Understand that. Here's a tip or two that might be useful then. Pick up a new set of axles. The ones that come from the manufacturer are a little soft and I still haven't figured out what size the hex heads are on them. Some of the 4-40 hex screws that come from the original manufacturer have pretty rounded hex inserts and won't permit tightening. No big since 4-40 screws are prolly laying in the bottom of your flight box. Better still, toss the 4-40 hatch screws and blind nuts and tap the hatch tabs for a 10-32 screw, or metric equivalent. Use an 8 or 10-32 or metric hex head nylon screw in place of the 4-40 metal screws. They never loosen up.

1-1/4" servo arms is correct, but you'll prolly end up using the hole at the 1-1/8" mark. As for the turnbuckle pushrods I couldn't say since I made my own with 4-40 all thread inside carbon rods. Maybe 1/2 gram heavier overall but many $$ cheaper. In the long run they are just as strong and adjusting one end is easy.

Take some thin ca glue and squirt a line all the way around the thin balsa wing pockets to stiffen them up. It's real easy to put you finger through one otherwise. Other than the above, assemble it the way it comes out of the box. It's a great flying plane and I believe you'll love it for IMAC.

I didn't really want to start a new thread just for this question so I'll ask it on this one. Tom, do you have any pics of the new covering schemes from the bottom, just curious as to what the bottom of the wings look like. Thanks for your time!

Well!!!! I ordered mine yesterday!! Can't wait for it to get here! After all the good things I've read about this plane and Wildhare I'm very excited to get on with the build. This will be my first 50cc plane and I'm confident, based on my research, that I couldn't have picked a better one. I went with the package deal in one of the new color schemes, the white/blue. Thanks to all that have contributed to this thread, I've read it through at least once and will probably read it a few more times before the plane gets here.

Deleted

Does anyone know what the thickness of the firewall on the sukhette is?

Tom,

Any idea on how to reinforce the sidewall in this picture? I am making new landing gear plates as best as I can. I just need ideas on how to reinforce the side wall. I am going to use a big washer on the inside of the wing pocket.

All suggestions welcome.

I'd push it all back into place and laminate a single piece of 1/64" ply over it. Then if you can access it I would add a layer of .58oz fiberglass or 9 oz carbon fiber unidirectional cloth. The carbon would be near bullet proof.

Something like this.

TF

I'm getting a Sukhoi next month and will be putting a DL50 in it. I ordered Tom's hardware kit with it which I believe comes with a 24oz tank. What are the rest of you running for tank size with a 50cc engine for 10-12 minutes of flight time? I've got a G62 in a WH Edge V1 with a 24oz tank and it's never less than half empty. The Edge will get downsized tank also since the DL50 will spend summers on it and winters on the Suhkoi.

Chuck

I run the 24 oz it will stop running at 30 min, depending on flying style

I'm under the impression that the tank size has been reduced to about a 20 ounce. I could be wrong here. In any case that would not pose a problem for most people and it helps keep the plane lighter since you won't be "bunkering" fuel that you probably wouldn't be using anyway.

With all the 50cc planes I"ve had I've never managed to run a 24 ounce tank dry before I was done flying for the round and usually had 1/3 to 1/2 of a tank left after landing using 50cc engines.

We can supply what ever size you want. Normally it's either 20 or 24, 20 seems like plenty but a lot of people like 24. I don't have enough attention span to run either one out.

TF

Well, I'm putting together my Sukohi and I hit a snag. In the model specific instructions it states to make the Aileron pushrods 5-1/2" long. Is that dimension from center of the servo arm to the C/L of the control horn screw or is it to the hinge line. I cant seem to get that dimension to make sense.

Thanks for any help

Jim

That information is in there for people who need to buy pre-made pushrods like the H9 titanium ones. It's the length of the actual pushrod, not including the ball links.

If you are making your own from our hardware kit, follow the instructions in the general manual.

TF

I received my WH SU-26 a few weeks ago just after Tom got the last shipment in, and I am very pleased with the quality and workmanship. The price is right and I think the factory did a good job on mine overall.

I'm taking a little extra time assembling as I also compete in RC Combat and more recently Pylon Racing and had a couple contests to get ready for.

Here are two issues I found that others may benefit from sharing;

1.Landing gear attatchment- As others have noted the gear don't seem to fit quite right and I noticed one person re-drilled mounting holes and was very upset. I had the same problem but took a different approach. The problem on mine is the way the plywood fuse sides extend slightly below the plywood bolt plate on either side. That's right where the bend of the gear before it exits the fuse side is. When mounting holes in plywood are aligned with tapped holes in gear, the radius of the bend in gear is jacked up on that lip of ply that sticks below ply mount plate.

If you continue to insert the gear about 1/4" further into the fuse it clears the lip of ply and settles up against the mount plate. Unfortunately by then, the tapped holes in gear are nowhere to be seen from above having moved completely off the holes in ply plate.

