Sounds like I'm heading in the same direction as you Travis?  I just hope I can avoid the bad crash part though[].  I think I will keep the whole plane stock standard as per the plans including the bendy wire gears.  I'm hoping my landings aren't too bad by the time I fly it.  That's if I go with an ARF trainer first.

I just got back from the shed and tonight I finished off labelling and sorting all the parts.  Luckily there weren't any more missing pieces.  I'll fire off an email to Sig shortly.  Sounds like they are pretty good on the customer service side of things.  I probably wouldn't bother and just make a new piece but being new to building, I'm a bit worried I'd stuff it up.  I think it's best to get the part sent over.  I know it's a long way to post such a small/light part but at least that will make the postage cheaper.  I will let you know what they say.

It looks like I will get about 1 to 1-1/2 hours a night to work on the plane.  We put the kids to bed at 7pm and I start work early so I like to try and get to bed by 8.30pm but I can see that pushing out an hour or two once I get into it.  I won't be able to work on it every night though.  But the good thing is, I can walk away and leave everything as is because I don't let anyone else in the shed - especially the missus!  So I don't have to pack and unpack stuff every day.

I am at the first stage which requires glue so I left it alone for tonight (past my bedtime anyway) and might read a bit further along on Ken's thread and re read a few pages ahead in the instruction book too before I start throwing any CA about the place.  I was quite happy with the building board I ended up with.  I bought a piece of "soft board" 1200mm x 900mm and chopped it down the guts to end up with two 1200 x 450 pieces.  I have put one aside to use once I wear the other one out.  Soft board is the stuff that gets used for pin up boards so it should work OK hopefully?  I bought some light duty plastic covering today which was very cheap and used that over the "cut out" wing plan (don't worry - it's a photocopy - the originals are stashed away).  And I will check if it copied the right size when I start laying a few parts out next time.

Hopefully I can posts some pics in the next couple of days so you can see my setup.  It's a bit messy but I like to think of it as organised chaos.