ORIGINAL: tomcatguy74

Thanks KoolKrabber for the comments and all.

Well, I picked up this gorgeous airplane on Saturday and man does this sucker have ALOT of field equipment.

Everything is in perfect working order and I just need to go out and get fuel and rubberbands for the wings. I guess the box of rubber bands has been sitting next to the plane for quite sometime and ''look'' like they might be bad but last night I picked one or two out and stretched the heck out of them and they were very very hard to break.
I bound the plane to my new RX and TX and it worked great. All flight controls operated very smoothly.

I am very excited about this plane. I am definately looking forward to my first flight with it.

Now I have some questions!!!!

What brand of 10% nitro should I get? Mogan Fuel's Omega (pink color) 10% or 15%, doesn't matter. The best fuels you can buy are synthetic/castor oil mix @ 16-20%. The best brand of fuel you can buy for 2 stroke airplane engines are Omega, Sig Champion and Wildcat Premium Xtra.

Can you all please help me learn to tune this baby? It looks much more difficult than a nitro rc truck.
Should I reset the needles to factory settings and go from there? Yes, reset needles to factory. Please simply read your manual from page 14-end on starting/tuning as it's WAY too much to type here. [link=http://manuals.hobbico.com/osm/40-46-65la-manual.pdf]http://manuals.hobbico.com/osm/40-46-65la-manual.pdf[/link]

The plane came with a couple pieces of equipment that uses small lead acid batteries like the electric starter, and the field box power panel.

How would I charge these? I just picked up a great Bantam BC6 charger that will charge lead acid batteries but how do I know how much amperage to charge these batteries with. Lead acid batteries are like car batteries. Lead = PB on the periodic table if you can remember back to high school Simply keep hitting stop (or arrow, im not sure on that charger until you get to PB). Then you want to charge the battery at 600mAh, or .6Amps for 8 hours+. Make sure the voltage is 12+V when charged. BTW I'm just looking at the site for this info as I run a custom 3s lipo to power all my stuff.

Also the RX battery that came with the plane is a 4.8 volt Ni-cad battery. Can I get a nihm battery that would work and live a little longer? Ni-Cd are fine, and are actually more robust for higher amp draw situations (like on a 5-8 digital servo plane, which your trainer isn't). I would simply hook up your battery to the charger, do a .5A discharge on it, then charge it at .2A until it's finished (charger will stop). Then discharge it again at 1Amp, and charge it back up at .2A. Reason for doing this is called cycling, which is good for these batteries and you need to make sure they're holding capacity under that 1A discharge load. Make sure if it's an 1100mah battery for ex, that it's holding at least that amount. If not, go buy either Ni-Cd or Ni-Mh. Ni-Mh are a little lighter which is nice, but both are fine.

How would I find out how long this battery will operate the radio system before failing? You need to fly a few flights, and charge it up with your charger. Then read the mah put back in. Ie, 1100mah battery, fly 4 flights from full charge, hook up and recharge to full and see how many mah it says it put back in. Ie, 1100mah full, fly 4 flights to 700mah = 400mah for 4 flights = 100mah per flight (much higher draw than your plane will likely use). Thus in theory 11 flights. BUT DO NOT GO THIS LOW! The norm for RX batteries is to never take them below 50-60% capacity. You will easily get 6 flights a charge on that battery I'm pretty sure. Just don't push it. Spektrum RX's like lots of voltage, so lots of guys run 5 cell packs so they don't have to worry about dropping below the threshold, including myself.

I noticed that the ''skin'' of the plane has some smaill wrinkles in a few spots, the guy told me that I can use a hair drier to tighten up the monokote, is this true or will I damage the skin? No, it's best to tighten it up before flying! Covering provides both structural support as well as smooth air flow. Use a hair dryer on high heat close to surface till it shrinks tight. Press on the covering while hot if its not sticking. A heat gun is much faster and easier since it's much hotter than a blow dryer, but you have to be careful not to burn the covering with a heat gun!

I have never worked with monokote coverings, what kind of chemicals can I used to wipe the plane down with? I use windex. Some guys use their own recipes, but I like to keep it simply. I flew over 150 flights this summer and used less than a bottle of windex, so it's cheap. You only need to wipe em down after your done flying for the day. Remember to run the engine with the tank empty or fuel line disconnected to burn all excess nitro from inside or you will rust the bearings. Use afterrun oil if you so desire, but it's not critical, especially if you "run" the engine at the end of the day with no fuel, and use Omega fuel.

Thats all I have right now.

Oh and KoolKrabber,..............I'll never give up!