I am building a 4 * 60 ARF and am at the point where I attach the completed wing onto the fuselage. After I got the two wooden alignment posts inserted into the fuselage and tightened the two plastic screws, I thought I would measure the distance from the back of the fuselage to each wing's trailing edge (not to the aileron).

There is a 3/8 inch difference in the two measurements. Is that OK? Will that much cause the plane to not fly well? Thanks for your help.

M'Kay. There are a couple of things missing here. Did you use a tape measure and get the exact points every time? I'd recommend pushing a pin as far back in the tail as possible, tie some string around it and measure. That way your sure one point is always at the same location. Since you've already glued the dowels in place, use a Sharpie to mark the string and move to the opposite wing. If your concerned, you can always slightly widen the holes in the WING and slide it left to right to get the measurement a little tighter.

Okay, to much information. As for the 3/8" difference, it won't make much (if any) difference. I built my 4*60 and had 1/4" of slop, with no issues. Unless your a world class 3-D'er, that distance won't effect the plane. My thoughts. Any others out there?

I don't think that you'll have a problem. The thing with ARF's that are not straight from the factory is that to fix it, it means tearing into it quite a bit and recovering it. That's a lot of work,
and if it's real bad, you should just send it back.
My last ARF was a Lazy Tiger P-51 from Thunder Tiger. It has a very bad twist to the aft end of the fuse. Check out the pic. I got this kit new and unwrapped but at a swap meet, so I didn't bother trying to send it back. I just made sure the tail surfaces were on straight and it flies very well. On its maiden flight, it just needed one click of right aileron to have it flying hands-off! Without seeing your model firsthand, I can't comment on how it will perform. Odds are, it will be fine.

Jesse

Thanks for everyone's comments. I re-measured it using the method you described and still got 3/8 inch difference. I see now that if I wanted it to be perfect, I shouldn't have followed the directions so closely. I could have slightly elongated the through-holes in the wing and then glued the wooden panels on the bottom of the wing in precisely the location needed to get the measurements the same. Oh well.

If you haven't done so yet, when you go to set up the horizontal stab, they usually want you to line it up with a reference point on the fuselage. Don't use the wing as a reference since you know that it's off a little. Use the string method, only push a pin into the front of the fuse centered at the cowl and measure from there to the outer tip of each side of the stab. That way, the stab will be aligned to the fuse and not the slightly off wing.

Jesse

Thanks, Jesse. That's good advice. I won't use the wing as a reference for aligning the stab, but the fuselage instead. I saw the twist in the pictures you posted. Pretty awesome that it flies OK even with the twist.