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The Blade XL, an EPP foam 3D plane is large, light and from all evidence flies well. This “kit” came from Northeast Sailplanes, aka Sal. Even though it’s an ARF (Almost Ready to Fly) it is not a plane to be assembled without some experience. Things could go wrong for anyone without knowledge of EPP, hook ups and an ability to improvise.

The kit I received had a decoration scheme I truly didn’t like. I began work on the plane by painting it with many coats of white spray paint; it barely covered the sinful color scheme. I’d rather fly heavy than have a plane not look so good; say no more.

The nose was rebuilt with a 5/16″ diameter carbon tube inserted through the front of the fuselage for reinforcement. Probing into the rear of the fuselage I found that some plugs in the rear bulkheads had not been removed. When I took them out I was trying to figure out how to improve the front, firewall of the plane. One of the plugs fit perfectly onto the nose and so was epoxied in place to act as a backup for the fiberglass firewall; it gave the plane a porcine aspect (however, hopefully, it will fly like a bird). The motor, a Hacker A30-12XL was mounted on the kit firewall and rubber banded into place, the bands looping around the 5/16″ carbon tube through the front end.

Most of the plane was assembled according to the instructions with very few changes though due to the translation, it was a struggle. The Hacker will be powered by a 4S 2100 TP Prolite pack controlled by a Jeti 40 amp opto controller. A Ubec will feed the receiver from the flight pack. The propeller for first flights will be an APC 14 x 7E. The receiver is a Berg 5 channel controlling ailerons, elevator and rudder.

There are too many unfinished projects in my workshop. Items No. 7 & 8 are being worked on actively. My plans are to expand on their assemby here, with pictures, as work goes forward. Here’s the list:

1 - An RBC kit from the Netherlands of a model called the Microbe. It’s a small takeoff on a Clancy Speedy Bee. It’s covered and just needs final assembly and painting.

2 - A rebuilding of Tom Hunt’s Ellipstik as ARFed by Sal at NES. I bought it from Tom, warped and holey; after straightening it out I started to recover it but it’s on a shelf.

3 - Two Zagis with modified wing structure. One to be a pusher (like the stock Zagi) and the other a tractor (as an experiment).

4 - An old timer, a Quaker Flash, “shrunk”, from a Flyline Kit - waiting to be covered.

5 - A flat foamie original 3D type design, ready to assemble and finish.

6 - An Aveox Embat - built and partially assembled, ready to cover.

7 - A Blade XL with the world’s ugliest predone decoration scheme. It’s progressing slowly with light coats of white Krylon H2O and alcohol based white spray primer being applied to tone down the original paint.

8 - An Eflite MiniFuntana, slowly but surely coming together. The motor mount has been a major project, installing a Mega 16/15/3 in a ModelAirTech belt drive gear box (3.33:1). Some day it will fly, hopefully soon.

9 - A scale model of a German 1930’s low wing trainer, the Klemm 125(?). It’s all framed up but in the intense flurry of building it I invented an impossible Rube Goldberg contraption to direct the controls of the tail feathers. The model was put aside until sanity returned but so far it’s still out of town.

10 - The smaller Pulsar glider with a vee tail has been flown but suffered a bit from an encounter with a tree. It’s undergoing repairs, epoxy is setting and it will be airborne again, soon. It’s powered by a Razor 2500 with a 4.4:1 gear box with a 9″x 6″folding propeller. It goes up real well, glides, glides, glides and finds thermals all by itself. The damage it suffered in the crash was surprisingly light.

My latest building project is Gary Wright’s Mini E3D. The kit was started a few weeks ago and has progressed to covering. How was the kit? Just fine except for a few little things involving the fuselage side balsa, the strip wood and a few places that had to be watched to ensure an accurately built framework.

The two fuselage sides were made from very different pieces of balsa. One side was stiff, heavy “C” grain and the other was very light and soft “A” grain. After testing them alongside each other for stiffness, some thin CA was run along the length of the “A” grain piece and hit with accelerator. That stiffened it up considerably. Assembling the fuselage required close attention to keeping it straight and aligned. In spite of that attention it came together a bit off but some soaking in acetone loosened things up and allowed it to be trued. Lesson learned: The stabilizer should be aligned with the wing before the fuselage is finally glued together.

The strip wood was quite curvey but there was enough with the kit and in the backup bins (Thank you, Aerocraft) to overcome what could have been a frustrating experience. Even wood that looked straight when picked soon warped in the summer humidity.

The paper/phenolic tubes that support the aluminum wing connecting tube allowed the wing to be twisted and for the twist to be held long enough to glue in an undesireable warp. Again, acetone loosened things up so the warp could be removed; the situation was carefully watched and controlled on the second wing.

The “cabin” framing was reinforced to keep wrinkles out of the covering. The only other modifications were to adjust the servo supports and openings to adapt to Hitec Hs55 servos. This involved some pieces of scrap balsa and a bit of fuss; no big deal.

As the plane neared finishing, a few things came up that required rethinking. It was difficult to balance with the battery (TP2000 Prolite, 3S1P) at the front of the provided ply strip. A ply insert was cut to fill the area up to the underside of the nose with slots for a hook & loop strip to wrap the battery as well as an extension of the hook material. The receiver was difficult to reach when it was mounted all the way to the rear so it was moved up. An RCDirect stick on antenna was installed along the side of the fuselage.