While scrolling through this forum the other day I saw mention of the Dual Ace. I liked the pictures (box art is awful) and thought I might like one. Today in my cruise through one of the local hobby shops one was sitting there so I had to have a look and I liked what I saw so I plunked down my money, (a rare occurance) and took it home. After a quick glance through the manual I quickly saw I didn't like the way they did things so I was going to do it in my own order.
The first thing I did was to remove the canopy and notice that all the hardware is metric which is OK and it does seem to be of a reasonable quality. The canopy (cabin roof) removed cleanly giving access to the innerds; plenty of room in there. I noticed all the visible glue joints had a fairly wide bead extending out from the actual juncture so there seemed to be plenty of glue in there although I do wish I knew what it was.
I just had to rough assemble the main components to get an Idea of just how big this plane was going to be when finished. Plenty big by the looks of it although a pair of 45's which I happen to have might just make this thing ballistic. The first task regarding effort in the building department was to remove covering where the wing tube, servo leads and stabilizer pass through the fuselage. At first I thought the covering might be Ultracoat (good) but on closer examination I think it is some form of Eastern film used on hundreds of other ARF's. It was so tough that my scalpel had trouble cutting it cleanly; tough stuff. The second thing I noticed is that there were a few wrinkles, mainly in the stabilizer and a couple in the wings. I hope the heat gun will do it's job when I attack it.
Anyway, that's it for about an hours poking about, I'll post more as I come to it. If you have any questions or advice which I might use please post it here so we can all learn. So far I'm happy with it.
Peter