Well it's pouring in northern Alberta today, and looks like it will continue to do so for the next week or more. While I wait for a nice day to maiden General Whee, I figured I'd put up my noobie thoughts on building one of these FT planes from scratch for any other beginners.
It is not difficult. Don't be intimidated to try and build one from scratch to save a few bucks to use on your electronics. The cutting and folding techniques used in the construction are very easy to do. Don't sweat small mistakes. Will your first score cut or two go through the paper on the other side a bit? Sure it will but a little tape and your all good! After you've done 2 or 3 you'll have it down for sure. I forgot to remove paper from the foam on the longest piece of turtle deck. It wrinkled but I said big deal. Then I glued the nose piece of turtle deck on backwards lol. I had to cut it off and recut a new one from foam and put it on correctly. In the end it looks fine. Take your time. Dry fit pieces every time. It will go just fine.
When it comes to installing your electronics it is also a very easy procedure. Make sure you plug into the proper channels and secure your servo connections with tape or glue so it doesn't come apart in the air. My motor spun clockwise when I first installed it, but switching two of the wires around fixed that quickly. I also had to reverse the aileron channel to make it work properly. My i6x radio which came with basically no instructions was not too difficult to figure out. So reversing a channel was super easy. My control surfaces were almost spot on after hooking up the linkages. I recommend to get this as good as possible mechanically so you end up with more trim available. I also had to change the end points on all my servos to get the throws as close to 12 degrees as I could. I only eyeballed it, but I can tell you for sure they moved to like 45 degrees when first installed, which is way too much! Programming the throttle on the ESC was super easy as well.
Now all that's left to do is learn to fly lol!! I highly recommend building one of these FB planes to anyone who would like to try RC flying but not spend a lot of money. After Your first one it gets cheaper still since you have a radio already! They are easy to build and require no special tools to assemble. And because you built it, when you crash it you can fix it or replace it no problem. Don't be like me and wait until your 40! Go out build a plane and have some fun!!