Buzzard Droppings January 2003

Great Planes Shoestring

By Dave Bell

I bought The Great Planes Shoestring at Galaxy Hobbies because I believe in keeping our local hobby stores open. The price was $229.00 plus tax.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   The box that the plane came in was very large, with great graphics showing the finished plane. Save the picture on the front of the box as it will help you place the decals at the finish end of this project.

All the components of the plane came wrapped in plastic and were secured by an ingenious method of folded cardboard. There was a small amount of wrinkling of the covering, but that was eliminated with a heat gun and Monocote iron. There are no ABS plastic parts in this ARF. They are all fiberglass. The cowl and wheel pants are done to perfection.

They are also painted to perfectly match the film covering. I forgot to mention that the covering on this bird is Monocote, the same stuff you have at the hobby store and the spray paint also matches the Monocote film covering. This will make any future repairs easy and hopefully invisible.

   All the control surfaces come ready to hinge and all the slots are cut. They provide everything you will need to finish the plane with the exception of the motor and the radio system. The parts bag is quite impressive. The instruction book will take you through all the necessary steps, one at a time, until before you know it, you have a beautiful plane on your bench ready for the sky. The total time I spent on the build was about 20 hours. That was fooling around between stages and taking my own sweet time on the assembly. I suppose if you were really motivated, you could get this thing done in a long weekend;)

   I put the wing together first and had the servos in and ready to go in one short session. The wings already have a pull string inserted for you to pull the servo leads through. Install the ailerons, and you're set. The landing gear bolts in and the wheel pants come next.

   I want to at this point make an observation. The fiberglass is done to perfection. The finish is smooth and without flaws. But I found that it is THIN. After 3 flights I found cracks in the wheel pants and the mounting holes in the cowl where beginning to enlarge. The way I solved this was to reinforce the fiberglass at these very points. I added 2 layers of glass over the holes in the cowl, and 2 layers of glass over the mounting block and inside edge of the wheel pants. I have flown 5 flights this way and no other problems seem to be arising.
The next step is to mount the engine. The blind nuts are already installed for you, so no problem here. I used the MDS .68 with an 11-7 APC prop. This engine has lots of power and with a top end of about 14,000 rpm lots of pull. The only hard part of this area installation was finding the mounting blocks that need to install. But they have figured this out and have a good way to solve it. The instructions help all the way. The last thing to do is mount your radio stuff. Easy, all the servo slots are in place and the push rod tubes are in. Piece of cake!

   The last thing to do is balance the bird. This also took me by surprise. The point of balance is at 3-3/16 inches from the leading edge of the main wing at the fuselage. To accomplish this, I had to mount my 1,100ma battery pack aft of the trailing edge of the wing, and also add 2oz of lead. That doesn’t sound right, but it is. I think that happened because of the larger motor up front. Well, for whatever reason it works just fine, so don’t worry. Install the decals as of the front box graphics. The only ones that gave me trouble where the ones on the side of the fuselage.
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