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The Super Tucano has arrived!  Basic assembly woes.

After a couple of minor delivery date changes courtesy of Fedex, the Super Tucano  finally arrived on the front porch.  Some minor box damage, but upon unpacking, no damage to the aircraft was found.  It appears the packing did its job well.

After watching a couple of relevant videos, I started going through the box and laying out all the pieces and parts and downloaded the directions… which are pretty poor.  For instance, there are several machine screws (3mm) and a couple of sheet metal screws… but the directions don’t seem to differentiate, so good luck figuring out which are intended for what.  The directions also direct the use of 14mm in one part of the body/tail assembly and 18mm in another but all of the screws supplied are 14mm!  The supplied diagrams are not detailed enough to show the two types or lengths either so those are no help either.

This is really disappointing for a model that I had to wait in line to purchase and that costs as much as this one does.  The assembly manual is a downloadable pdf and the airplane is on its second itteration already due to some early retract issues… which I appreciate.  Would it have been so hard to also correct these errors??  Either update the manual and/or come up with a new screw pack please?

I dug out a few extra 3mm screws and proceeded with the build, but the irritation had just begun.  While the assembly process as a whole is only a few steps… the airplane comes much more complete than many I have built… the poor instructions and some odd design choices combined with some quality issues combined to make the process painful.  Hopefully your mileage will vary.

I initially held off on the wing assembly and started with attaching the rear of the fusealage.  That went fairly easily and I allowed it to dry overnight as I had opted for some slow setting adhesive.

Next, I started on the tail assembly and that is were things started to get interesting.  The horizontal was fairly straight forward, but I did notice that the machine screws were going into plastic… no threaded inserts or the like.  The whole question of which screws to use was in my mind as I really wasn’t sure if I was intended to use the sheet metal type screws or the machine screws for this step.

Moving on to the vertical fin attachment, I started to realize what some of the on-line reviewers had mentioned, but in my opinion under emphasized.  Getting the screws into the deep hole in the bottom of the tail and into the (again) plastic to cut threads was difficult at best.  The wires running to the front of the airplane are potentially in the way (read as constantly) and it is easy to lose the screw in that open space, or miss the socket/hole.  You also have to hold the fin tightly in place while doing this.  The entire task is frustrating and for me at least, resulted in the creation of many new inventive curse phrases and suggestions for anatomically impossible tasks I would like to suggest for those who decided this was a reasonable assembly task.

I eventually ended up stripping one of the holes and had to do some extra modeling.  Luckily I have a drawer full of threaded inserts that are made to be heated and pressed into plastic.  I also have a purpose made tool to heat these and insert them so that is what I did.  I consider this design to be a major flaw with the airplane.  Not having some sort of pre-threaded hole or insert such as I installed is just inexcusable in an airplane of this cost, and combined with having to put the screw in a blind hole with no guide tube or similar device to help out… just defies logic.

Having conquered that little task (in a short 2 hours or so), I moved on to putting in all of the antennas and fins.  I had read about the proper direction of the fins on bottom aft part of the airplane (these are called strakes) and when I got to that part, I looked at the manual and the photography and sure enough they were in opposition to each other.  I double checked by looking at photos of the real airplane and confirmed that the written directions are correct, the photography is of an airplane that was incorrectly assembled!  The strakes on the actual airplane are widest at the leading edge and taper down toward the aft end of the surface.

It was about this time that I really started noticing the finish work on the airplane.  First of all are what I guess are injection or mold marks of some kind.  I think of them as daisies and they are all over the airplane.  Once I noticed them, I was rather suprised and then reminded of another HK/Avios airplane I had owned that suffered from the same daisy marks.  That airplane was not a scale airplane, so I didn’t really care so much but on this airplane it is disappointing.  Likewise, the paint adhesion on this airplane promises to be problematic.  A couple of spots are already flaking off and I recall the same on my previous experience with an Avios aircraft as well.  By contrast, I recently worked on a foam plane from Flightline and the paint was excellent.  It also has the “daisy” marks all over it, but the paint adheres much better.  I presume they use different foam/paint to create these planes so maybe this is a tradeoff of some sort but I wish the finish was better.  There also seems to be a lot of “flashing” left on this bird which just seems to be a little sloppy.

The final finishing item is the decals.  There are a couple of places where they seem to have rubbed and gotten damaged somewhere along the way… those are minor.  The big issue is that oe of the more noticable decals is just crooked… and very noticably so.  I had no doubt, taking it off would peel paint and covering the resulting scar could be a challenge… and then I’d have to get a replacement decal if I wanted to replace them…  Which doesn’t seem to be readily available!  Again, disappointing.  I am just about to just conceed that the airplane is simply never going to really look good with all these issues unless I want to invest a week of “refinishing” time.

