Four Star 20EP kit by SIG

With an AUW of 2.3Lb I chose to use a 313W motor that is slightly more powerful than the kit's recommendation of a 250W motor. I found a suitable motor on Amazon.com, combined with a 40A ESC, that fit my requirements of power and weight with the following specs: Voltage range: 7.4V to 14.8V (2S to 4S LiPo) Kv: 1,100 Io: 1.6A @ 12V Max current: 30A Rm: 0.05 ohm Weight: 86 grams Motor attachment to the fuselage followed the kit building instruction manual. I fit two blind nuts between the 1/4" motor spacers and added 3/4" standoffs to achieve the 2 5/8" clearance between propeller and cowl: The ESC fit above the battery plate, and for balance I positioned the battery about 1" behind F1: Receiver (FlySky FS-iA6B), elevator and rudder servos (Hitec HS-81 Micro Servos) fit nicely in the compartment above the wings: Aileron servos attached as called for in the plans without any modifications: The completed plane with cowl (spray painted) and spinner removed to achieve

I was looking around for a nice covering scheme. I finally settled on the color combination of white, black, and neon lime. I saw this scheme on a Stick by Dancing Wings Hobby and decided that I would use it on my Four Star instead of the all-yellow and traditional stickers. This is what the Dancing Wings looks like: I loosely based my covering design on the STICK. The changes I've made include a checkerboard patters for the bottom of the wings and less elaborate contours. Wing top and bottom Fuselage and empennage Complete model

I started this section with the empennage. Elevator halves connected with 1/16" wire link: The fuselage is a straightforward "box" build. Formers glued to the top cover, then side panels, and finally bottom cover. The forward section formers, and turtle back are next. This is my dry fit of top cover, formers and side panels: While building the fuselage I read about modifications that others have done. Most of the mods involve moving the battery hatch to the top of the fuselage instead of the small access hatch at the bottom. I had built a stand for my planes to use at the field so laying the plane bottom side up is not an issue for me, so I decided to leave the hatch as designed. However, I did some research about battery sizes and weights to get a sense of which 3S LiPo batteries I might be able to fit into the battery compartment. Batteries in the range of 2,200mAh to 3,200mAh will require a minimum clearance (in millimetres) of 17Hx32Wx102L to maximum of 28Hx44Wx131L.

This is the first time I'm building a laser cut balsa kit. The manual seems to be very detailed including pictures and a full size plan. The only issue I have is the mismatch between measurements on the plan vs. the actual part layout and size. However, using the plan as a guide seems to be sufficient and the wing panel build was easy. I use my magnet board and a few of my LiPo batteries to weigh things down when needed. I am not using  Aliphatic wood glue and no t CA as directed by the build manual. This required me to glue he wing panel in stages instead of a complete dry fit before a CA gluing stage. The part were sometimes not snug enough, so the wood glue was a better choice. I think that for a good CA bond all parts must be snug against each other. Complete wing panels before sanding: Wing panels attached with dihedral brace before and after sanding

Kit arrived in the mail well packed and ready to build! Fairly unexciting. Parts are all laser cut and inventory check found nothing missing.