BEFORE ASSEMBLY
Because of my prior employment as a product developer at Horizon Hobby, I have gotten in the habit of weighing everything with ARFs. As the person simply assembling the parts, there is little in your power to control the weight of the individual components, but it helps arm yourself with knowledge so that you can make appropriate equipment choices, and have a much better idea of what to expect out of the finished model. Normally, I’ll do a weight buildup to include the weights of all hardware items, but for this airplane, it’s not as critical, and I doubt many of you here would care to hear the weights of screws and washers. I tend to weigh and measure model airplane construction in the metric system as a ten base is much easier for me to calculate and decipher. That said; the individual component weights are as follows.
Fuselage: 614g
Canalizer: 32g
Canopy: 80g
Cowling: 66g
Left wing panel: 172g
Left aileron: 30g
Right wing panel: 166g
Right aileron: 32g
Horizontal stabilizer: 78g
Elevators with joiner: 26g
Rudder: 32g
Wing tube: 46g
Landing gear legs (both): 60g
Wheelpants (both): 32g
Not too shabby. The engineering of this airplane is among some of the best I’ve seen among the different manufacturers over in Asia. I didn’t bother to get hardware weights as they aren’t something that can really be controlled. If you prefer, substitute lighter weight aluminum hardware or do like I do, trim any excess bolt length, if applicable.
If you wish, take this time to go over your airplane with a heat gun and/or covering iron. I’ll warn you, your airplane will probably wrinkle again, so I don’t spend too much time on shrinking covering at this stage in the game. Rather, I keep my covering iron handy to iron down covering on a specific part that I’m working on, such as the horizontal stabilizer after I trim the covering for installation, and the fuselage around the stab saddle before I glue the stab in. Also, a covering iron is just as important to my hinging technique as glue is.
I do, however, take the time to neatly open any and all holes in the covering for wing tubes, servo leads, pull-pull cables, cooling exits, etc. That said, I don’t simply cut the covering flush with the edge, or use a soldering iron to melt the covering (yuck!). I will fold the covering into the holes, unless it’s something like a tube socket, in which case I will cut flush with the edge. Folding the covering in yields a much nicer finished appearance, and will not lift during normal use. Furthermore, it will not pull away when you try to shrink covering adjacent to it. It takes very little extra time to fold the covering into an opening, but the professional appearance and better performance gained is well worth the extra effort.
As stated, I do not like to melt covering with a soldering iron. First of all, it will trash tips in a heartbeat and leave pigment and residue that can bleed to other colors. Temperature control is critical with this method; most covering begins to shrink at 300 degrees, so unless you have a higher end soldering station, chances are you are going to burn the covering and make a big mess. Extra finish work is required with this method as it leaves a ridge of burned, discolored plastic around the edge of the hole you were trying to open, so you still have to try to trim that away with a #11 blade. Because this lump of melted plastic is so much harder than the surrounding balsa wood, it’s easy to nick the edges of the part. I will say, it’s a much quicker method to open holes, but the final appearance makes it look like you spend even less time than you did to open the holes. Remember this; there are no points for building your airplane the quickest.