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Help! First Plane FLT1072 or FLT1053
- Thread starter P40VRP
- Start date
You’ll find many forum members willing to provide the benefit of their experience to help you with your builds & flying. I used the FLT 1053 foam board to build my 1st kit because it was all that was available from Flite Test at the time. The new builder foam board is white, which has its advantages for paint & decorations. If you’re like I was in the beginning, & to some extent I still am inclined to wreck the models I build, you may not need to worry about finish issues. I still use tape to decorate & provide contrasting colors for orientation, I don’t worry about much else, the foam board is rebuildable or replaceable. After you build your first project you might decide to try scratch building with Dollar Tree Foam Board (DTFB). DTFB is not what I use for its potential life span, but in my case because it’s cheap & light weight. I made my 1st build an easy one by using a Flite Test kit with a swappable Power Pod. I bought the ‘B’ Power Pod package & I still use those original components on models I’m currently building. Probably the best advice I got was to seek out help from more experienced flyers to do my first flights (Buddy boxing) for flying a more advanced kit than the ‘ready to fly’ mini I started with. I’m planning on building a Simple Cub in the future & I might even do it from a kit, but I do love scratch building & modifying the plans to my own ideas. Good luck with building & flying & enjoy the adventure.
What ever Foam Board you use I recommend brushing on a couple of coats of Minwax prior to painting. Seal all the Foam Board edges with hot glue or by low heat ironing if you’re going for longevity so the edges don’t delaminate or easily be damaged. I use water base Minwax but others recommend oil base. Both seem to work well to keep the paper from delaminating from the spray propellants or chemicals in the paint.
Check out this string:
https://forum.flitetest.com/index.p...quarantine-build-off.62361/page-2#post-553157
https://forum.flitetest.com/index.p...quarantine-build-off.62361/page-2#post-553157
Hey, welcome to the forum. The Cub looks like a good first plane, but I've read posts on here from people that struggled with it. It's not as easy to fly for a newbie.
I'd recommend the tiny trainer. I built a modified version as my first plane, and it flew great. I had to use a modified larger wing as the foam board here in the UK is heavier.
I'm currently building a FT Tiny Trainer from the speed build kit for my son to learn.
I was also thinking of building the Cub as my next plane, but when I read about it, I decided I didn't want a plane I'd not enjoy flying at my level. So I'm going to build a Scout next.
I'd recommend the tiny trainer. I built a modified version as my first plane, and it flew great. I had to use a modified larger wing as the foam board here in the UK is heavier.
I'm currently building a FT Tiny Trainer from the speed build kit for my son to learn.
I was also thinking of building the Cub as my next plane, but when I read about it, I decided I didn't want a plane I'd not enjoy flying at my level. So I'm going to build a Scout next.
Thank you messyhead for your input! It is very much appreciated. I had originally thought about going with the Eflite Apprentice for my first plane and trainer but when I saw the Flite Test build videos and the economical price of the Flite Test kits I was truly impressed by Flite Test.
The fact of a more hands on build interests me more than the ARF planes.
The fact of a more hands on build interests me more than the ARF planes.
Howdy. New to these forums myself and haven't yet introduced myself. I'm in the process of getting back into the hobby and upping my game in the type of planes I'm using. I thought that since I have flown planes before the Simple Cub would make a good get back into things option. I quickly discovered that I'm more rusty than I gave myself credit for. That advice about the SC being a bit of a handful is pretty good advice. I reassessed my plan of attack and built an Explorer as it is a pusher prop and should save frustration and money as the prop is somewhat protected when gravity comes a knockin.
Something that I think was giving me problems is the B pack components. The SC calls for an 8x4.5 prop and the B pack comes with a 9x4.5. I think (and I could be wrong) the included props with the B pack over prop the plane as I was struggling with terrible prop torque. When I was searching the forums for tips on this I came across more than one comment stating that the SC does not take well to being overpowered.
One more thing I did was order a copy of Real Flight 9 RC simulator and have spent the last week worth of bad weather sharpening my skills and reaction times. Once I got back to the point I could keep the planes in the air, perform acrobatics, and land without crashing more times than not I cranked everything the game has to offer in the way of realism all the way up and started using the trim to further mess things up on top of what the game does to ya. Not sure how much this will translate into actual flight time but at the very least my reaction times should be considerably better.
Something that I think was giving me problems is the B pack components. The SC calls for an 8x4.5 prop and the B pack comes with a 9x4.5. I think (and I could be wrong) the included props with the B pack over prop the plane as I was struggling with terrible prop torque. When I was searching the forums for tips on this I came across more than one comment stating that the SC does not take well to being overpowered.
One more thing I did was order a copy of Real Flight 9 RC simulator and have spent the last week worth of bad weather sharpening my skills and reaction times. Once I got back to the point I could keep the planes in the air, perform acrobatics, and land without crashing more times than not I cranked everything the game has to offer in the way of realism all the way up and started using the trim to further mess things up on top of what the game does to ya. Not sure how much this will translate into actual flight time but at the very least my reaction times should be considerably better.
I have an adtech pro 200 and their own glue sticks, and I love it, but the pro 200 is fairly expensive. The pro 80 also works, and I heard that somebody has a dewalt glue gun that they like very much. Of course the little mini craft store guns work too if you want something even cheaper, but you might have to switch to a bigger gun for larger builds in the future. I spent a couple years building with a mini one, and it worked, but only for small builds. Also, to make sure that a specific person sees your post, just type an @ symbol and the start typing their username. A list of users should show up and you can just click on the right one to tag them like this, @P40VRP . Anyways, good luck with your build!
@P40VRP I use the AdTech Pro200 & the glue sticks that FT recommends & I’ve been pretty happy with it. I did need to lay the gun down on it’s left side, remove the right side by taking out the tiny phillips #1 screws & clean all the melted glue out of the inside so the glue stick feed mechanism would work. Eventually the glue build up stops the glue stick from feeding properly. I recently had an experienced builder tell me he uses White Gorilla Glue & it works fine for building foam board models.