Unboxing

Kit arrived in the mail well packed and ready to build!


Fairly unexciting. Parts are all laser cut and inventory check found nothing missing.


 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Crash and rebuild

Image
Maiden flight went by without any problems. No trim needed and the Four Star flew wonderfully as promised. The only issue I have is a short flight duration that I intend to fix sometime with a high capacity 3S. During the end of my forth flight, during my landing approach, I misjudged my air speed and stalled while turning into the final leg. The plane top-stalled and plummeted 40 or 50ft through the trees. Luckily, she fell all the way down and did not get stuck on one of the higher branches as some planes at the club do. Damage was minimal to the fuselage; only a torn landing gear. The right wind panel took to brunt of the fall and was severed to the right of the aileron servo After consulting with an experience club member I set out to rebuild the wing by stripping all the covering and "grafting" the missing section from scratch       I sanded and re-covered the wing and the Four Star is ready to take the air again!
Read more

Wings

Image
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
Read more

Fuselage and empennage

Image
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....
Read more