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The parts laid out on the table, I've used the packaging of the plane to work on. Was big enough for a work area.
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The manual. The are some problems with the manual, mainly the photographs which are B&W and very hard to see
the details on. For a novice foamie builder, definitely a challenge.
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I've used Foam Safe CA to glue the carbon rod to the elevator surface. I used foam safe accellerator to
insta-cure the glue.
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The elevator and stab glued together via the carbon rod. I later found out that hinges like this are uncommon
in foamies as most people simply tape the two together.
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The ailerons now glued to the wings. The depron wings are very flexible, I hope they do not induce flutter in flight.
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I've started work on the fuselage. The servo trays are made out of plastic and fit snugly into the fuse.
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The fueselage now mainly assembled. I've used a lot of CA to hold everything together. Hopefully this won't affect the balance of the plane.
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I've started assembling the rudder. It looks very fragile. I hope depron is sturdier than it looks.
By this time I've used over half of the CA.
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Rudder attached to the fuse. One of my many screwups of this plane, I didn't notice the proper alignment in the
manual and some of the hinges were off. It was a minor fix.
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I've glued the gears and carbon supports in place. More of my screwups, the mounts for the rods were in the wrong holes. I had to cut them out
and re-glue them in the proper position. It was a major screwup, and for a moment I seriously considered scrapping this
plane and building another. But, I don't give up SO easily, I went back to it moments later...
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I've fixed my screwups and mounted the "gears" on the plane. I can't see this plane taking off from grass or even
pavement, this is definitely an indoor takeoff plane. I saw a lot of planes without the gears, so I wasn't going
to even mount them, but I didn't want to upset the balancing of the plane, and it seemed that the gear rods were
acting as additionall structural support
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The plane fully glued, sans the motor mount. This is a VERY light plane, even the ceiling fan caused it to sway.
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The servos and electronics installed. This was a MAJOR pain in the ass, fitting the servos through the servo
trays. The rubber wire protector for the servo would not go through the tray, we ended up cutting the rubber off and
making the servo tray hole a little bit longer.
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I've glued supports for the fuselage on the plane. The manual for the plane is very inconsistent when it comes
to the supports. Even the front picture of the plane does not have them on, and when they are glued on, they
partially block the logos on the plane itself. It seems that these supports were added at a later time, perhaps
to add structural support after too many in-air breakaways.
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The engine mount doublers glued on, plenty of CA here. I accidentaly broke off a piece of the depron fuse
during this phase, but was able to glue it back on.
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Installation of the BEC enabled ESC was a breeze, Installing the motor mount seemed pretty straight-forward.
Unfortunately, I've lost the screws for the motor at some point and had to find matching screws from my collection.
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The Turmoil all completed. I've bought a 980mAh Li-Po pack for it, should give me 15 minutes of flight time.
If I find I fly this model often, I'll probably buy another pack.
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This plane took me approximately 16 hours to build (4 hours / day). Far above the adverised 2-3 hours assembly time.
I read the reviews of this plane and no one was able to finish it in the specified time frame.
While there were many screwups, I was able to salvage the plane every time. I really wish Great Planes would
do a better job on their manuals, but hey, cost is a factor eh?
I flew the plane few days after assembling the plane, it was a little bit of breezy, but the plane had no trouble
flying in it. However, I had not programmed the ESC properly and the engine cut out on me when I gave it full throttle.
I was in a hover which immediatelly caused the plane to plunge to the ground. I broke the gears off but amazingly
no actual depron was broken.
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