Great Planes 30cc Citabria
Just received the new Great Planes 30cc Citabria. This is one of the first airplanes I've ever received where the structure, covered in Monokote, was not baggy when removed from the box. Other than a couple of seams, the covering was perfect. Everything was well packed and no damage from shipping. Color match between the covering, fiberglass cowl, wheel pants and forward hatch/windscreen, are all perfect. Wing-tips are beautifully finished. Side windows are pre-installed. The wing has fairly thin cross-section, which means lower drag, but will likely provide for some interesting stall charascteristics. The flaps should help increase drag and reduce stall speed at landing, however.
So far, with about four-hours into the assembly, I have installed the aileron and flap servos in both wings (Savox 1257/1267), along with the flap/aileron pushrods. Same servos will be used for each elevator half and rudder. Curious why GP went with a pushrod on the rudder instead of a pull-pull setup. Probably could retro-fit this, as there's plenty of room between the elevator/rudder servos in the long rectangular mounting area in the cabin area. I'll have to take a closer look at the structure in the aft-fuselage area. I have a Smart-Fly Sport Plus with ignition cut-off and will run Hobbico LiFe 2100 or 3200 packs. A new DLE-30 cc with a J-Tec wrap-around muffler will provide fantastic power for this aircraft. The included aluminum spiner is drilled and cut for a DLE-30/35 engine/propeller combination.
I'm not a fan of the "cowl-ring" cowl-mounting system, similar to other GP models, like the former 50cc Yak and others. It's a multi-step process where you have to attach the ring to the firewal, mount dry-mount the cowl, then with a long stick, add some epoxy to attach the cowl to the ring, then remove the cowl and mix up some epoxy/milled fiberglass to fully attach the cowl to the ring. This is great for a scale look, but I'm going to add some hardwood blocks to the firewall and use external cowl-mount screws. A little sacrifice in scale appearance in a "stand-off" scale aircraft, won't harm a thing, and it will greatly incease the ease of cowl installation/removal.
By the way, the airplanes on the west coast have already sold out and once sold out in the East, they'll be on back-order. Get one while you can. They're disappearing fast.
I'll try to post some photos in the next day or so.