Snowblind
Propeller Balancer
I'll start by mentioning that I have never built a balsa model before, I know a proper work surface makes things easier, and this will be a flightless bird.
...I can not believe to this day that this model is recommended to ages of as young as 12 years old. I don't deny that there are those 12 year olds out there that could happily build this model perfectly, however, it's not something I would ever expect of that age.
...Coming from modeling cars in styrene for years, this is also by far, the largest static model I have ever built due to it's 24" wingspan. I was never truly intimidated by it's size, but there is a reason I've owned it for 14 plus years, or since I was 13 or so, with me only just this past month or so deciding to just ing build it before it gets lost or destroyed.
...As the pictures show, you'll see that the box didn't fare the best, but this birthday present won't go wasted, I'm pretty happy I didn't try and fail to do it years ago, my 7-year-old-twin-younger-siblings would never have let this thing survive the first time I stepped out of my room; Heh, my Stepdad's PiperCub rubber band plane died to them pretty fast, first just a finger through the wing, a week later, many crashes/folded wing, and no admitting it from them.
...Now, The box says laser cut, and I'll give it that the parts that are cut were done very well, all the way through with just enough reinforcement in nibs to hold them into the sheets, but not hard to remove. However, the box came with about a mile of thread, and a single sheet of 1/16th thick balsa sliced at varying intervals to form both square stock, and several widths of rectangular stock.
...It also included 4 pieces to make two leading edges(diagonal cut end to end splice... wait, whaaa), 5 lengths of spar(an extra spar length? and splice that too?!? Good thing this one's not flying... EVER), the plans are reasonable, and have each part shown in all dimensions which is good for replication, and the fact that you have to shape so much yourself, the instructions are as usual not quite suited to my learning style, but not unclear.
...I could easily see powering this plane and flying it with some light modification, and plan to do so with another of the same assembled a little more robustly. (one piece CF spar for one thing!)
^^^You can see some geometrical problems coming forth to wrinkle my wing a little here, this got worse after shrinking! The instructions said to use one piece of tissue sheet for each wing, which is how I tried it first. The same issue came forth for the top wing, which I sheeted in two pieces, one from LE to spar, other from LE to spar opposite way round.
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The instructions stated to mix 50:50 white glue with water and paint it through the tissue onto the ribs spar and leading edge, this is the top wing being weighted down for drying before shrinking.
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Top wing drying, bottom wing not yet treated, sitting up to collect air from my laptop's huge 1.5*8" hot air dump.
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^bottom wing drying slower
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This model uses parts of the box in it's jigging, and visuals. The wing jigs are to be cut from the bottom of the box and used for alignment. I spent more time trying to get the jigs to sit right than it took to simply glue the vertical struts in while watching for true, using the jig to confirm later. The pilot figure is also laser-cut, and is a 2D profile of Orville Wright using the box-bottom graphics.
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I have more pix already taken/progress made, but I figured this was already a pretty long post.
...I can not believe to this day that this model is recommended to ages of as young as 12 years old. I don't deny that there are those 12 year olds out there that could happily build this model perfectly, however, it's not something I would ever expect of that age.
...Coming from modeling cars in styrene for years, this is also by far, the largest static model I have ever built due to it's 24" wingspan. I was never truly intimidated by it's size, but there is a reason I've owned it for 14 plus years, or since I was 13 or so, with me only just this past month or so deciding to just ing build it before it gets lost or destroyed.
...As the pictures show, you'll see that the box didn't fare the best, but this birthday present won't go wasted, I'm pretty happy I didn't try and fail to do it years ago, my 7-year-old-twin-younger-siblings would never have let this thing survive the first time I stepped out of my room; Heh, my Stepdad's PiperCub rubber band plane died to them pretty fast, first just a finger through the wing, a week later, many crashes/folded wing, and no admitting it from them.
...Now, The box says laser cut, and I'll give it that the parts that are cut were done very well, all the way through with just enough reinforcement in nibs to hold them into the sheets, but not hard to remove. However, the box came with about a mile of thread, and a single sheet of 1/16th thick balsa sliced at varying intervals to form both square stock, and several widths of rectangular stock.
...It also included 4 pieces to make two leading edges(diagonal cut end to end splice... wait, whaaa), 5 lengths of spar(an extra spar length? and splice that too?!? Good thing this one's not flying... EVER), the plans are reasonable, and have each part shown in all dimensions which is good for replication, and the fact that you have to shape so much yourself, the instructions are as usual not quite suited to my learning style, but not unclear.
...I could easily see powering this plane and flying it with some light modification, and plan to do so with another of the same assembled a little more robustly. (one piece CF spar for one thing!)
^^^You can see some geometrical problems coming forth to wrinkle my wing a little here, this got worse after shrinking! The instructions said to use one piece of tissue sheet for each wing, which is how I tried it first. The same issue came forth for the top wing, which I sheeted in two pieces, one from LE to spar, other from LE to spar opposite way round.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
The instructions stated to mix 50:50 white glue with water and paint it through the tissue onto the ribs spar and leading edge, this is the top wing being weighted down for drying before shrinking.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Top wing drying, bottom wing not yet treated, sitting up to collect air from my laptop's huge 1.5*8" hot air dump.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
^bottom wing drying slower
_________________________________________________________________________________________
This model uses parts of the box in it's jigging, and visuals. The wing jigs are to be cut from the bottom of the box and used for alignment. I spent more time trying to get the jigs to sit right than it took to simply glue the vertical struts in while watching for true, using the jig to confirm later. The pilot figure is also laser-cut, and is a 2D profile of Orville Wright using the box-bottom graphics.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
I have more pix already taken/progress made, but I figured this was already a pretty long post.
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