A few suggestions- learned the hard way.

If you are building from a kit, DO NOT THROW AWAY the sheets your parts are cut from. If you mess up a part or need to rebuild later they can be used as templates to make a new part. I went brain dead halfway thru building my first kit and threw a lot of them out. I think everyone assumes you should know this, I did not.

Do not assume the plans are 100% right. I built a Goldberg J3 Cub EXACTLY to the plan then the opening in the wing that fits over the fuselage uprights were too narrow for the wing to fit down over the fuselage! I measured everything repeatedly, I had built it right, the plans were wrong. A couple of other members have e-mailed me saying they had the same problem building one of these and just thought they had screwed up until they read one of my posts regarding this. It took some MAJOR tearing-apart and rebuilding to correct- not something you want to try on your first kit! If you have a specific plan or kit in mind, search out build info on this site regarding that kit and ask specifically if anybody has built it and what they suggest you look out for.

I got extremely lucky and had a beautiful covering job on the Cub when finished. The instructions said to balnce the model AFTER covering and only mentioned balancing for fore/aft balance (longitudinal CG). I balanced it laterally and had to add weight out on the left wingtip- so I had to cut a hole in my beautiful covering job to stick lead weight on the outer rib. A minor thing but I hated cutting that hole! It patched up o.k. though (on the bottom). Next time, I will probably cover the fuselage and balance laterally before covering the wing, then cover the wing and balnce for CG after finishing.

Finally, I would seriously evaluate the hardware in any kit and probably throw away most if not all of it. I would rather spend an extra 20, 30 or 40 bucks for top notch hardware on a plane I am going to invest so much work in and A lot of supplied hardware is suspect. On the Cub, I built balsa pushrods for Elevator and rudder, using the manufacturer supplied wire for the ends, even though I utilized very litle of the supplied hardware in the kit. I accidentally bumped the elevator on a door frame in my house after completing the model. It bent the wire and compromised the strength of the assembly- WITHOUT DENTING THE BALSA TRAILING EDGE that hit the door. Pretty pathetic! So now I have to remove the glued-on windshield to remove the pushrods and replace them (with Dave Brown fibreglass rods for a whopping $7.95, I might add). As flimsy as the originals were I am glad I never flew them and had to exert any force on them as in pulling up out of a dive- I doubt they would have handled that load without flexing or bending. Again, that $7.95 would be awfully cheap insurance. Throughout the kit I used Hangar 9 nylon control horns (supplied ones looked like polystyrene instead of nylon), Sullivan Golden clevises with locks & locknuts (supplied ones looked like polystyrene instead of nylon), Robart hinge points instead of supplied supposed CA hinges, Du-Bro wire (the supplied ones were brittle and broke when bent), etc. I invested in Z-Bend pliers and used them throughout the kit (strong, simple, reliable) putting Z-Bends on all servos and clevises at the horns. I added a second aileron servo instead of using the reccomended single aileron servo. If I had it to do over again, I would build the control surface edges with a thin hardwood edge instead of balsa just to keeep them from getting beat up.

Hope some of that helps.

Bill Duffel