Apprentice Motor Change
 

Hi all. I am brand new to the RC world as well as using a forum so pardon my ignorance.

I recently purchased my first RC plane (Apprentice) and had an "incident" where the plane became a lawn dart and I broke the propeller shaft. After attempting to remove the set screws to replace the shaft, with no luck, I have decided to remove the motor and take it to a shop to see if they can help me out. My question is, how in the world are you supposed to get into the fuselage to disconnect the 3 wires? There is no way my sausage fingers will ever fit in the firewall hole to reach them. I know I'm not the first person to encounter this so...HELP PLEASE

there appears to be a hatch on the bottom of the plane. If that doesn't give you access, unplug the ESC from the receiver and pull the assembly out through the hole in the firewall.

BUT, if serious to learn, seek help from a local club or experienced pilot. It is very tough to learn how to fly without instruction, even with all the flight gyros.

Thanks for the reply. The hatch in the bottom does not give access to the wire connectors. I ended up having to peel the ESC retaining clip away from the fuselage to allow me enough play in the wire to feed it through the fire wall to make the disconnect. After the motor swap I fastened the ESC clip back to the fuselage with some epoxy and good as new. In my opinion, this is the second design flaw with the Apprentice. The other being to gain access to the nose wheel assembly you need to take off the prop and the cowling. Not a big deal but just a bit of a hassle.

I was just getting a bit too confident and trying to fly inverted at too low of an altitude. It got squirrely on me and I forgot all about the safe mode...lesson learned. ;) I was able to do some forward and side slips...what a cool little airplane