[NorseHammer]

Well I got my little present to myself early this year, I just opened it. Its from Oily's NOS page (http://www.oilmanelectricrc.com/NOS.htm) a NIB foam winged older ARF called "Slick Baby" from a firm called RTF Flier Enterprise Co., LTD. The manual is in Chinglish, the model looks pretty, its a low wing trainer type meant for .35 to .46 slimer propulsion so I'v got the idea to slam in a HET Typhoon T29 instead along with some modern mini servo's and LiPo's. The T29 is a 300 watt brushless motor which should work so long as the All Up Weight stays down. The Motor is the jewel here, I can't wait to get the thing assemble and out to the field.

Norse

[NorseHammer]

Well this is a old style arf, with some questionable features, the most worrysome is the total lack of a spar in the wing. I've never seen a foam wing kit in the 30 or larger size without a spar, even my 1/12th scale combat planes with foam wings had spars well all except the ACE simple series. The motor mount is wood and painted black with what appears to be one coat of latex paint, its flaking off around the bottom where it meets the foam sheeting. If this plane was to be powered by a glow engine, the fuel would get at the foam sheeting through the paper covering on the leading edge at the nose of the fuselage, its not a plastic film like the wings and tail feathers. The cowl is heavy polypropolene and fits the fuse poorly, the cockpit base is blow molded styrene as is the tail empenage. The hinges, Control Horns and other hardware are not comparable to modern quality offerings from Klett, Dubro or Sig this isn't stuff I want to risk my flight pack and motor on, the kit is nowhere near the quality of the HET offerings, but that was the state of the art when this kit was released. The HET has real heat shrink covering which this kit doesn't I tried to smooth out a portion of the covering with my iron on the low setting I use for "SolarFilm" and that was nearly the end of that patch of covering. Its a self adhesive material reminicent of "MacTack" that my mom used to use inside the kitchen cupboards. I'm going to leave it alone.
The next bit of concern is the thickness of the Ailerons they're thicke than the trailing edge of the wing! I vaguely remember an article on aerodynamics by Alistair Sutherland in RC Modeling magazine that basicaly suggested this was a bad thing one should correct. I can't remeber the why of it at this moment though.

I'm probably going to use an 18 inch long drill bit and bore two holes into the wings so I can shove doweling into the foam to act as a spar. It'll add some weight but I don't have confidence in a foam butt jointed wing with a one and a half inch wide wrap of epoxy glass to hold things together. The cockpit will be a screw on affair so I can remove it to change batteries I hope to get it to balance in a fashion that allows me to use the C of G as the place where the power pack fits since I have several different weight battery packs that would probably end up going into the plane. For control she'll get three Hitec HS225BB servos because they're light and powerfull. I need to order a prop adapter, some electrical connectors for the motor and ESC to match the JETI and Deans stuff I prefer to use so it'll probably be a couple of weeks anyway before it's flight test time. The plane isn't as heavy as I first though though, I put all the pieces on a kitche scale and it came out to 1800 grams or about four pounds so the project is looking positive overall.

Its a Nostalgia plane, makes you apreciate the modern arf like the HET's with the near perfect fit and finish of all the components, nothing extra thick or thin everything just right. Boy have we come a long way!