Thunder Tiger Fun Tiger Extra

	The kit in the original box. This was one of the ebay auction items. It was purchased for less than the $89.99 street price.
	Like most ARF kits, each of the major assemblies is wrapped separately. All necessary hardware is included. The modeler needs to supply the engine, radio components and adhesives. We used CA, 30 minute epoxy, and 5 minute epoxy. The engine we will use is a Saito FA-65 4-stroke. This engine weighs just 50 grams more than the Morris Hobbies 46 (with muffler), and as we will see later, we need this additional nose weight of this engine to set the proper CG.
	While inspecting the kit, it was noticed that there was severe damage to one of the wings. Since we were building this kit for a Fun Fly event a few days away, it was decided to repair the damage, rather than wait for replacement parts to arrive.
	Three wing ribs and the center wing sheeting were damaged. The pieces of the original ribs were glued back together using thin CA. The "Fly Paper" style covering makes this operation tricky. A paper template of the wing ribs was made, glued to three balsa pieces using 3M 77, then rough cut with a band saw. The parts were shaped using a belt sander.
	A hole was added to the center of the new ribs to allow air to pass through and to allow room for the servo rails to pass through. A reciprocating sander was used to sand the opening in the parts.
	This view shows the new ribs, glued next to the damaged ones. This restored the wing's shape and provided the needed strength. This plane can be subjected to high G loads, so the damage had to be fixed.
	The original covering is the " Fly Paper " type. MonoKote or Oracover ARFs are much easier to work with than this type, but, we can still work with it. Bright red UltraCoat was applied right over the existing covering, using a covering iron. A heat gun was used to shrink the covering.
	The main dihedral brace was glued together with 30 minute epoxy glue and allowed to set overnight.
	The covering was carefully removed from areas that would be used to glue the model together.
	The fuselage had to be modified for the Saito FA-65 engine. The existing mount was not wide enough, so about 3/8-inch was cut from the bottom of the slot. Additional clearance was provided by sanding the opening until the engine fit into the slot. We recommend that you save mounting the engine until near the end of the building sequence to help balance the model, rather than follow the instructions See notes on page 2. Also, we used a Master Airscrew 11x8 3-blade prop and Dubro spinner to give us plenty of ground clearance.
	We have now finished the preliminary steps, getting the kit parts ready for final assembly. Now we will glue and screw the various parts together.
	The hinges were installed in the main wing halves, the horizontal stabilizer and vertical stabilizer using 30 minute epoxy. Oil was put on the hinge pins before the epoxy was applied. Alcohol was used to clean and excess epoxy from the hinge line. The control surfaces were flexed several times during the epoxy curing time to make sure that the hinges still worked.
	Rather than follow the instructions, we chose to use a tried and true method of aligning and gluing the horizontal stabilizer in the fuselage. We will add the landing gear much later, not now. The fuselage was held at 90 degrees to the slate building table. A string was used to check that the distance from the nose of the fuselage to each horizontal stabilizer wing tip was identical. It is important to make sure that the stabilizer centered in the slot, while the distance from the table to each stabilizer tip was shimmed so they are equal. 30 minute epoxy was used to glue the stabilizer to the fuselage.

Last Updated 7/13/02

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