Okay, about the photos above:
First photo you see above, the radio is just for size reference, NO, you do NOT get a free radio with your ARF! I wanted you to see the size of this Horizontal Stab. The wingspan is 69 inches, which sounds unimpressive...deceptively so. As a 1/4-scale Full-wing Monocoupe this would have had a span of 90 inches. The Clipped-Wing version sounds short at 69 inches...and it is. But they don't TELL you about this horizontal Stab. This Horizontal stab spans over 26 inches! In fact, the ONLY thing on this plane that seems small are the wings.
As I removed the items from the box, I was impressed with the packaging. The box itself was substantial, and it came inside another shipping box, so there was lots of protection. Each and every item was carefully packed inside its own plastic bag, and each plastic bag was secured with plenty of tape to box sides, or holders, or even the custom cardboard bulkheads inside.
Which leads us to the next photo of the Cowling and the Dummy Radial. You see "Plastic Dummy Radial engine, and some flimsy little piece of ready-to-disintegrate paper-thin-plastic comes to mind. Not in THIS kit. The radial was pretty light, I was happy about that...but it was rugged, too. I caught myself thinking that it's gonna take some work when I have to make the gas engine cooling opening by taking one of the cylinders out. Look at the photo, though, and you'll get an idea of the careful packaging I've been talking about. That ring of cardboard and the plastic bag secured to it did a perfect job of protecting that piece during shipping.
Next item is the Control horns and the Pull-Pull linkages. These are beautiful, nicely finished control horns that are NOT going to break no matter what. I counted out the right number of screws and clevises. The clevises come with the cable-ends already screwed inside them...no mistaking their intentions. The cables are strong, supple, and substantial. In fact, I would have no problem using ANY of the supplied hardware in this kit. There are two issues with it, one is real, the other is ME.... The tailwheel/steering gear has springs that are too weak, the plane is going to have trouble ground handling. The other is that a metal clevis is going to be snapped into a metal control horn, and then a metal spring is going to hold it all together. RF-NOISE! RF-NOISE! keeps running through my head. As I said, that's just me and my old-school RF-noise police policies running amok.
The next photo is just plain fun. All the parts and pieces right there in one place where you can see it all...and as promised to some of our thread posters by Pacific Aeromodels, there is an extra piece of yellow covering to use in finishing the slot in front of the vertical fin on the rear turtledeck. The covering seems to be a very good job, and it has some wrinkles in it, but nothing you wouldn't find after storing your own bird for the winter. A little bit of ironing and it should be fine (and they say we don't know how to do housework like ironing!). The fiberglass pieces seem very strong and also flexible. The yellow paint is a little brighter than the covering, but I'll guess that in a year or so that paint should be a near-perfect match. Excellent paintwork, no little dust bits under the paint, all very glossy and they get a big thumbs-up from me. It's SO good that just handling the parts while getting them ready for the photos made me want to put the camera away and start messing with the plane!
The next photo is showing the shorter wire linkages. the longer ones are there, running in and out of the photo, but I found that they're so long that if I showed them that you couldn't see what a good job they did on the shorter linkages. So I made the executive decision to show you the shorter linkages. Check these out. They are pre-measured for the plane to go with the servo holes, should be enough adjustment to make them perfect fits. The manual is so thorough that it actually makes reference to the lengths and tell you that if you decide to manually set your aileron differential you will need to get a longer linkage rod. That's impressive. The longer rods appear to be 4-40 size and they come with clear sheaths to carry them to the back (yes, you are given front OR back servo-mount choices because they know that heavier or lighter engines can change that, and they've provided a choice of linkages!). They've even given us lite-ply linkage-tubing support brackets to use to glue-up the tubings inside the fuselage after setting up your servos. You can see them in the little plastic pouch.
Last photo above.....The manual. This manual is IN COLOR, and it's full of photos, and it's 25 pages long! Others say 28 pages, but I won't count AMA literature as manual pages. It's full of tips for successful hinge installations and things like that. I'm not done reading it, but I might take exception with one section involving installing the rudder, more to the point WHEN it should be installed. I'll have to read that over again and more thoroughly before I say any more about that. But this is a very nice manual and so far I have been very impressed with it. If this plane truly interests you, you can download and print out your own manual, I'll place a link here for you.
http://www.pacaeromodel.com/MonoC/Manu/Mono.pdf
Jimbo