I just finished my first kit, the PT-60. I really enjoyed building it. With a Thunder Tiger 61 Pro, and 600mah battery under the tank and against the firewall, it needed about 2.5 ounces of lead bolted on the bottom of the engine mount to balance. Is this pretty common with this kit? If we get a good weekend anytime soon, I'll get my instructor to test fly it and then see how I do on the buddy box.

With the amount of people using 4-strokes, I wouldn't be surprised if it were designed to hold a bit more weight up front.

Congrats on finishing it! Kinda gives you goose bumps huh?

It doesn't surprise me that you need the weight. With experience, you can start removing some of the weight to shift the CG back a bit. This will make the plane a little more aerobatic, and you will be fine. Even if the plane is designed to balance with a particular engine, is is a simple fact that beginners will over-glue joints, and that there are alots of glue joints in the tail area. The tail area has a much greater moment than the nose, so a tiny amount of extra weight at the tail requires a lot of counter-balancing weight at the nose. So, my guess is that you went very slightly "heavy" with the glue at the tail. This is not a problem.

gus

You may try a Higgly Heavy hub for your spinner nut. Looks nice and adds the weight you need. You get a fly wheel affect as well. Not familiar with the PT60, but would hope it would have come out a bit better. You may also move your engine further ahead on your mount rails.

Carrell, Congrats!! When's the maiden, I'd like to see it. Do you have Pix on the club web site?

I believe I did get a little carried away with the glue. There are a lot of glue joints in the tail area and most of them call for epoxy or thick CA. The TT-61 wa on my Global Right Flyer ARF before I broke the tail off. It runs really great and should have plenty of oomph for this plane.

I'm hoping to take it out Saturday Feb 7. Weather.com is guessing 10mph north wind and 43 degrees, so it might be a bit nippy. I'll call my instructor Saturday around noon to see if he thinks we're good to go.

I do not have any photos of it yet. I really regret not taking any while I was building it.

My brother is documenting his GP Super Sportster 60 build, and our members have a few more projects at

http://www.greenvillerc.com/pages/Bu...20Projects.htm

The link for "Carrell's Project" is an Astro Hog I had built. The photos were sent by the man who built it.

Even though I'm not soloed out, and this plane has not flown, I'm already anxious to build another kit. I thought for sure I'd be an "ARF-Man" for the quick assembly and economics, but now I believe I'll probably have a combination of ARF and kit planes.

Great, I'll try to make it out and bring my Tiger Moth.