Back in June, Tower had these planes on sale for $140.00. With promotional discount and free shipping I could get one delivered to the door for about $117.00. The impulse overcame me and I clicked in all the right spots and a week or so later, sure enough the HERO landed at my door.
Well, my assembly will certainly be a bash....As soon as I opened the box and started checking things out a list of things to do (read that change) began to grow. I’ll try to share it all in this thread. I have been picking at this thing for months. So, this assembly will not be a quick one. I am slow.. and I have too many other things to do....
Even before I bought it - the Red, White, and Green did not do it for me. So, I’ll be doing quite a bit to change up the color scheme. Still don’t know what to do with the pink on the bottom of the wing and tail feathers. What is crazy to me, is the factory color scheme completely hides a pretty good looking airplane. We’ll see how mine looks when done. Oh, and the pilot is hideous! He/It will be replaced. Or at least repainted. Still won’t be scale quality but... I can’t stand to look at what came in this thing as a pilot.
I have some issues with the engineering for the fuselage, knowing how I abuse my planes. I’ll go over this in detail when I get there. But the area from the front of the wing to the firewall only has a minimum amount of wood keeping things connected. I will be gluing the “hatch” and add some kind of support/stiffener under the wing. You’ll understand when I get there.
I did the math on the wing area and came up with completely different numbers than what Phoenix claims. Phoenix advertises this airplane to have 58 sq dm (which is equivalent to 899 sq in).... I actually drew up the wing in a cad program and at best this airplane has a wing area (including ailerons) of 838/839 square inches (54 sq dm). This also includes the area covered by the fuselage. They say it should weigh about 5lbs. If so that is still a wing loading of about 13.75 oz sq ft.
I will put a Super Tigre 51 on this plane. Expectation will be 13X4 or 12X6. I use both props on these engines on different planes already. I wanted to put a pipe on it. But with the narrow cowl, inverted is the only way to go. With the headers I have, the pipe would need to go right through the wing. So, an old custom made muffler will go on it.
With my home brew FAI fuel, I get just over 5lbs of thrust with the 13X4 zinger. With that my Phoenix Hero will not be a 3D monster by any stretch of the imagination. But it should go vertical long enough to keep me happy.
Alright.. So much for all the lead in hoopla..... Here is a few pictures of the plane mocked up.
