Arcfyre
Elite member
Hello everyone.
This week I decided to take that big step from building foam to balsa. As per the sticky posts on this forum, I opted for a high quality laser cut kit from the FT store, the recently released balsa basics cub.
The kit is superb quality. The wing jigs itself together completely without glue. I had the wing assembled in about half an hour. The fuselage was similarly easy to mock up, as it was all whole pieces and not open structure. The laser cut pieces fit exactly and there was no modification needed to get parts to fit.
I struggled a little with the film covering stage, as it is an unfamiliar process to me, and like everything, requires practice. I can't blame the kit for that though. The fuselage and tail surfaces ended up looking nice, but my wing has a few wrinkles and a tiny warp that I'm still working on getting out.
The kit is designed as a 3ch, but I am allergic to 3ch airplanes, so I added ailerons with some scrap from the kit. Was simple to do and they work well.
The plane balances a touch tail heavy with a 1000mah battery, but it was still flyable. Power off it glided very nicely, so it seemed to be an issue with thrust angle. I added some spacers under the top motor mount screws to add a touch of down thrust and it helped a lot.
I just flew it with a 1500mah battery and that seems to be the sweet spot. Balances nicely, and just cruising around at 35% power, I got 21 minutes of flight time, landing with a total pack voltage of 11.2. This airframe with the new power pack B is remarkably efficient.
Here are some pictures of the build. It was simple and straightforward to put together. If you're thinking about balsa, I can highly recommend this kit. It has me looking around for my next kit now.
Video of it flying:
This week I decided to take that big step from building foam to balsa. As per the sticky posts on this forum, I opted for a high quality laser cut kit from the FT store, the recently released balsa basics cub.
The kit is superb quality. The wing jigs itself together completely without glue. I had the wing assembled in about half an hour. The fuselage was similarly easy to mock up, as it was all whole pieces and not open structure. The laser cut pieces fit exactly and there was no modification needed to get parts to fit.
I struggled a little with the film covering stage, as it is an unfamiliar process to me, and like everything, requires practice. I can't blame the kit for that though. The fuselage and tail surfaces ended up looking nice, but my wing has a few wrinkles and a tiny warp that I'm still working on getting out.
The kit is designed as a 3ch, but I am allergic to 3ch airplanes, so I added ailerons with some scrap from the kit. Was simple to do and they work well.
The plane balances a touch tail heavy with a 1000mah battery, but it was still flyable. Power off it glided very nicely, so it seemed to be an issue with thrust angle. I added some spacers under the top motor mount screws to add a touch of down thrust and it helped a lot.
I just flew it with a 1500mah battery and that seems to be the sweet spot. Balances nicely, and just cruising around at 35% power, I got 21 minutes of flight time, landing with a total pack voltage of 11.2. This airframe with the new power pack B is remarkably efficient.
Here are some pictures of the build. It was simple and straightforward to put together. If you're thinking about balsa, I can highly recommend this kit. It has me looking around for my next kit now.
Video of it flying: