Balsa USA Smoothie Build
Well, I was looking at web sites trying to find some new project to work on (not that I don't have enough already) and ended up on Balsa USA's site once again. Last year when BUSA brought back the Smoothie I liked it's lines and almost bought one, but I really didn't feel like building a kit. Well, I finally pulled the trigger and bought one last week.
Two days ago, after I got home from work, the UPS driver pulls up and delivers a plain white box marked Balsa USA and Fragile on the sides and Smoothie on one end. Sweet...
I've decided to do a build thread on this little baby, for a couple reasons.
1) I haven't seen any done yet (maybe I haven't looked hard enough).
2) This is the bigger reason. I hope it keeps me motivated to finish the plane in a timely fashion. Last year I built a Sig Wonder and that took like 2-3 weeks which wasn't bad, but the kit I built before that was a Sig King Kobra and that took me around 8 years to finish just because I never felt like shaping the wing tips.
On to the build thread.
Well what can I say? The kit is boxed like a kit. All the wood seems to be pretty good quality. The parts pack seems to be adequate for what's there (which really isn't much), although I don't know how much of it I'll end up using. After glancing through the instructions, I think they may be a little lacking from other kits that I've built, but BUSA does expect the builder to have a couple/few builds under their belt so some detail is just skimmed over. The only bummer is that I didn't get the 2 page typed instructions that were supposed to come with the kit. I would have liked to check them out, but it's not necessary.
I decided that I would just follow along with the instruction book for the build and since I'm using the dining room table for my build I don't have the room to jump around and build more than one main part at a time anyway.
The instructions start with the wing...
Both wing halves build on the same wing plan, so I used wax paper to protect the plans from being glued to the wing. The wing is symmetrical, but checking the ribs I found that the leading edge and the spar cutouts didn't match up if I had one flipped over. So if you build this plane check the orientation of your ribs, or your leading edge will be wavy. Other than that, the wing build is pretty standard, and the only other hiccup I ran into is I can't sheet the center of the wing at this moment. The instructions don't tell which 3/16" balsa sheeting to use so I thought it prudent to hold off and get the sheeting done on the fuse and if there is any sheeting left over, use that for the wing (I hope I wasn't shorted some balsa). I installed sheer webbing between all but the last two ribs on each side of the wing. When I was half way through gluing them in it dawned on me that I should have waited until I had the wing sheeting installed. This would have made it easier to glue the wing sheeting to the ribs and I would have liked to know how ridged the wing would be without the sheer webs. I hate the thought of adding unneeded weight even id it is just balsa. I guess the last note on the wing is that I built it with 3/8" dihedral. The instructions say to use 0-1" dihedral, I like the looks of a wing with some dihedral and I thought 3/8" looked good.
If you look at the pictures of the wing, you can see the ribs are solid (the holes were drilled to get aileron wires through the wing). The fuse is also solid. No material has been removed for the purpose of removing weight, so the plane will be solid, but heavy.
OK, I guess that's it for now. I need to eat, then it's time to start the fuse.
Take care, Jerry