The SIG Kadet Senior Sport EG ARF kit has a very complete hardware package (above), including all necessary mounts, fittings and instructions for setting up either an electric or nitro version. The flying surfaces (at right) are covered in transparent and opaque Oracover and are set off nicely by painted wheel pants and a fiberglass cowl.
Assembling the Kadet As a frame of reference, this plane is the
fourth Kadet I have owned—two by way of building high-quality SIG kits and the third assembled from the original ARF offered some ten years ago. This version resembles the first three in terms of the structure of the flying surfaces, but is decidedly different in the construction of the fuselage and some other components like the landing gear. More of that as we encounter the fuselage later in the assembly process.
SIG’s manuals are known for their easy- to-read and fully-illustrated format that take you step-by-sequential-step through the assembly process. This one is no differ- ent. It is complete and offers an amazing amount of help in selecting components for the electric version. SIG even details appro- priate size motors by brand name, ESC matches for those motors and recommended battery sizes and propellers to make your electric version a success—even if it’s your first electric model.
After re-tightening the covering, I test fit the wing panels by sliding them onto the aluminum wing joiner tube and then push- ing the panels together. The fit was excep- tional and the root ribs ended up butting to- gether perfectly. This is not always the case with some other ARFs.
Next I installed the aileron servos, aided by strings provided in each panel to pull the aileron servo wires and their required exten- sions through the interior of each wing. The only small glitch was that I needed to enlarge
the servo hole openings a bit using a sanding paddle. The Futaba S3004 servos that I used throughout were slightly too large. I used the sanding paddle again to enlarge the servo mount holes in the fuselage. It may be that some standard servos are marginally smaller than the outside case of the Futabas, so test fit the servos you will be using before enlarg- ing the openings unnecessarily. Like all of the other control surfaces, the ailerons have their hinge slots cut and matched to their adjoining flying surfaces, but they are not yet glued in place. The man- ual suggests sliding the hinges into the con- trol surface and then using two pins to keep each hinge centered as they are mated to their respective flying surfaces and anchored with thin CA. That technique works well for hinging all of the control and flying surfaces, but be sure to follow the hinging sequencing directions, particularly where the fin, rud- der, and tail wheel are concerned. The aileron control horns and pushrods are all external and provided no difficulty when setting up the aileron servos, particu- larly since the holes for the control horns are already accurately drilled into hard- wood anchor blocks. The aileron pushrods are threaded on one end for a metal clevis with a locking nut, and are bent at a right angle and clipped off before being held to the servo arm with nylon snap keepers on the other.
After completing the wing panels, I slid them together again and test-fit them to the fuselage. Mine lined up perfectly—including
the wing bolt holes. I did, however, have to re-glue the nylon wing bolt anchor nuts. They popped loose as I removed the wing bolts after the test fitting.
For those of us used to building two sides
of a Kadet fuselage and then putting it to- gether in a box form with 1⁄4 square cross pieces, well, forget about all of that. The new fuselage is made of laser-cut ply and balsa parts that interlock with each other to give an exceptionally strong, yet light fuselage. To get a sense of how everything in the fuse- lage fits together like a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle, study one of the flight photos that shows the plane in profile. Even though it looks a little different regarding its con- struction techniques, everything goes to- gether in typical ARF fashion as we start bolting and gluing parts to it.
Speaking of which, assembling the main landing gear comes next using heavy gauge hardware and nicely
finished fiberglass
wheel pants that really class up that entire assembly. One of the most often employed modifications of previous Kadet Senior mod- els was changing out the original tricycle landing gear for a traditional two mains and a tailwheel arrangement. That’s already been done for you with the Kadet Senior Sport, using a nicely pre-painted heavy duty aluminum gear, dense foam wheels, and the wheel pants.
The whole landing gear assembly gets bolted to a pre-drilled plywood plate securely an- chored on the bottom of the fuselage. However, a word of caution here. Make sure the T-nuts
The Kadet features a two-piece wing for easy transport, joined by a sturdy aluminum tube (above left) that slides into accurately cut plywood channels in both wings. A protruding plywood tab in the front and nylon wing bolts at the rear
FLYING MODELS
hold everything in place when the wing is mounted to the fuselage. Aileron servos are housed in pre-cut openings (above right) in the bottom of each wing. Pre-installed strings assist in pulling the servo leads through each wing.
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