After gluing the rear section late in the evening and then working on the tail surfaces on the following evening, I started in on the wing on the third day.  I have a full time job so I can’t just sit and work on models all day, though I hope to correct that issue soon!

I expected to spend 15 minutes test fitting and then glue the wing halves together… setting it aside for the evening to let the glue set up.  Instead I fought with getting the wings to mount onto the plane for… ever or so it seemed.  I could only get 3 screws in (at best) and I quickly realized that it was always one or the other of the back wing bolts that would NOT go in.  I walked away and went to bed, convinced my plane was built from parts that had intially failed quality control but were pressed into service to fulfill the quantity ordered.

I tried several more times the next day and finally resorted to bending the metal posts to get a good alignment.  This involved multiple mountings and removals of the wings and careful, very small adjustments for fear of the metal shattering if I applied to much pressure.  I finally got to a good place and got the wings to mount nicely.  To bad it didn’t come out of the box this way!

The last piece I undertook was to recreate the linkages on all the primary flight surfaces.  I’m just not willing to fly a plane with this much power relying on plastic pin clevises, so I gathered up good quality 2-56 Dubro rods and bolt through ball clevises and E/Z bend link clips and did a nice upgrade.

At this point I had the basic assembly done and started moving into what I will call personalization of the airframe.  This will include the addition of functional bomb drops/pylons, more scale details in the cockpit, etc…

Some weeks back my flying buddy Steve picked up an old ARF biplane from another club member.  The airplane was an ARF that someone had started to work on and had then returned it to the box.  It seems like it had been in the box for quite a few years and over that time there had been some damage to the aircraft… some parts had apparently gone missing and there was nothing on the box or in it that gave any hint as to the original manufacturer.  It was a Tiger Moth of some sort… but that was about all anyone could tell.

Steve picked through the material and found a bit more damage than I think he had anticipated and also realized it was short a landing gear, cowl, wing joiner tubes… you get the basic idea.  He also had the somewhat belated realization that a Tiger Moth is not a WWI era bird…  This was the point that Steve decided that this airplane was not what he was really looking for, and that this “very much NOT an ARF anymore” was more work than it was worth to him.  He was considering just trashing the whole thing when I opened my mouth and said I would take it off his hands if he really was just going to trash it.  Fast forward a few days and I had a rather large and slightly smelly cardboard box full of somewhat damaged airplane parts sitting in my garage.

After a few days of smelling that box, I decided it had to go so I set up a temporary workbench and pulled all the airplane parts out and took the box to the burn pile.  Sorting through the parts, I started looking through to see what was missing and what was damaged as well as clues as to the manufacturer.  I reached out to Steve and he dug up some info he had been provided as to what manufacturer built this thing but I quickly realized that information was not accurate.

This went on for a couple weeks until I finally started moving all the parts to my shop and really looking for distinguishing features and build methods.  Eventually I realized that the model is in fact a Nitro Models Tiger Moth 1.20.  Even at that there was one oddity in that this Tiger Moth has ailerons on both the top and bottom wings.   I have found at least one example of the Nitro Models TM shown with this feature so apparently some of them did in fact come out of the box this way.

That solved I started working my way through the various bits and pieces and cataloging and reparing damage.  Somehow this went from a “I’ll catalog the problems and decide if its worth fixing” to “I’ll fix the damage and replace or manufacture the missing parts”.

So here is a likely incomplete list of the problems that will have to be overcome.

• The fuselage has been stripped of covering (apparently it was originally yellow)
• The cockpit areas both have sheeting damage where the sheeting extends over the open cockpit area in the front of each
• The fuselage has sheeting damage in a couple areas of the turtledeck
• The fusealge has a 3″ section of framework missing along the bottom starboard side, just behind the wing seat area.
• The cowl is missing
• Three of the four wing sections have one of the tabs where the wing cabanes attach broken off… and missing.
• Ditto on the fuel tank/center section of the upper wing which had all 3 tabs missing on one side.
• Covering on all the wing panels have various “divots/stretch marks” where various other parts have pressed into them and stretched the material. 
• Covering has also pulled loose at the trailing edge next to where the inboard end of the ailerons would be.
• One of the cabanes that attach from the top to bottom wing… which in this example are just solid aluminum rectangular stock is missing.
• The top center wing section/fuel tank has sheeting damage in two places.
• There are no wing joiner tubes for either the top or bottom wings
• There are no wing locator pins for either wing
• There is no wing joiner (wood or metal… about 1/4×3/4×12″) for the top wing 
• There are no wing bolts (for the bottom wing)
• There is no tail gear or main gear

Finally, the most bizarre issue I’ve found involves one of the bottom ailerons.  Keep in mind that the bottom wing is where servos connect to the control horns and a seperate connection is made from the bottom wing ailerons to the top in order to drive those.  In one bottom wing aileron there is a mounting block for the control horn to mount to, and another in the next bay over for a control horn that is used to attach a linkage to the top aileron above.  In the other wing, neither of those blocks exist!?

