sport option shown here (above right). Included is an Electrifly Rimfire .15 outrunner, 45-amp Silver Series ESC, 9–9 APC prop and Flight Power 3S 2,550 mAh Li-Po.
pair of hemostats to be the perfect tool for holding the axle nut in place while slipping the axle and wheel itself into place inside the pant. Once together, each gear leg as- sembly is screwed to the wing. What a super clean setup!
As you reach the final assembly stages you are now required to work with the molded plastic pieces. As noted earlier, these pieces were not very close in color to the covered portions of the airframe. After I trimmed each of the five plastic pieces, I decided to spray them in white paint to better match the MonoKote. While this may not bother a hardcore racer who may go through multiple airframes in a day of racing, I plan on keep- ing the Proud Bird in my stable for the long haul, hence the extra aesthetic effort. The two wing fairings are attached to the fuselage sides. How you attach them is up to you, but I chose to use medium CA. Now the wing can be bolted on and the belly pan glued into place. I used thin CA to wick into the joint between the pan and the wing. The cockpit area of the Proud Bird con- sists of three separate pieces; a cockpit floor, forward cockpit floor and the actual canopy. The cockpit floor is glued into place over the elevator and rudder servos as well as your receiver, so make sure everything is set up properly as access will be lost.
The forward cockpit floor goes in next. This piece needs to be removable for battery access. While the manual states how this piece will be removable is up to you, it also offers a suggestion which I used. Two small scrap pieces of the plastic that were trimmed away are glued to the fuse side- walls on one end. The front cockpit floor can then be squeezed at the front, slid under the cockpit floor, then locked in place under the
two scrap pieces. All of these pieces seemed overly complicated compared to a single hatch, but I was willing to wait and see how it performed in the field.
The gorgeous fiberglass cowl is now fitted.
It slides over both the fuselage and the front of both of the fuselage fairings until the proper spacing between it and the spinner backplate is achieved. It is an extremely tight fit and some sanding and trimming may or may not be necessary to slide it all the way on. Once in place, four holes are drilled through the cowl, fairings and ply- wood fuselage longerons for four wood screws.
The painted canopy is now fitted. It has a front tongue which slips under the rear lip of the cowl. Two magnets are glued into two plywood “donuts” which are then glued into the inside of the canopy. These lock into magnets already embedded into the fuse- lage sides. Some care must be taken here so as not to accidentally glue the hatch to the fuselage.
Lastly, the prop and spinner is fitted to the propeller shaft. I found that, with my provided sport setup and 9–9 APC prop, sub- stantial trimming was required of the spin- ner propeller slots to achieve a proper fit. And with that, the Proud Bird is ready to fly!
Unless you want an entirely white air- plane, how about some color? As the Proud Bird promises to be both fast and difficult to see, you may want to make it a bit more visible. For mine I decided to trim it in the can’t-go-wrong combination of MonoKote neon green and yellow, along with the prerequisite racing checkering. All of the added color was from stick-on trim sheets cut by hand from pencil drawn patterns.
The Proud Bird begins its road to flight with the attachment of the ailerons (above left). The wing halves are next joined together with epoxy (above center).
FLYING MODELS
Note the beefy carbon fiber wing tube and anti-rotation pin. The wing bolt plate is held in place with clamps while the ply servo tray is glued into place (above right).
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