In another thread, I promised JerKap that I would do a review of an Alpha 60 RTF that I am putting together for my father-in-law from Oklahoma. I'm no MinnFlyer, but here it is:

We began by opening up the very large box. As I mentioned previously, my father-in-law didn't want to open anything until he was here with me, so I got first crack at it. Everything seemed well packed, so as to avoid damage (more on that later). The ads say the plane can be ready to fly in less than an hour. We'll see.

Wanting to play by the rules, I started with the instruction book. Step 1 is assembly of the wing. Upon inspecting the wing halves, I found a typical high quality Hangar 9 UltraCote covering design. Only one problem: It was very wrinkled, more so than any other Hangar 9 ARF I have ever seen. I started out shrinking it up with a covering iron, but soon decided that was too slow and moved to a heat gun. After about 20 minutes of work, I got things looking pretty good. Boy, I'm going to have to hurry to get this done in under an hour.

Two attachment options are provided, rubber bands or bolts. We are going with bolts. Regardless of the attachment method, the wings halves are joined in the same way. There is a large aluminum tube that fits perfectly into tubes in each half near the spar. This sets the dihedral. There is a smaller pin near the trailing edge that keeps everything in place.

The manual then instructs you to apply a narrow piece of tape to the joint to hold the wing halves together. I'm sorry, but I can't go for that. No can do. (Isn't that a song?) Even though both halves will be bolted to the fuselage, I'm not comfortable just having the wing halves taped together. Accordingly, I applied a thin layer of 30 minute epoxy to one side and slid the wing halves together. A perfect fit. As long as I had the epoxy out, I cut the covering away from the two holes in the leading edge. I chamfered the provided dowels for wing mounting and installed them in the holes. I also cut the covering away from the holes for the wing bolts.

The aileron servo was already installed in one wing half, so I connected the pushrods to the torque rods. The ailerons seem to be set pretty well without any further adjustment. I then set the wing aside to dry.

Here are pics of what we have done so far:

We have about an hour into it at this point. Up next, fuselage!