R/C Phile

Ibuilt one of those a long time ago, it was my very first RC plane, it had an Enya .09 in it and it flew like an anvil.(Retiredafter one afternoon of flying with an instructor). As my 1st RC plane I did not build it very light (Lots of epoxy) and I am sure that a full size lat 70's vintage 6 channel Futabareceiver and 4 standard servosdid not help matters either.

As you pointed out there is no provision for removable cowl or hatch. Making the plastic cowl removable was fairly easy by adding support beams andfastening via smallscrews through the plastic. That was not enough access to mount / dismount the engine and deal with typical issues soI dealth with that by sheeting as usual, covering, then carfully cutting out "Access panels" that were fastened with small wood screws.This " feature"and a few others I have found made mebelieve it was designed to be accurate from a static scale standpoint but without much engineering effort spent on making it a functional R/Cflier. The scale wing does not have much lift (Thin airfoilshortish span ), the scale aileronswere all butuseless, and the short tail moment made it somewhat"Jumpy" in flight.

Ihave seen some reports about the 58 inch wingspan version that seemed more encouragingfrom a flying perpective. This 1/2A version was not much smaller with far less power, probably comparableweight and shorter wings.. Perhaps it would do better asan electric.


If I were to re-do this plane Iwould do the following:

- Make sure thatwhenyou build it, you take as much weight out of it as possible as mentionned before with light R/C gear /careful wood selection / less wood / Litespan type covering
- Iwould look into modyfying the wing profile to make it thicker or perhaps increase the wing spanto improve the lift charateristics
- Do it as a 3 channel plane and save time / weight on ailerons unless you over-size them. If you decide to include'emfor looks use really small servos to minimize the weight investment for such a small return in flight

Good luck with it.