In another thread, I promised JerKap that I would do a review of an Alpha 60 RTF that I am putting together for my father-in-law from Oklahoma. I'm no MinnFlyer, but here it is:

We began by opening up the very large box. As I mentioned previously, my father-in-law didn't want to open anything until he was here with me, so I got first crack at it. Everything seemed well packed, so as to avoid damage (more on that later). The ads say the plane can be ready to fly in less than an hour. We'll see.

Wanting to play by the rules, I started with the instruction book. Step 1 is assembly of the wing. Upon inspecting the wing halves, I found a typical high quality Hangar 9 UltraCote covering design. Only one problem: It was very wrinkled, more so than any other Hangar 9 ARF I have ever seen. I started out shrinking it up with a covering iron, but soon decided that was too slow and moved to a heat gun. After about 20 minutes of work, I got things looking pretty good. Boy, I'm going to have to hurry to get this done in under an hour.

Two attachment options are provided, rubber bands or bolts. We are going with bolts. Regardless of the attachment method, the wings halves are joined in the same way. There is a large aluminum tube that fits perfectly into tubes in each half near the spar. This sets the dihedral. There is a smaller pin near the trailing edge that keeps everything in place.

The manual then instructs you to apply a narrow piece of tape to the joint to hold the wing halves together. I'm sorry, but I can't go for that. No can do. (Isn't that a song?) Even though both halves will be bolted to the fuselage, I'm not comfortable just having the wing halves taped together. Accordingly, I applied a thin layer of 30 minute epoxy to one side and slid the wing halves together. A perfect fit. As long as I had the epoxy out, I cut the covering away from the two holes in the leading edge. I chamfered the provided dowels for wing mounting and installed them in the holes. I also cut the covering away from the holes for the wing bolts.

The aileron servo was already installed in one wing half, so I connected the pushrods to the torque rods. The ailerons seem to be set pretty well without any further adjustment. I then set the wing aside to dry.

Here are pics of what we have done so far:

We have about an hour into it at this point. Up next, fuselage!

Sorry for the multiple picture posts.

Fuselage work began with the heat gun again. Things were pretty wrinkly on the fuse as well. The next step is to install the main gear. The wheels and nose gear are pre-installed, so installation involves screwing in two screws to blind nuts in the fuse. Now it can stand on its wheels! Tail surfaces are next.

The tail surfaces didn't have as many wrinkles, but there were some dents in the balsa. The dents did not seem to come from shipment. They appeared to have been there when it was packed. Shrinking the covering covered the dents pretty well. The vertical fin has two small bolts protruding from the bottom. The horizontal stabilizer is attached to the bolts with wingnuts and thread lock. The whole assembly is then attached to the fuse with two screws.

Herein lies another slight glitch. The manual states that two phillips screws are provided and that you should use a magnetic screwdriver to get them up through the fuselage to the holes. Instead of phillips screws, however, socket head screws are provided. It took a while to confirm this, and it could be confusing to a beginner. The socket head screws are easier to install. The control horns are attached to the pushrods and we are done with this step.

The final step is to install the three-blade prop and spinner. Now its done! By this point, the batteries have charged up enough to at least check out servo operation. Everything works well. Here's more pics:

Next up, ignition!

The wrinkles were amazing in mine too. But i dont have a covering iron or heat gun, so I did my best with a hair drier and clothes iron. Basically is did nothing, but my plane still flies good.

Looking good Scott. Whens the maiden?

Maiden will likely be Friday afternoon/evening. I have a prior engagement tomorrow and the weather is looking crappy anyway.

I couldn't, however, resist taking it out and firing it up. I fueled it up. Not sure how big the tank is, but it seemed to take a lot of fuel. Primed it, put the glow on and hit it with the starter. It fired right up. I leaned out the high end to close to the max on the limiter. It seems pretty good. I'm very impressed with the way it runs so far. The flywheel helps it idle nice and slow. We'll see how it performs with the three blade prop.

I taxied it around the cul-de-sac a little bit and immediately noticed that the nose wheel was way out of line to the right when the rudder was centered. Easily solved by adjusting the pushrod at the servo.

That's it for now. BTW, total assembly time was around 2 1/2 hours. Of that, probably an hour was spent on the covering. If you didn't mess with the covering and you didn't epoxy the wings together, you could do it in about an hour.

