I'll say. Very nice color scheme too. I might have to steal parts of it.
The Bushwacker taught me to make wooden wheel pants, and I STILL prefer them. They're much easier than fiberglass (or plastic), you can fix them easily, without it even showing.. You also don't have to try to match paint to your heat shrink covering. I'll bet I've made 20 sets of wheel pants over the years using the exact same technique Mark Smith taught me with this kit.
If you'd like a new manual, I've got the whole thing scanned in. Let me know.
[email protected]
A 480 ought to be perfect. The manual calls for a weight of about 48 oz (3 lbs) with a .19 engine, and full sized (1974) servos. With the modern super mini servos, I'll bet it could be built closer to 2 lbs. A 2200 3 cell pack weighs 5 ounces. Back in those days, a 450 mAh receiver pack (4 AA nicads) weighed 4 ounces, and the servos were about 1.8 ounces each. The Heathkit receiver that I used in my first Bushwacker weighed 2 1/2 ounces, so the flight pack weight was about 12 oz. An Enya .19, motor mount and fuel tank was about 10 more oz., so 22 oz for the radio and powerplant. If you go with a 480, and modern 9 gram servos, the entire flight pack and power setup weighs about 11 oz, for a 3/4 lb savings.
I have an original kit that I got on a little known (at the time) website called eBay, in 1999. I also have a TON of contest grade balsa, because I had a fire, which burnt about $200 worth of balsa, and I made the insurance company buy me contest grade (I didn't tell them, heh). When I get around to building the kit, I'll replace all the sheeting with contest grade, which ought to shave another 3-5 oz.
The heaviest part of the original kit was the landing gear wires, at about 4 oz. I have this trick where I laminate up .007 carbon fiber with 1/64th plywood and clamp it in a form, which makes super light landing gears, without the hassle of trying to mold one out of glass or c/f. I just need to get off of my duff and do it one of these years...