I am considering getting the sig smith miniplane next. I have a couple questions...

1. Where can you find them for sale on the net (for price comparison to my LHS)?
2. From what I have read, the cabanes (sp) are extremely hard/aggravating to get correct.
Is it possible to leave the balsa off of the wire or does the balsa add needed strength to
the cabanes?
3. Same with landing gear?
4. Any tips/links to building, setup, or flying this plane would be appreciated. (I have built a
lazy bee and speedy bee so sticks are not foreign to me)
5. Thanks for your time.

http://rfr.htmlplanet.com/smith/smith.html

Here'a link I found, as I am in your boat, but witheth oars in the water: I bought the kit, and am weaiting for a clear building table to start it!

Yes, I have heard the same thing. There is also a mentioniof teh Miniplane in teh Higlye book 'Bipes' and he does touch on its construciton, which is a nice help!

As for pricing, www.sigmfg.com is a good place to start, as this is Sig's page!

Then look at tower hobbies, and a few of the other 'online' ordering shops. Go to www.greathobbies.com as well. They are canadian (with a US branch..) and you might get a better deal, with the exchange rate.. I paid about $140CAD for it, and this was just before Christmas..

They say this can be a ticky build, and that one shoudl really really take thier time with it..

Thanks for the info dr_wogz. I'll check out the link.

Good luck with your miniplane!

I'm building the miniplane now. I got it from Towers. I followed the directions in 'Bipes' and the cabanes came out fine. The book has other helpful hints for the miniplane in there too. I don't see that the balsa gives any more strength to them. I have seen full scale with different landing gear also. I haven't started covering mine yet. A friend had one years ago and he flew the wings off it! Good luck.

I've built 3 of them.

You don't need the balsa fairings on the landing gear or the cabane struts unless you want them there for looks. The N strut wood helps strengthen it so you need it there. They do look nice with the airfoil shapes but the landing gear mounted ones tended to crack with age (hard landing every now and then). After my first plane, I tossed the stock gear and bought some aluminum gear that was a little wider but same height. This helped in the ground handling and looks beefier. Consider it if you aren't going to enter a scale contest.

Try to make it as light as you can, (ie: sand sand sand especially in the tail). Try to keep the tail light to save weight up front.

My first one was covered with Coverite and painted and had an OS .50 FSR. It flew okay but was not as good as it could have been so my second one was covered in monokote and it came in much lighter and was much more responsive (same engine). My third one had an OS .70 4 stroke...wow!

The cabanes align with the fuse with no special skills needed, just have a basic knowledge of soldering and you're good to go.

You'll love the plane
Don

I built mine before I read "Bipes" and I had a bad time with the N-struts, and they gave me trouble several times after it was built. After I read his book I modified the mini with N-struts cut from aircraft grade plywood, as Higley recommends, and haven't had any trouble since. I strongly approve of this mod, the only problem being that it is less scale this way, since the struts are at 90 degrees to each wing. By the way, Carl Goldberg (no association) sells plastic 90 degree mounting brackets which are certainly handy in the modified installation. As for the landing gear and interplane struts, I covered them with car door trim edging available at most auto supply stores, have had no trouble, and it looks pretty good.

I found the kit to be time-consuming but not difficult to build. I have a Magnum 61FS on mine, it flies great, and looks wonderful taxiing out to takeoff.

Sounds like I need to get the Higley "Bipes" book.

The solid wood "N" struts sounds like a plan. I have another Miniplane, NIB, and I was thinking of doing "I" struts. Not scale, but so what I'll be modifying it a bit to make it look like a Reno Bipe, anyway.

Later
Don

I built the interplane struts using K&S airfoiled aluminum tubing. The joints were epoxy. The tube ends were stuffed with wood and drilled to accept the wire pins as per plans. They survived longer than the Miniplane did!
The cabane structure was built following the plans and gave no trouble. I was nervous about soldering on the airframe, though. The soldering was done with the structure mounted to a scrap of particle-board shelf material.

Mine had the red-and-white sunburst design, but the bottom was covered in solid red. This simplified the job and provided excellent top-to-bottom contrast in flight. The Miniplane rolls and snaps very quickly! I found the constrast helpful in keeping the pilot oriented with the airplane!

I'd like to encourage you to build one, I loved mine!

I appreciate all the comments. I believe I will go to the LHS at lunch today and get them to order one. I do not have a digital camera but, maybe i can take some pictures and post them later. This is my first biplane so, I will probably have more questions as the build progresses.

Thanks again for all the input.

Well, I brought home my miniplane kit yesterday and looked it over. I don't think I will to many problems with the fuselage, wings, and stabs. The only thing that I'm pretty sure will give me some trouble is the struts. Not necessarily putting the balsa on them to make the airfoil shape but soldering them together.

I was hoping to be able to silver solder them instead of using lead solder. I have just never been any good at lead soldering. Of course the airframe would be toast before you even got one solder joint done. I am thinking about making a jig that has the same spacing as the fuselage to get everything lined up and soldered for the cabanes. Still thinking about the n struts. What do you think?

You should have some copper wire in the kit. Wrap it tightly around the parts to be soldered and use stay bright solder and flux. I did my first one with a big old heavy duty soldering iron and it worked just fine. The other two were done with a small hobby torch. Before soldering, mount the cabane pieces on the fuelage and check to make sure the bends are all right for alignment. If they are, I wrap the wire around the pieces and put a drop of CA to help hold them together and then carefully take it off the plane to solder it up. It's pretty simple.

Or you could make a jig like you are thinking.

You should have no problem soldering...as long as it flows through the pieces it'll be strong enough. The wing mount is glassed to the cabanes so you have that helping hold it all together, too.

Barnowl gave you a pretty good idea for the N struts. I'll probably do that on my next one (or an "I" strut)

First thing to do is cut all the printed wood pieces out (I always hate doing that )

Don