The Alpha 60 I just assembled had the same issues with the wrinkled covering. I also found a couple of stripes that where not stuck down very good. I think they use a very low temp iron to apply the covering - when I removed the covering from the top of the wing for a repair I found it had not stuck down well and came up with no effort. I went over the whole plane making sure I ironed all the stripes down as well as possible except over the decals which I was afraid of ruining.

Hoglfyer

The loose covering would not be a big issue for an experienced modeler, but could be daunting for a beginner. As Shortymet says, it doesn't have much effect on the way it flies, but it could cause covering to prematurely pull loose and lead to fuel damaged wood.

Did you fly it yet?

Hogflyer

I saw im doing some training flying on it yesterday, our club had a big 50 year anniversary this year and he was doing some buddy box time with it.

I will let him tell how it flew.

That's very diplomatic, Jon (Minnreefer). More on that later.

I had written a detailed flight report Friday night, but lost it with a computer glitch. Oh well. Here's a revised version.

Took Friday afternoon off work and headed out to the field with my father-in-law. I got everything set up and checked out. Did a range check, which went fine. Fueled it up and started it up for the first flight. The engine was running pretty well, although it stumbled a bit in transition. It was very flyable, so I decided to get a few flights in before any fine tuning. Taxied out to the runway and took a deep breath.

I had already adjusted the nosewheel, so it tracked straight down the runway. Because I advanced the throttle very slowly, I used the whole runway. It lifted off nicely and I was immediately struck by two things: 1) It was trimmed almost perfectly straight out of the box and 2) it flew so SLOW, even at full throttle.

I only had to move aileron and elevator one or two clicks to get straight and level flight. It was incredibly stable, even at very slow speeds. And speaking of slow speeds, the three-bladed prop really keeps this thing from building up any speed. I was a skeptic at first, but I think it is a great idea for teaching beginners. The Alpha flew slower, well, than any trainer I have ever flown before. Before landing, I did a few basic trainer aerobatics and it performed them just like a basic trainer. The aileron throws are set pretty low, so rolls were doable, but a challenge. Adding rudder really helps out. Plenty of power for loops, Immelmans, split-s, etc. Inverted is also possible, again, as good as any other basic trainer.

I then landed and hooked up the buddy box. I then had a couple of great training flights with my father-in-law, who had never flown before. He had a blast and did a great job. By the second flight, he was able to take control for at least a few minutes at a time without me having to take over.

I have trained people on my old Kadet Mk II and on Nexstars and I can honestly say this is the best-flying trainer I have used yet. I am finishing up an LT-40 with a student, so that may change after we fly the LT-40, but I was very pleased with the Alpha.

Up next: More flights and . . . disaster!

The saga continues . . .

The next day was our annual club open house, in this case our 50th anniversary. In addition to airshow-type demonstrations, we always volunteer to take any visitors up on the buddy box after they practice a little bit on simulators that we have set up.

We got there early and got one more training flight in with my father-in-law. Once the guests arrived, I began giving buddy box flights. I buddy boxed at least a half a dozen people, ranging in age from 7 to 50. Even the 7 year old girl was able to do pretty well. A couple of the guys were able to fly 5 minutes at a time without me taking over on their first flights ever! Again, this is a great trainer for an absolute beginner. I think we got a few guys hooked.

Then, catastrophe.[] I was going to start another buddy box flight. I had my card on Ch. 41 on the frequency board. Turned the radio on, briefed the student and started it up. Took the plane out to the runway, and then waited a little bit because there were some other people landing. Another club member doing buddy box flights had just crashed and was headed of to the woods on the north side of the field, but I didn't think much about that as he was well away from the runway. I took off to the west, gained altitude and turned around to fly back east across the field. I was just about to give control to the student when the plane suddenly nosed forward and went straight in from about 100 feet up, leaving me staring in disbelief.

I went out to pick up the wreckage and couldn't figure out what had happened. Had I left my antenna down? Was there a clevis failure on the elevator (no)?

About 1/2 hour later, I found out what happened. The other club member giving the training flights had his card on 37. After his crash, he discovered that the buddy box he was using (without a crystal or antenna) was labeled 37, but his master transmiter was on 41. So when I turned mine on, I unknowingly shot him down. He still had his transmitter on when he went to get his plane, and shot me down. He is a good friend of mine and felt terrible about the new mistake. He immediately offered to replace the plane.

Because my father-in-law was just visiting for a short time, I wanted to send him back with a functioning plane. I called my LHS from the field and had them hold another Alpha 60 for me. We assembled it that night (did not have the same wrinkling problem and actually ran better) and flew it yesterday morning. Like the first, it flew great.

