About a year ago I saw a Craigslist ad for somebody selling a couple unfinished planes, located only a few miles from me. A quick call to get directions to the seller's place and I was on my way! When I got it, I wasn't sure what kit this was, only that it was somewhat old, well built, and very dirty. It was sitting in an upstairs storage of a commercial property, and was brown from the dust and there were (are) a couple spots of tar on it that probably fell on it during a re-roofing of the business.
After getting the planes home a quick online search informed me this was a Sig Kadet Mk.1, the early version of the plane. There was no engine in it, but holes were drilled for servos. From what I can tell, it's never been finished or flown, so time to change that!
Here is the starting point, after using Windex to clean the surfaces as much as possible. The wing has some damage to the covering, both wingtips have dents in the plastic caps, and there is still some brown staining that I haven't been able to remove. Tonight I'll try some xylene & water mixed to see if that's strong enough. *IF* I can get the wing clean I'll just patch the holes and fly it as-is for now, but if it's still extra-ugly I'll strip and re-cover the wing. Hopefully that won't happen, as the guy who built the plane did a great job covering it, and even made his own full-length piano hinges for the control surfaces. I'll get some pics posted of those later on, they're very interesting (and major over-kill). I like the design of the windows, which gives it a sort of commercial airplane feel. The cowl was cut out for a glow engine, I may leave it that way as I convert to electric, or maybe I'll get bored and try to fix or replace it with a full cowl.
From the top, the discoloration is hard to see, but you can see a hole in the covering and the tar that dripped onto the wing, plus the dented wingtip. If I re-do the wing I may remove the plastic caps and carve balsa replacements - we'll see what happens.
The wing bottom has a much larger hole, but the balsa structure is undamaged. This would be an easy patch. Here you can also see the continuous hinge the builder made. It's done using a bunch of short sections of brass, glued alternating sides to the aileron and wing. I'm not sure why he did it this way, and have never seen it done like this before.
Inside is really a blank canvas. The servo rails will probably be moved further back to make room for a 3 or 4 cell battery to fit.
The original design of the Kadet Mk.1 had a rubber band mounted wing, but the builder did most of the work to convert it over to bolt-on. The only thing that wasn't done (yet) is adding the hardwood blocks and captured nuts to run a couple bolts down into at the back of the wing. The wing itself has been modified already for the bolts.
Overall, this should be a fairly quick project (hopefully). I checked through my stash of parts and found that I've already got the motor, ESC, 3 servos, wheels, enough white covering to patch (but not completely re-cover) the wing, pushrods, etc to finish the plane. Besides covering, the only thing I may need to purchase is a pack of wheel collars for the landing gear. I'm hoping a 3 cell battery would be enough to fly this plane, but it was built for a glow engine and is fairly heavy, so I'll probably get much better results with 4 cell. I do have three 2-cell 2200mAh packs, so I can use two of them to make a 4-cell pack.
After getting the planes home a quick online search informed me this was a Sig Kadet Mk.1, the early version of the plane. There was no engine in it, but holes were drilled for servos. From what I can tell, it's never been finished or flown, so time to change that!
Here is the starting point, after using Windex to clean the surfaces as much as possible. The wing has some damage to the covering, both wingtips have dents in the plastic caps, and there is still some brown staining that I haven't been able to remove. Tonight I'll try some xylene & water mixed to see if that's strong enough. *IF* I can get the wing clean I'll just patch the holes and fly it as-is for now, but if it's still extra-ugly I'll strip and re-cover the wing. Hopefully that won't happen, as the guy who built the plane did a great job covering it, and even made his own full-length piano hinges for the control surfaces. I'll get some pics posted of those later on, they're very interesting (and major over-kill). I like the design of the windows, which gives it a sort of commercial airplane feel. The cowl was cut out for a glow engine, I may leave it that way as I convert to electric, or maybe I'll get bored and try to fix or replace it with a full cowl.
From the top, the discoloration is hard to see, but you can see a hole in the covering and the tar that dripped onto the wing, plus the dented wingtip. If I re-do the wing I may remove the plastic caps and carve balsa replacements - we'll see what happens.
The wing bottom has a much larger hole, but the balsa structure is undamaged. This would be an easy patch. Here you can also see the continuous hinge the builder made. It's done using a bunch of short sections of brass, glued alternating sides to the aileron and wing. I'm not sure why he did it this way, and have never seen it done like this before.
Inside is really a blank canvas. The servo rails will probably be moved further back to make room for a 3 or 4 cell battery to fit.
The original design of the Kadet Mk.1 had a rubber band mounted wing, but the builder did most of the work to convert it over to bolt-on. The only thing that wasn't done (yet) is adding the hardwood blocks and captured nuts to run a couple bolts down into at the back of the wing. The wing itself has been modified already for the bolts.
Overall, this should be a fairly quick project (hopefully). I checked through my stash of parts and found that I've already got the motor, ESC, 3 servos, wheels, enough white covering to patch (but not completely re-cover) the wing, pushrods, etc to finish the plane. Besides covering, the only thing I may need to purchase is a pack of wheel collars for the landing gear. I'm hoping a 3 cell battery would be enough to fly this plane, but it was built for a glow engine and is fairly heavy, so I'll probably get much better results with 4 cell. I do have three 2-cell 2200mAh packs, so I can use two of them to make a 4-cell pack.