ORIGINAL: weeber24
Before I started mine, I was reading stories about people putting theirs together in a few hours.
No way....not the Pulse XT ARF. There's still a lot of work left to do on this plane, though, cowling aside, most of it is easy stuff. Securing the canopy takes time unless you use screws, and getting the control horns on straight can't be done in seconds. Securing the radio equipment isn't something you want to do haphazardly either.
Getting the airplane right takes some time. Slow down and enjoy it. Having seen hundreds of maiden crashes, I'de say most of them were due to poor preparation. Almost everyone builds faster than I do. It takes me six hours to assemble a Mini Ultra Stick, but every one of them flies straight off the board and I never have to touch them after the test flight. I prefer to take my time and know everything is as good as I can make it.
The Pulse that gets into the air quickly is the Plug-N-Play version. All you do is jam in the receiver and hook up all the wires. Then you go fly it. Really, the biggest problem I had putting together my Pulse XT Plug-N-Play is that I couldn't believe it was so easy to have such a nice plane. I kept checking everything over and over because I just had to have left something out. Even after flying it there was nothing to do except wipe it off. I didn't even change the setup the plane came with except to dial in some more rudder throw with the radio.
I kind of got my hopes up after reading those stories, but I had a learning curve to get over, at least that's what I'm telling myself
I wouldn't even worry about the speed with which you get an ARF ready. I worry more about the quality of the work I'm putting in. Part of this is pride in workmanship, but most of this is because it's a poorly installed radio, badly balanced plane, or improperly secured control horn (among many, many other things) that can cause a catastrophe. I take my sweet, sweet time and I check my work over and over and over. And then I'll think of something at 3am, get out of bed and go check it again.
If you're like me and maybe a little slow, then there's no shame in taking your time and building it over several days.
Certainly if the result is nice work.
I used to despise actually building an airplane kit. I have built so many that I am burned out for life, but I kind of enjoy assembling some of these ARFs, especially the E Flite and Hangar 9 stuff that goes together so well. Even at that, there wasn't much assembly on the Pulse XT PNP. Bolt on the tail, bolt on the LG, bolt on the prop, jam in the receiver and go fly.
Shameful, really, but it's hard to argue with the results.
Speaking of which......................
http://largoflyingclub.com/app06/pulse.wmv
http://largoflyingclub.com/video/austinpls.wmv
Some of you may have seen these, and some of you may not have. Enjoy or ignore. Just for grins, here's the Mini Pulse with the big 480 motor.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rawC-C9JMWA