PHOTOGRAPHY: DICK SARPOLUS
With the holes already in the elevator and rudder for the control horns (at left), it is easy to bolt them in place. The wire pushrods are provided in the correct length, easy to install. The aileron and flap servos are attached to the bottom of the removable hatches (above), giving a very clean appearance to the airplane.
I’ve had some not so good experience with ARFs that came with a minimum of instruc- tions and/or information about the airplane. Even though the airframe is completely built, all the radio equipment, hinges, con- trol horns, control linkages, engine mount- ing, fuel tank, landing gear, must be in- stalled. That’s a lot of bolts, nuts, clevises, control horns, hinges, screws, pushrods, etc., to be handled. Everything to be done, every piece of hardware to be used, is covered in Hangar 9’s instruction manual; it is 51 pages long, with plenty of close-up photos. It’s in four languages, I only needed the English, but that’s fine. The one thing that so impressed me with this “kit” was the attention to de- tail; they don’t leave anything questionable, they tell you how to do it.
The first assembly step is to install the control surface hinges, and I used a small, very sharp scalpel type modeling knife to trim the covering a bit around the hinge slots, to be sure I could get the CA glue in the right places to secure the hinges. The only real airframe assembly is to epoxy the
horizontal stab and vertical fin into the fuse- lage, and it’s best to do that with the wing panels mounted to the fuselage so the tail surfaces can be lined up properly. On my airplane, that was easy to do; the parts fit near perfectly.
A nice feature is the removable one-piece canopy and top hatch assembly; it slides for- ward and lifts up to remove, and is held in place with two strong magnets. When off, the entire radio gear installation is visible and accessible. The two wing panels slide on over an aluminum tube spar and butt up against the fuselage, the aileron and flap servo leads are plugged in, and the wing panels are held in place with two allen head bolts. These bolts are metric, they’re small, and I went to the local hobby shop to get ad- ditional bolts—I just knew I’d be dropping and losing one, sooner or later.
I used Spektrum A6060 digital servos; they fit right into the servo cutouts in the airframe. Also used was a Spektrum AR7010 7-channel receiver, as it would bind to my Spektrum DX-7 transmitter that I’ve been flying with for the past few years. As
was recommended I used a 2-cell 6.6V 1100 mAh Marathon Orion Li-Fe pack to power the electronic ignition. As this was my first Li-Fe pack, I bought a new charger, a Hitec X4, to handle the Li-Fe charging. For the ra- dio system, I had a bunch of well proven Ni- Cd packs and used one of them. Nylon engine mounts were provided, and I drilled the beams for the Evolution .60 gas engine. I had a little trouble with the wire pushrod to the throttle arm on the carbure- tor, and drilled a new hole higher up in the firewall for the pushrod to head to the carb. With a little bending of the pushrod and testing, it worked out fine.
The fuel tank is provided with three lines, but I pinched one line off on both sides of the tank stopper. I’m used to filling through the engine feed line and discon- necting the muffler pressure line for over- flow when filling the tank. A fuel filter is used in the line between the tank and the engine; the engine instructions remind us that less gas than glow fuel will be needed, so clean fuel to prevent clogging anywhere is even more important.
The removable fuselage top hatch allows easy access (above left) to all the equipment inside. Seven servos are required. The Evolution 10 cc gas engine
FLYING MODELS
(above right) looks like a typical glow engine, but has a gasoline carburetor, spark plug, and electronic ignition. It burns low cost gasoline.
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