Well, I'm still building my first plane after a couple months, and in the haste, I forgot the all important first step... checking that everything that comes with the kit actually came with the kit.

Except that I've been lucky, up till now, I've yet to have missing pieces.. in fact, the kit came with extra wood! The midwest Aero-star needs eight 1/16 sheets for the center of the wings. these sheets come bundled together with elastics. The funny thing is that I have two bundles for a total of 16 sheets! might come in handy for repairs.

The other kit problem I think I have is that the shaped balsa trailing edge of one of the wings doesn't look like balsa! Unfortunately I've already glued it in place.. but I think that cutting slots for the hinges will be something of a headache. The kit asks me to punch some T-pins through this trailing edge to hold it down at one point, and I must say.. it was not easy pinning that down!

I have no idea how to tell all the woods apart, but seriously, can balsa really be this hard? (I have trouble leaving a fingernail mark on it!) Anyway, I know it won't cause problems, I'll just take more time to make the slots for hinging with a new blade, but it is surprising to see this.

Yes, balsa can be very hard. it ranges from almost as soft as white styrofoam to almost as hard as spruce. The most common stuff in kits is a medium grade, a bit on the light side.

It can be difficult to hand slot the hard balsa for hinges. The Great Planes electric hinge slotter (or a Dremel cut-off wheel and a VERY steady hand) can help a lot. I've also been known to use a small drill bit... punch a bunch of holes on the hinge slot line, and then get out the DuBro slotting kit. The holes make it much easier to punch the forked tool in, and then picking out the crushed balsa is fairly easy. Modify these techniqes based on the hinges being used... its easy to end up with a WIDE slot which is no good for CA hinges.

Well, I do have the dremel, so I can try that (and I have lots of practice with that with other hobbies), but I'll just try the hobby knife first. I also have the dubro hinging tool, but a guy at the club suggested I use CA hinges instead of those hinges with the pins in them. And boy was he right, I installed the hinges for the aileron on the other wing half on the first try and it was actually pretty easy! CA hinges are so much thinner that it makes quite a difference.