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Old 05-02-2015, 03:00 PM
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abufletcher
 
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Originally Posted by jwrich
Balsa USA kits has always been a stand off scale kits. They are designed to fly and reasonably priced. With a little work, you can make them into a fine representative of the scale airplane.
Perhaps my dislike of BUSA kits stems from the fact that their eindecker kit (my first experience with a WWI kit) is particularly "bash-resistance." Their design uses a slab-sided fuselage that is both too short and too wide (and curved in the wrong way). Many builders replace the slab sides with a more traditional longerons+uprights "derrick" construction in the rear.But then there is the construction, placement and method of attachment of the one-piece wing. The wing is in the wrong scale location. Fixing THAT requires rebuilding the entire forward fuselage. Oh, and the firewall/cowl diameter is also far too narrow. So anyone who wants a scale EIII will pretty much need to throw out the entire kit fuselage. Oh, and while we're at it, let's throw out the kit's faked "comma" rudder which has been turned into a traditional vertical fin (mounted on the misshapen fuselage) and a hinged rudder. Then, there's the "slot" in the fuselage for the stabilizer portion of what really should be a full-flying elevator. Undercarriage? The kit's version is just a bunch of too wide and too low wires. Finally, we have that ridiculously (for an EIII) fat, cantilever wing with the silly looking wingtips (and of course the ailerons).

In short, the only way to "mod" the eindecker kit is to toss it and start from scratch.

Last edited by abufletcher; 05-02-2015 at 03:08 PM.