| My son got me a Bird of Time ARF for Christmas and I must say I'm
| impressed with the quality of the packaging and the overall quality of
| the kit. The covering had only some minor wrinkles but it was still
| better than I could have done it.
| The wing is HUGE. This is my first pure sailplane. I've had a few
| smaller electric powered sailplanes that were fun to fly but I'm
| expecting much more out of this one. I'm going out of town on business
| in a few weeks so I'm going to try to get it built and test flown
before
| I leave.
|
My $.02 worth.
I bought one over a year ago and installed spoilers in the wing for RES
flights. The spar does not have vertical grained webs installed, which I
corrected. ( The instructions do stress high start launches and
discourage winch launches.) See here:
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I also used a 90° bellcrank in the tail centered in the round port for
elevator control. The standard size servo is mounted up front with the
rudder servo.
On my third test flight the fuselage broke just in front of the tail
while landing. Inspection showed that the glass cloth was not "wetted"
with epoxy. I contacted Tower Hobbies and eventually received a new
fuselage from them.
When I finished the new fuselage including a plastic tube for the
antenna I filled the fuselage from just in front of the bellcrank to the
wing trailing edge with spray foam that is sold for sealing against
drafts around windows, doors, etc. This added at lot of strength to the
aft part of the fuselage with little weight penalty. According to my
scale the flying weight is right on the 60 oz. advertised.
The first flight with the new fuselage was in 15 to 20 mph winds using a
medium duty high start. The plane flew great and I tested the spoilers
at altitude for the first time. They worked fine with no nose down
pitch. I increased the rudder throw to all I can get since it was a bear
to make the crosswind turn when landing.
With these changes the airplane is great.