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.
