I don't have any firsthand experience with that plane.......but I heard that it is very durable......but isn't the best flying trainer out there......

Mike

Alter things just a little and you can reduce weight. (some...) Sand the surfaces to be glued, and use medium CA to replace almost all of the contact cement. CA is far lighter than contact cement, and will rip the coro before it lets go.

The window shapes glued onto the fuselage side are decorative, not structural.

An alternative... visit www.spadtothebone.com Look at the Debonair. (in the SPAD Originals designs list) Not as pretty, but gets the job of a trainer done. Considerably lower wing loading than the Aircores trainer.

The coroplast trainers are TOUGH! They tend to bounce, not break. The SPAD sites' designs are getting very good. (as people find improvements, they get updated.)

These things are a double edged sword. On one hand they are hard to tear up. On the other hand
you will crash it more because it dosn't fly very good. My time was on the Cub version of this plane.
It was givin to me by a rookie to try and get it to fly. It did fly but we ended up buddy boxing on the club
trainer. The aero on a plane with a 2" by 3" hole in the front aren't that great.
My advice would be to build a Sig LT-40 and find a teacher. If you cant find a teacher , think about buying
Real Flight R/C sim. You will get frustrated trying to get the Aircore to fly. And might give up on flying.
later daveo

Id' agree with daveo on getting a more conventional trainer and an instructor. If you can't do the instructor thing then I'd also agree that you need to get Real Flight G2 or G2 Lite. The Lite version with a Futaba styled interface is available for about $130.00 most places.

Several hours flying the PT-40 in Real Flight and actually practicing take-offs, landings, touch and goes etc, will allow you to develop the required eye motor loop without crashing a real plane in the first 30 seconds. It ends up being much cheaper, much faster and much less frustrating in the end. If you can get to the point of flying G2 Lite PT-40 well on the advanced setting with some light wind andmoderate thermal activity, you can probably solo without crashing too badly.

While not the ideal trainer, you could also consider a Duraplane Trainer 40. It's relatively heavy and requires a little more speed and throttle on landing but does have a decent airfoil, actually flies fairly well despite the weight and stall speed, is quite aerobatic, is hard to damage and easy to repair. It offers a good compromise between durability and flying traits for an instructorless student pilot.

Quint,

I would agree with the information noted regarding the Aircore 40. As a trainer, I think the cons out weigh the pros by maybe 60-40.

It is durable. It is a stable flyer. I had a little flutter in the ailerons, at high speed. Fixed that by clipping the ailerons about 4" per side. Fastened the clipped pieces to the trailing edge as filler.

The main pro is probably the "crash protection plan" they give you. If the plane is crashed and broken, they will replace the broken parts free.

The main con would have to be the weight. It is heavy for it's size. The weight leads to other cons. Because it’s heavy, it tends to go where you point it. Also, it glides like a rock. In short, it's a "lead sled". It does not try very hard to correct it's own flight path. Not appealing traits for a trainer. Maybe, a second plane.

My nephew tried it and thought it was too fast. I didn't think that could be possible. He soloed on a Great Planes PT40. He was not comfortable with the Aircore 40.

I am not familiar with the other planes mentioned. Sounds like those guys know what they are talking about, though.

Regards,
Mark


Regards,
Mark

I had the cub version also, it flew like a brick. literally. And it did not recover from the sudden stop haha. A good ARF trainer or Balsa ARF kit would be alot better to learn on. They fly very heavy.

Cut the weight and the Aircore 40 is a very good plane. You lose a LOT of weight by using CA instead of contact cement. (sand the place the glue will bond and it sticks VERY well.)

Delete the decorative pieces. (not a lot of these... mainly the windows)

for more tips on building using CoroPlast (which is the Aircore's material) visit www.spadtothebone.com.

BTW... I'm building a coro trainer (my design) with 48 inch span which should do VERY well with a .15 to .25. (competitive for COMBAT with the .25, and deleting the landing gear, if I'm right...) Test flight by Sat.