A.)Of course one obvious fix would be to run a long drill bit down thru the fuse and the holes in ply plate to drill and tap new mounting spots in the gear. (Cursing optional)

B.)One other possible fix would be to dremel or cut away that little lip of ply where it interferes with proper gear seating, but that looked like it would require an enlargement of the slot the gear go into to work through, and repair afterward. (More cursing optional)

C.) So I settled for this fix which worked for me; using material of a thickness that matched the lip of ply that causes the problem (aprox 1/8") , I used 1/8" HDPE plastic and cut a spacer plate for each gear and marked and drilled bolt clearance holes through it and tacked it to the gear with 3M77 adhesive spray after test fitting to insure clearance and alignment.

This required enlarging the slot in the fuse the gears goes into slightly, which looks fine considering, and the plane will sit 1/8" taller. It seemed the least invasive fix, and if anyone wants pics, I'll dismount one side to show you what I did. It's pretty simple.

2.Elevator servo location in the new 87" batch that I received seems much lower than the pics of other planes in this build which show the servo high enough to have it's arm pointing down. You'll see from my pic the low location of servo cutout required me to put arm on pointing up. I was worried this would be a problem at first. The geometry seemed wrong. When the control horn on the elevator travels forward and pivots up (during down elevator command), the arm on the servo is going forward and pivoting down, a conflict when extreme throw is used.

I figured before I started whining and complaining I'd at least get it rigged up and try it out. Even though the geometry seems wrong and I think would be better if both servo arm and elevator horn were pointing in and pivoting in the same direction, this setup still looks like it allows for lots of throw before it hits the point of going beyond proper extension into binding. I should have taken pic of full up and down throw for you to see what I mean. Let me know if anyone needs to see that, be happy to oblidge.

The other tip to pass along and my question; I had previously noticed comments about the two Horizontal stab locations, and having chosen the rear position made what I think to be an erroneous assumption that the rear tail servo position is for the rear stab location. After cutting it out and seeing how close that is to the elevator I chose to open the front servo location which appeard both higher and just far enough in front of elevator to allow a better linkage moment. It seemed like the up servo arm down control horn situation would be even worse when coupled much shorter so I installed mine in the front spot.

Is the rear servo location for dual rudder servos? If you put elevator servos there it looked like they would be in the way of pull-pull rudder cables. So choose wisely before cutting the covering away or you'll be patching it like me! Ultracoat "True Red" seems to be a near perfect match.

Tom, you might want to put the SU-26 instruction addendum in your download section along with the general assembly download. Mine actually came with no printed instructions and I had to get the Sukhoi addendum from someone on these build threads. Thanks.

Well, I sure like your elevator servo location a lot better then mine.

With the recommended 1-1/4" servo arm there is no way to get the control rod at a 90 degree angle to the control and servo horns. I'm now wondering what everyone else did in this situation. Here's a picture of how my control linkage setup looks.

Do you think that throw angle will be a problem?

The other problem I'm having is that the hardware package supplied control horns are 1/2" offset and the factory drilled all the hardpoints at 3/4" off the hinge line.

That angle will work just fine.

And the slight offset of the control horns will make absolutely no difference in the way it flies. The only place it matters even a little is on the pull-pull rudder where you like to have the pivots on the hinge line to keep the cables both tight.

TF

OK, Thanks for the help Tom

Been flying the V1 Sukhoi for a while now with the horizontal stab in the forward mounting position. Just moved it back to the rear position to see how it flies. Hopefully an improvement in flight characteristics. Forward stab position feels a tad snappy - hope the rearward stab position helps. At 6 or so gallons on the plane I'm really enjoying it. I'm pretty neutral in CG and weight is around 16.5 lbs with CF where I could use it.

Recently picked up a 84" WH Extra 300 locally and I really like the Sukhoi interior and cannister tunnel in comparison. Hope to get the Extra going soon - wifey made the comment of bunnies reproducing at the house - not a problem in my opinion

Jason

Let us know how you like the rear position on the stab. I'm putting one together later this month and would like to know which is best.

Chuck - will do , hope to hit the field on Sunday so we'll see.

Well I bit the bullet and after much reading decided to purchase one of these beauties. I am starting with the airframe and Tom's hardware kit first as I am on a budget and plan to work on this kit slowly as funds allow for the purchase of engine, servos , electronics etc. Tom at WH was very helpful and It was a pleasure dealing with him. ( just wish he would have separated that last red/wht/blk SU outta the combo kit for me ). It was a toss-up between that and the red/yel anyway, not having the Honda scheme in stock made the choice that much easier The yellow red scheme is a good looking plane and are my normal colors i use because of the high visibility and contrast.

does anyone have a picture of the underside of the red yellow scheme , the website dosen't show it that I could find. Also could one of you kind people take or post a few shots of you plane fairly close up in the following locations :

front cowl off DL 50 installed 45 deg angle exhaust side

straight down canopy off showing electronics/fuel tank install

and one of elevator servos installed.

I plan to take a lot of pictures of my build and post them here for others once I start


Thanks

Don

bump !

The little brown truck showed up with my Sukhoi yesterday without damaging it! This is by far the best built ARF I've had. The only problem with it was the front stops for the canopy frame were both broken off. It will take five minutes to reglue them in place. Tom has a nice unadvertised plus with the plane... some very nice wing bags that also protected the wings in transit. Can't wait to get started on it, but some house projects have to get completed first.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Chuck

Just ordered mine yesterday.
Gonna do a BUD LIGHT scheme on this one !

Jim