Hello all, my name is Jordan Morse and I am the owner of Morse Aircraft Development. (
www.morseaircraftdevelopment.com) We have been offered the opportunity to do a build review and flight review of the new Pilot Dolphin Turbine Ready Jet. We will post tons of pics and details as I build. The jet arrived today via DHL. It actually came faster than I anticipated, from overseas. The box was in decent shape considering the trip it had to make. I really like the way it was boxed, and I saw something I have not seen before in packing, the fuse was held in place by a wooden dowel through the wing tube and then secured on both sides. The plane came in two boxes, one for the fuse, stab, rudder and accessories. The other box contained the wings. Tony at Pilot included the light kit and wing bags for our review plane. Everything was pre installed at the factory, servos, fuel tank (I will address this during the build), air tanks, air lines, retracts, all linkages, air valves, voltage regulator, and lighting kit. The manual for the plane is downloadable from
www.pilot-rc.com.
All you really need for this plane to get it flying is a turbine, radio, receiver, batteries, and a UAT. We are using a Futaba 18MZ and R7008SB for guidance, A Demon Cortex for a gyro, 2x Tail Dragger RC LiFe batteries (2500). For a turbine we turned to Barry at King Tech for a K100G. I believe this will be the perfect match for this airframe. The install of the components should be strait forward.
I found the plane to be very good looking. If you were 5 feet away you would never know it was a balsa and covered airframe. The only wrinkle I could find was on the belly pan. The build seems to be of the quality you come to expect from Pilot. Most of the glue joints look good, of course I will go over them all with a fine tooth comb, especially since its a jet and not an IMAC plane. I will say I was weary at first seeing that Pilot, who has always built prop planes, was coming out with a woody jet. I was pleasantly surprised when I opened the boxes. I think this will be a great trainer or sport style jet for those lazy Sundays.
Here are some pictures of the packaging and each component, along with some pictures of the factory install, not as neat and tidy as one of my builds, but it will work for an ARF. Sorry some of the pictures are sideways, they are not that way in my flies. I will be updating this thread everyday with the days progress and pictures of such progress.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvoCmGDvY5o