Ouch! That's to bad Scott , And your right , all you can do is stare at it as it goes in. Sounds like you have a good friend, willing to own his mistakes. And you not wondering what happened.
You`ll find the LT-40 a good trainer. I`ve had a ST GS40 , Evo .46 and a Mangum .52 4c on mine. It flies the best with the Magnum , but the GS.40 pulled it nicely also.
Sometimes Murphy shows up in the strange ways.

You can say that again, Robbie.

At least you feel "better" know why your plane crashed, I felt bad when I saw that pretty plane in a few pieces, but I bet a lot of people had fun on the buddy box.

Jon

Hello to all in this thread.

I hope you can help me with my new Alpha 60.

I just finished putting it together and was checking the center of gravity which by the manual it is supposed to be 4 1/4" from the leading edge. When I try to hold it at that point the plane just goes nose down. It is actually impossible to hold it by the COG. The model is the RTF, version that came with Rx, Bat pack, fuel tank, engine, servos, etc. all put together. I even tried moving the bat. pack farther back, but still tiltes a lot by the nose.

Any suggestions, comments would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

David

David-

A couple of questions.

First, is your fuel tank empty? I assume it is, but just thought I'd check. The plane must be balanced with the tank empty.

Second, how far off is the CG? Put pieces of tape on each side at the recommended point and then move your fingers forward until the plane balances level. Then measure to see how far off you are. If it's only about 1/4", you're probably fine. If it's more than that, you will probably want to add a little weight to the tail. You can buy the stick-on weight to start out with, but I recommend permanently attaching it eventually, so it doesn't fall off in flight. Just add 1/4 oz. at a time until it balances.

I have now flown 3 of these planes, as a result of the disaster described above. The first two were RTFs, and the third was an ARF that had the engine and radio from #1 installed in it. I'm ashamed to admit it, but I flew all three without checking the CG and they all flew great. A nose heavy condition will not create nearly as big a problem as a tail heavy condition, but it is still best to balance it. As the saying goes, "a nose heavy plane may fly poorly, but a tail heavy plane often flies only once!"

One final question slightly off topic. Do you have an instructor to help you with the maiden flight and to teach you how to fly? The Alpha is a great trainer, but without an instructor to help you get started, it will still be a challenge to bring back down in one piece until you have a little experience.

Hello Jagnweiner.

Thanks very much for the tip!

Well that should do it. For some reason that i can't explain (because the box was sealed when I opened it up) the tank is completelly full, and now I realized that the hose that goes from the tank to the motor is pinkish in color. Now I understan why, it is full of fuel. This is weird. In any case I am glad I may have the reason for the unbalance.

Ok, so first of all, get the fuel out and re-check the COG.

Regarding your suggestion about an instructor, I have some friends at my local aero club that will give me a hand, I just thought that I would bring in the plane as much ready as possible, that's why was checking the COG.

I have flown before a TwinStar II which is a lot smaller and a Logo10 helicopter, but both of them are electric, hence my lack of experience even spotting a tank full of fuel...lol.

Thanks again!

David

If you bought this plane new, and the tank was full of fuel, then you bought a used plane. The RTF version comes with the tank installed, but no fuel since it's a hazardous material and has different shipping requirements.

I'd have somebody with a lot of experience look this plane over really good to make sure it's not messed up, especially the engine or better yet return it for another that has not been used.

For balancing, you may have to add weight to the tail. I have an Alpha 60 RTF that required 2-3/4 oz of lead on the tail to balance properly - and my wing repair didn't cause the nose heavy condition (bought it with damaged wing hence the repair before it was even assembled).

Hogflyer

That is weird, and a little hard to believe. So when you look at the fuel tank from behind, you see fuel sloshing around in it? The fuel line from the tank to the motor is pinkish in color because from the factory, one line is green and the other is red/pink, to help you make sure you don't get them confused.

If it is full, take a fuel pump and pump it out. Discard the old fuel because you don't know how old it is. Balance the plane empty and let us know how it turns out.

Hi Scott,

I emptied the fuel tank as you indicated and obviously there was a improvement. Still the plane tilts down by the nose but not as bad as it was before. For sure the fuel was adding a lot of weight.

Now I have another problem. Every time I try to start the engine the bolt that holds the propeler becomes loose. The first time it happened I thought maybe I didn´t tightened it hard enough, so I did it again making sure this time it was pretty tight. Once again, as soon as I applied the starter to the cone on the propeler it got loose again, so much so that the propeller just comes off. I thought about putting a preshure washer but there is barelly any thread left for the bolt, so the washer won't fit.

