Hey guys,
I originally posted the following in this thread in the IMAC forum;

http://www.rcuniverse.com/showthread...20&forumid=231

but there is little activity there so I thought I'd try here. The big issue there was with the wing retention spring.

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Me and a buddy are finishing up a pair of Staudachers. Personally I wanted the Sukhoi, and he wanted the Edge 540 but the Staudachers (which were our second choices anyway) were all that they had left.

I'm glad I stumbled across this thread because each time we put the wings on we look at each other and shake our heads when it comes to that spring.

We've basically been following along with the RCU review to put them together. In that review, he said he used the spring so we were going to go with it. Now though we'll probably go with the dowel/bolts or a maybe a dowel/longer beefier hook/rubber bands or stonger spring. We also thought of the stronger spring with the hooks as is, but I have some real doubts as to the strength of the current hook and its mounting. Especially since its screwed into not-all-that-hard-pacific rim-hardwood.

Another thing about the review that really pi$$ed me off is the description of how he mounted Du-Bro wheel axles to the stock fiberglass landing gear. The Du-Bro axles require a rather large hole to mount them. When we went to drill the holes the gear splitered and basically cracked in two. He never mentioned this might happen and now that I look at the picture, it looks like he had to make a repair himself. To fix it, I wicked some thin CA into the crack then clamped the gear in a vice. While there I filled all the missing spaces with chopped fiberglass and more CA. Then I smoothed the area as well as removed enough paint from the front and back side. I then used JB weld to put the axle in along with a large washer on the back side before the retaining nut. Its very solid now and you can hardly see the crack up the leg. I hope it lasts until I can find a replacement. We took more care in drilling the other holes but we still lost some chunks in places that had to filled/CA'ed. I know its partly my fault for not realizing this might happen but the gear looked very solid and there was no problem when drilling the smaller pilot holes. Someone said I should have used a forstner bit to drill the holes??? All done, the Du-Bro axles make a sano set-up but if I do it again I think brass tubing bushings over the supplied screws would probably work just fine. You think??? I absolutely hate wheel hubs riding on bare screw threads.

About setting up for 3D flying. What throws are you guys using? We found we can get all sorts of throw on the rudder and the elevators (like 60deg+) but the ailerons on these Staudachers were only tapered on the aileron leading edge and not the wing itself. Just looking at it, the amount of throw just doesn't look proportionate to the throws we are getting on the tail surfaces. As an aside, neither of us has flown a plane this large that was 3D capable and are going on the assumtion that we need all the throw we can get. We also didn't like the supplied hinges so we wen't with plenty of Robart medium, steel pin, hinge points. Boy was that fun...... :stupid: . Now I remember why I liked CA hinges. However, now that everything is together, the surfaces are smooth and solid and again, I'm leary about the quality of the pacific rim CA hinges. The guy that sold the patent to SIG for the original CA hinge used to winter down here and he told me all about the chemical engineering that went into designing it. I kinda doubt the same considerations went into the kits cheaper version???

We also used some Great Planes large scale horns. They work fine on the tail surfaces but the foam core ailerons dont have any hard points in them to mount them to. You can't really get them tight without severly crushing the aileron. I can see we're probably going to have to go back in and do something different here. Again, no mention of it in the review.

Here's our equipment details.

My plane:
- Super Tigre 2500 (1.5)/ Bisson pitts muffler/ Dave Brown 3.25" spinner bored and trued on a lathe to fit the ST crankshaft/ Du-Bro 20oz tank.
- Menz 18x6.
- Airtonics Stylus PCM radio.
- Airtonics 94732 coreless servos on ailerons and elevators.
- Airtonics 94102 standard servo on throttle.
- HiTec 5645 digital on rudder.
- 1400mah 5-cell battery.

His plane:
The same except for;
- Zinger 18x6.
- Airtronics 94731 coreless servos on ailerons and elevators.
- HiTec 645mg on rudder.

We've also got some additional Top Flight, Zinger, and Master Airscrew 18x6, 18x6-10, and 18x8 props to try. The last plane I flew the ST on seemed to really like the 6-10 pitch prop.

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Again I wish I had seen this thread as well as we are finally to the step of CGing the planes tomorrow. I'm now hoping and praying we won't have to add any weight.

We'll probably buy a fish scale to weigh them but don't hold your breath.

All tail surface servos are mounted in the tail. I'm hoping the 2500s are heavy enough to counter. We're using 5-cell NiCads mounted in the engine box next to the tanks.

A couple of other comments more in line with the discussions I see here;

The painted cowl lines on our planes didn't line up well. If you get them matched on one side, it was painfully off on the other. His more so than mine. So, we "twisted" the cowl, per se', before drilling the mounting holes to even out the mismatch on both sides.

We also noted that the vertical measurement to mount the engine was a little low as per the instructions. With the cowl paint lines, leveled up with the fuse trim trim lines, the center of the engine was low in the spinner cut out. By using the 3.25" spinner it doesn't actually look bad but its one of those niggly things. Also, the 146mm measurement was about 2-3mm too long for our motors. By mounting the cowl out as far as possible, we managed to get the cowl-spinner gap to about 5-6mm on the right side..... uuuugh!

Because the we had to mount the cowls out to the very limit, we have only about 1/8" fuse overlap at the top. So, we made up some 30mm x 30mm ply tabs and glued them to the supplied blocks before mounting them. Three on either side, none on the top. This allowed us to drill and tap for 8-32 nylon screws further in from the cowl edge. I've always had bad experiences with little wood screws mounted near cowl edges. This way we hope there is enough meat around the holes to absorb loads and prevent cracking. Also, the heads of the nylon screws are larger to also help distribute loads away from the hole edges.

The ST head would not really fit with out some rubbing so we decided to just cut a hole. First we made a thick paper template with the hole for the head cut out in it. The template is long enough that we secueely taped it to the fuse side just aft of where the back-edge of the cowl would be. Then we gently folded it back and removed the cylinder heads. Next we slipped on and mounted the cowl then folded the template back and drew the head hole onto the cowl with a marker. After cutting out the hole, we remounted the cylinder heads back on and it was perfect! The ST head is flat on top and is damn near flush with the cowl. It looks very cool.

As I live in Yuma, AZ, about 3 hours from San Diego, I have been to the Palomar field several times to fly helicopters and am considering becoming a member. We also like to go to the November heli fun-fly. I'm very surprised the members don't think the field is big enough for larger scale planes. Your field is one of the largest I've seen. Personally I think its a matter of some of the same "fear mongering" (for lack of a better phrase) that I get as a heli flyer. Anyway, If these things fly well enough, and survive the first flights, I was hoping we could bring them up and fly with you guys. Maybe you could teach us some stuff?? Or if you want, you are more than welcome down here. There are several large scale flyers and we have a 600ft x 50ft paved runway with unlimited airspace.

Have fun,
Mike