And so it begins! I opened and sorted the kits contents and checked them against the inventory in the instruction book. All pieces are present and accounted for except the rear portion of the horizontal stab (about 1/4" x 3" x 24") is missing. I bought the kit at the LHS and they are usually good about fixing this sort of thing so I will pick up another piece of balsa this weekend when I go there for supplies. Some of the measurements in the inventory list are off by 1/8" of an inch or so, some longer and some shorter. I will have to wait and see what the impact of this is. The wing seems to be about half of the wood in the kit. I bagged the pieces that would fit and just laid the wing parts and fuselage parts in separate piles. All small pieces are in baggies. The hardware is pretty minimal and the nose gear is quite rusty so I will be replacing it. The engine mount in the kit appears to be for a .60 size engine so it will probably need to be replaced as well. The main landing gear appears to be 3/32" thick aluminum which I assume to be sufficient for a 5 1/2 lb. plane.

On another note, I had a minor tragedy this morning. My Stevens Aeromodel Lil Squirt got trashed[&o]. I just finished the plane last night and maidened it this morning. I had several nice flights in perfect weather (no wind and temps in the high 60's), got it all trimmed out, ran out two batteries and landed. My friend was flying a GWS Formosa, came in to land, overshot, and smashed into my Lil Squirt. It didn't stand a chance. You can see that one wing is demolished. What you can't see is that the fuselage and tail are also in pretty bad shape. He gave me $25 to buy a new kit so I guess I will be buying one of those at the LHS this weekend too. It would take longer to fix the plane than to just build a new one and it wouldn't fly as well. Weight is very important for a plane this small. The plane weighed just under 3 oz. AUW (I built it a little heavy) and it flew very smooth and slow. Very graceful at less than half throttle and quite perky at 3/4 or full throttle.

Don't worry though, the Aircruiser comes first. It has already taken over my workboard so it will get finished first.