RCU Forums - Best J-3 Cub?

Hello Airzino:

I may not be able to comment on all of the Cub kits but I can comment on one. The GP (Great Planes) Cub is a fair kit. I had some problems with this kit. The wing tips and rudder and elevators use a built up section. The outer or trailing edge pieces or these surfaces are built of 2 or3 pieces glued together. They are supposed to be CAD drawn. But they are die cut and the fit is absolutely pitiful. I had to do some serious fitting and had to use epoxy to assure good bond strength. The firewall is a royal pain in the a** to install. They have you build the fuse and then as one of the last operations install the firewall. Bending the fuse sides to meet the firewall was horrible. I would reccomend putting the firewall in before any other former first to avoid this. Do not forget to brace it with triangular stock. The firewall fit was poor also. The construction instruction book can be confusing. There are some important stepps that are buried in the book. Such as a piec of lite ply to go from the wing mount to the top of the fuse to reinforce the front of the cabin. I missed it completely and I read through the instructions before I started. So read the book carefully.

Now having knocked the kit I will say the plane came out very strong and exceptionally light. It also looks great. I am an experienced builder and IMHO pretty darn good at it. I did go at it and not go step by step as in the manual. So some of the problems I ran into were my own damn fault. I am at the covering stage and will hopefully fly it this spring. I am covedring it with 21St Century fabric and using a Saito 80 in the nose with the standard wing. I will save the wood that the wing parts came in so I can use the die cut outer pieces to fabricate my own wing parts to make a clipped wing later. I did modify the kit to use 2 servos in the wing. I just used the hatch where the rods from the pivots out in the wing to the ailerons to mount the servo. The servo will stick out of the bottom of the wing but so what, I'm not gonna compete with this model. Used lite ply for the hatch and screwed the hatch to rails I glue in on the ribs. I think this model will work nice when I finish it. Other than the poor parts fit and some wood being too soft in my opinion ( I did not replace it We will see how it goes) and the supplied cowl being flimsy ( I am going to reinforce with fiberglass) I thing it is an ok kit. If you take your time and be carefull I am sure you will like it. By the way the kit is pretty darn scale, with a little detail work this plane would make a decent starter scale competition model.

Sorry for the wordy post. I hope this can help you, I got it from my LHS at a very good price 89$ so I think I got pretty good value for my money.

Mark Shuman