Has anyone experienced something like this with your Alphas? I have added a few pics so you can see how I am fitting the propeller, that to me looks exactly as the manual indicates.

Thanks for your suggestions.

Tighten it more, and more, and more. I've never had a problem with mine coming off. Just every few times to the field, I retighten.

Make sure you are not trying to crank the engine in a flooded condition. Just remove the glo plug, and spin it through about 5 - 10 flips with the glo plug out. You might want to put a cloth over the hole for the plug for the first couple of spins in case it spurts out fuel. I found that it is easy to overprime the motor. Just 1 or 2 rotations after the fuel goes into the main needle is all it should take to prime it.

It hasn't happened with my Alphas, but has with other planes. One thing that sometimes works is to make a washer out of sandpaper the diameter of the prop hub. Put it between the back of the spinner and the thrust washer of the engine. Not sure what you are using to tighten the nut with, but you should use a good size crescent wrench or box-end wrench. The 4 way glow plug wrench won't apply enough leverage.

Good luck!

I've probably flown 7-8 of these by now, it's the most popular trainer in my club (we've had 4 of them in the air at once!). We love them, and recommend them.

Some notes:

- Yes, the engine can kick and throw the prop. It's fairly common, and usually due to over priming as mentioned above. The limiter in the needle might play a part here because it's often a bit rich and allows more fuel in to the engine than you need to start. The engines are run once, but not "broken in" when you get them. As you get a few hours on the engine, the compression will drop a hair, and this tendancy will go down quite a bit. Once in a while we get one at the field that's really tight. That's great, it's going to be a bit more powerful than average, but it's also going to toss more props than average as well when new. It also helps to be "agressive" with the electric starter. Guys who are afraid of applying pressure with the starter throw more props because the starter isn't getting enough grip to push the engine through compression fast enough, and the engine backfires. Working on your starter technique will reduce thrown props a lot.

- Do yourself a favor and remove the bolts that hold on the nose strut one at a time, and put on some locktite. It's not a question of "IF" they will fall out and leave you with a dangling nose wheel, it's only a question of "when". I must have seen this happen 4-5 times on different Alpha 60s

- Most of them have balanced right on, but 1 or 2 have, in fact, balanced so nose heavy that they were hard to flair for landings. That 3-blade prop really "throws out the anchor" on final, the Alpha 60 "breaks" harder than any other trainer I've flown, which is nice. But when you combine that dropping airspeed with nose-heavy and trainer-level elevator throws, you get a plane that is almost impossible to put on the mains. Adding a little tail weight fixes it right up, making the plane one of the easiest to land there is. The most I've added to a student's plane was about 1oz.

- I agree that glueing the wing halves together is the way to go, however most of the 60's at my field were put together guy newbies following the directions, and I've never seen a problem with the tape, even with guys who opted for the rubber bands. It really does work, even if I'd still do epoxy myself

- The limiters on the high and low speed mixture are usually close enough, but it's pretty common for us to have to remove or adjust the limit on the low end to get a smooth transition from idle to full power. I suspect it has something to do with the "normal" temp/altitude/humidity/fuel used around here vs what they use when they set the engines. The high speed is usually not as big of a deal, but we've still had a couple of Alpha 60s and 40s that really needed the mixture set outside of the range of the limiter. I have a used Evolution .45 from an ex-students Alpha 40, and I pulled the limiters off. They are easy to remove, and make the engine easier to set up once you know how to adjust your mixture.

Thanks to all for your suggestions.

After reading the posts above I decided that maybe I just wasn´t tightening the bold hard enough, so I pulled the motor out of it's support, got a good confortable hold of that sucker and applying leverage with a good wrench little by little the bolt went farther in. It went in smooth and felt real solid and finally the thread on the shaft came out the bolt.

I put everything back in place and finally was able to crank it up. I was gladly surprised by two things, first it fired up as soon as I applied the starter and went into a low steady "purrr" at low idle, and secondly I couldn't believe how quite that Evolution engine is. At idle you can just have a normal conversation confortably right next to the plane and even at full throtlle is not ofending at all like other planes some of my buddies have at the club that are just annoying when they are setting them up on the ground.

Now that I have taken all the fuel out I will again proceed to balance it, and that is it!!...can't wait for the weekend to go with my friend to the club to give it a try. I am glad to hear so many good comments on the Alpha.