Brace yourselves. Lots of photos.
Only damage on the wing covering (a bit blurry). I suspect something poked through at one point. Both sides were damaged.
Servo tray & foam RX/ Battery encasement (soft, cellular foam held together with zipties)
Clever RX and battery placement- protecting the most expensive parts of the plane where you can is always a good idea. I would also like to point out (no pictures though) that the antenna for the reciever comes out of the fuselage behind the wing and is tied at the tip of the tail! Nowadays we have 2.4GHz, and I can get better range with 6" of wire than that can.
Old Futaba TX
Battery voltage indicator on the TX
The trims aren't a button, they're an actual slider. Just gives a sense of how far we've come over the years.
Engine starter motor
Glow plug starter... thingy?
Extra props (10x6)
Motor w/ prop installed (one of the screws on the spinner is stripped and I can't get the prop off)
Algea in the tank
. Looks like whoever flew it (if it even did) forgot to flush the tank before putting it into permanent storage.
Old reciever and servo leads - I plan to reuse the old servos if they work. I remember a post where someone was talking about older servos having power on different pins of the connector than newer ones, so they wouldn't work with new recievers, but I spent 45 minutes looking for that comment and still can't find it.
Edit: Thanks to Joker for finding it!
It turns out that old servos like this were wired differently than they are today. The power wire was at one end with the ground in the center. Now the power is in the center, so by simply swapping two pins they all work! Unfortunately for me, I already took delivery on new replacement servos. While the temptation is to simply use the new ones, I'd like to re-use the original equipment when possible and save the new ones for another project.
View attachment 59496
The wheels are flat on one side from sitting for so long...
Anyone have ideas (besides buying new wheels) on how to remedy this?
Also, who makes phillips-head wheel collars anymore? Aren't they all hex now?
Excessive use of glue on the tail by the builder. They obviously didn't have Josh Bixler telling them "Now remember kids, more glue doesn't mean a stronger joint" in their day, but it should've been obvious that this was more than a little too much glue.
Tearing off the covering was really easy, as the adhesives were essentially gone.
The worst of the two broken/chipped wing ribs. Easily fixable/replaceable with some CA.
(almost) Fully Stripped. Only have the wingtips and tail feathers left. Next step will be to find a good esc/motor combo for this thing. The previous props were 10x6 on a .46 glow engine, if that helps. Hoping ~$80 -100 for both the motor and esc, although I feel this to be insanely optimistic, unless I buy used. I would also like it to run on 4s, see below for why.
I'm planning to use two Gens Ace 2s 5000mah 50c batteries in series, to keep cost down. I normally use them for my truck, but since I don't use them because there's no space for it in my dorm, they're just sitting in a lipo bag at my house. Yes, they are big. Yes, they are heavy. You know what else is big and heavy? A .46 glow motor, that's what. I'll need a ton of nose weight for this build, so why not make some of it more battery capacity
?
Also, I noticed that the trailing edge sheeting on the top of the wing wasn't glued in place. I assume this is normal, as these wings are prefabricated (probably by a machine, judging by how well the ribs were glued to the coating
) for a ARF model, but I could be wrong.
