Picking up where I left off with the Balsa USA Cub, it's last flight was rather scary. The engine died as it was flying away from me, but it was fairly low and I was flying at a sod far, so no worries about trees! Because of the distance I had a hard time judging altitude above the turf and I ended up stalling it from a few feet up. It came down fairly hard, but with relatively limited damage. The entire fuselage sustained only a few simple breaks - the opening side window broke off, the silicone exhaust extension was broken, the windshield cracked, and a landing gear bungee mount broke. The wings took a little damage, but only at the root ribs where the wings attach to the fuselage. These broke fairly cleanly right off. No other visible damage to the wings, and even the struts survived intact.
To get it back in flying shape I've got a little work to do, starting with removing the remains of the ribs that were still attached to the fuselage. Balsa USA sold me just these replacement pieces, although I could have tried cutting them from scratch. These will be taken care of after I get some work done on the fuselage.
The windshield was cracked fairly bad, which is no big deal as I wanted to replace it anyway. The old one is scratched up and I just didn't like how it was installed. It'll take a little time removing the excess glue used to hold it in place, but the new clear windshield will be worth the effort.
Nothing major with the engine, although I'm putting a new muffler on it, new spark plug, new fuel tubing, etc. It's still got a lot of dirt from the sod farm crash on it, although amazingly it didn't break the prop! As I was going through the fuel system I found out why the engine died - it was out of gas! I'm not sure how that happened as I was only flying for maybe 8-9 minutes and I normally stop flying at 11, with 2 minutes of reserve. I'll have to watch it for the next few flights and tweak my flight times as necessary. Also a little carb tuning could help as it does run a little rich. The plan is to install a new cowl as part of the re-build. The original one is still usable, but I don't like the design of the fake Continental engine and am going with one that is a bit more realistic.
This didn't cause the power loss, but it certainly doesn't help fuel flow - note the kink in the line leading to the carb. The clunk is stuck forward in the tank, probably from the force of the extra hard landing. The clunk line will be replaced with a different type of fuel line that is supposed to stay much more flexible than the yellow Tygon line. A new bung will go in as well - maybe I can sneak a bigger fuel tank in the fuselage, I'd like to extend my flight times if possible.
And here's the biggest headache to fix, mainly because I can't fix it myself. One of the lugs that holds the bungee in place broke off, but I was able to rig it temporarily so it could at least sit without needing to be propped up. The crash put a lot of stress on these little lugs so I'm sending the parts back to the guy in Idaho who made them so he can either re-build the parts or simply sell me new ones. Either way I don't want to trust the original lugs after they've been stressed like this.
4 screws later and the struts are off and ready to be packed up. When I got these pieces they were painted (horribly) with thick yellow paint which is visible in spots from wear. Considering the impact forces I'm amazed at how well these pieces survived the crash.
Since this has been my favorite plane to fly and it doesn't need *THAT* much work I'm trying to get it done ASAP so it's ready for Spring. Unless something else jumps in front of it!