![]() One thing I would NOT do yet is place the motor mount. Use some scrap balsa to adjust it, pin it down, and hit it with some CA. The bottom is a little trickier as you need to curve it as it heads toward the motor mount. The top piece is easy, cut it to length and fit it into the bulkheads. What the builder needs to do is to keep them in from the edge 1/8", which is the thickness of the top/bottom sheeting. But what they are NOT telling you is exactly where they need to go! Unless you think ahead a few steps you'd be tempted to run them along the top or bottom edge of the fuselage side. "Install fuselage strengthen stick A9 onto fuselage, then put two motor amount together and stick them in the head of fuselage."Their English is better than my Chinese, but not by much!īasically this step is simply telling you to install the sticks along the top and bottom of the fuselage. I tacked everything together and lined it up before committing to more glue. There is a lot of slop in there as the slots are much too large. If you look closely at the picture you can see the slot and tab construction for the bulkheads and servo tray. Probably a lot heavier than it really needs, and somebody who knows what he's doing could shave a LOT of weight off this kit! The fuselage is covered with 1/8" sides, top, and bottom. An easy fix, but they're pretty weak until the bulkhead gets glued into place. Quality of the parts so far: the tabs that go above the leading edge of the wing were broken off on both fuselage sides. Basically you're just installing two bulkheads and the servo tray on one side of the fuselage. "Install 2 bulkhead A1 and A3, servo assembling base A2 onto fuselage side plate A12."If you're looking at the picture of the parts for the fuselage that makes some sense, and the picture that goes along with step 01 helps as well. Plans, Step 1.01 ( step 1, I guess) says: The quality of the print/paper is quite good, but the pictures are small, the "Chinglish" is typical, and the instructions are usually very vague. Let's start with the manual (I'll stop putting it in quotes for now, but will continue to laugh every time I call it a manual). My thought here is to follow the plans (as much as possible) and then fill in the missing blanks for future builders by including my mistakes, my assumptions, etc along with the details from anybody who wants to chime in. ![]() Seriously, why don't they actually hire people who know how to speak the language to trandlate and re-write the documents? The pictures have potential, but they're tiny and don't correspond well to the English. Calling them "instructions" or "plans" is a massive reach of imagination. I'm hoping this build log will help others who try this kit out, because the "instructions" that come with the Red Swan are absolute crap. I'm currently updating another build-blog that covers the first steps in building the plane, so I'll copy the info here and maybe delete or close down the blog. And it's cheap, so if it turned out to be crap I won't mind scrapping it. The Red Swan seemed to fit a category I haven't done yet - a quasi-glider. The Stick style I have covered with my Lucky ACE, I've already got a J3 and Super Cub, and the other styles just didn't speak to me. So why the Red Swan? I was going to order from HK to save money and their choices are somewhat limited. Now he'll just have to visit me some time and pick up his plane before I decide to build it and fly it too! My dad is getting into the hobby and had me order a plane for him, so I ordered the HK Red Swan and had them shipped together to eliminate my shipping cost. They went together incredibly easily, the manuals were complete, the online community was strong and helpful, etc. I'll admit to being cocky after building the Mountain Models kits. The building season in Wisconsin is long and I've currently got two foamie scratch-builds under construction and two other planes needing a minor part or two so they'll be ready for Spring. I started off buying the Hobby Zone Super Cub, crashed it a number of times, re-built it, and crashed it some more. My history to date includes building some planes from foam board, building ARF foam kits, building an ARF balsa J3, and building two Mountain Models balsa kits (Lucky ACE and the Switchback with both the GT and standard wings). ![]() I'm going to classify myself as a noob at building and flying until I do something actually useful for the community.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |