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I haven't really dug into it since I've been finishing up my 2M Evolution for the 2008 season. The weather is getting right and I need to start practicing for GMA in April. Here is my initial impression. .
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The wood looks very good and the milling is great, I haven't taken the cores apart to look at them yet. However, the design of this kit uses some very seriously thick lumber so I'm going to be doing alot of milling to thin down some of the planks. The wing sheeting is 3/32" that will be replaced with 1/16". There are also alot of balsa blocks for wing tips, engine cowl, wing fillets, and other places - time to buy new X-acto hollowing blades. The fiberglass canopy is very thick as well, so I'll probably be doing some internal grinding to bring down the weight. It appears that Bluejay could easily use half of the epoxy and fiberglass to make the canopy for this plane. . . Hmmmmmm. . .maybe I'll send it to Mike Hester to have him form up a slick-azz CF canopy. I would like to see someone do a serious redesign of this kit and reduce the wood weight by half - create a fiberglass engine cowl, replace the 3/8" thick formers with balsa/CF sandwich, thinner wing sheeting, thinner fuselage sides, ect.
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The instructions are the same typeset of the original. Sorry, no pictures.
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I'm not trying to be negative about this kit, I am really looking forward to building it and putting too much engine up front. The parts of the kit are very well formed and I'm sure will go together perfectly. I would rate the overall value of the kit as very high, it is just the original design that could use some updating.
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When I start it I'll post pictures and keep everyone updated. I am no master builder by a long shot, in fact when I opened this up it struck me that I haven't built a "kit" in almost four years!! Hopefully other XLT builders will begin posting their progress as well. Maybe we'll also need to rename the thread. . .
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