In future posts, I will try to step through each of the issues and discuss the remediation… and hopefully share some pictures as I try to rehabilitate and transform this ARF (not) into something that flys!

Recently, I did as the instructions directed regarding the studs that hold the vertical fin in place and “…checked periodically to make sure they remain tight”

I had done this after the first couple dozen flights and found that they were a bit loose so I tightened them up a bit…. and again a couple dozen more flights later… and again they seemed to be loose. On a third check I again tightened them and then noticed that the aft most “stud” had started to protrude from the bottom of the airplane.  This was unexpected, as each time they seemed to tighten up fine and I never tightened them using excessive force, or so I thought.

Not suprisingly, removal of the fin revealed that the rear stud in particular had begun to pull out. This is a bit disappointing as well as concerning as these two studs/bolts are all that hold the fixed portions of the tail in place. 

I noodled on this for a while and almost decided to do a more traditional epoxy/permanent installation of the tail surfaces but I still wanted to preserve the ability to disassemble this part of the airplane… so I decided to try to better secure the stud.  To this end, I added a bit of glue and pushed the stud back in to what seems like its original position.  I then soldered some washers onto the stud against the bottom wood of the vertical fin and then epoxied over the entirety of that bottom surface and the washers and let it dry completely before reassembly.

I’m hopeful this will now remain tight and stable. If you fly this airplane, I’d recommend keeping a close eye on this.  I know I’ll be checking it again in the future.

The first TT I had was the full BNF version.  Shortly after the crash, I went through the airframe and pulled the motor, every servo, ESC… every bit of electronics and control linkage including every LED and control horn.  I kept the servo mount plates with servos, linkage and control horns all still attached and stored it all in a tote.  I even kept all the servo screws and the little red spacers that are used to mount the servos in the tail.  At that point in time it was just in hope that I would end up with a new TT to install it all in… and if not I would find something appropriate.

When I finally received the replacement TT it was the ARF so I had a lot more work to get this bird ready.  I started working my way through the manual, step by step so that I wouldn’t miss anything… and while it is generally a decent document, it does have a few shortcomings.  Here are the things that caught my attention or where I made a decision to vary a bit from what was written.

One of the first steps is mounting the rudder and elevator servos.  Of course I had swapped out the provided screws for my preferred allen head screws but that is just preference.  What I did notice at this point is that while the pictures show them, there is no word about the spacers that allow the servos to mount properly!  These little wooden blocks are spacers that shim the back end of each of the tail mounted servos.  Without them, the servos do not mount on a direct plane with the control horns and potentially would bind at extreme throws??  At a minimum they would be out of line and less than ideal geometry would be the result.

Here is one in place.

The manual moves on to the wing servos which I was able to just swap in, ready to go from the BNF.  I did notice at this point the BNF came with some small snap on ferrite cores that were installed on the aileron wires.  Those are typically installed to block interference of some sort which made me wonder… If those are needed, then why are they not included with the ARF??  Or perhaps recommended somewhere in documentation?

I re-installed mine running both the aileron and flap wires through it.  A little interference prevention on both won’t hurt anything!  Here is my reinstall.

Moving on, the next steps are installing the horizontal and vertical tail sections.  I had forgotten about the 5.5mm nuts that hold this together and of course didn’t have a 5.5mm socket (again)… a 7/32 is 5.56mm so close enough considering you don’t want to crush to much wood anyway.  I noticed at this point that the manual had not mentioned installing any control horns on any surfaces.  I looked through the entirety of the manual at this point and could never find any mention of it!  Sort of obvious that you will need to do this so not end of the world that it is missing but it might have been helpful to suggest when this might be easiest to accomplish… like maybe before you mount the tail in place??

Following this is the landing gear, axle and wheel assembly.  This went without issue although, just as a note, they direct you to use two 1/2″ wrenches for the axle mounting.  The axles I got used a 1/2″ and a 7/16ths”.  I didn’t bother with the landing gear fairing.  I tend to pick up my airplane with one hand on the landing gear and that precludes having these installed.  My first TT lost both of those quickly… one in flight… anyway and if you don’t know it is supposed to have them, you will never miss them.

Next came the motor mounting box, ESC and motor mounting process along with the battery hold downs and receiver.  No serious issues were encountered, though I modified the ESC mounting method by installing some small mounting blocks and screwing the ESC down so that I could eliminate the velcro blocking the heat sink.  Improving cooling is always a good idea in an electric airplane!  I also used some better velco battery hold down straps though the provided are sufficient.  I did seem to need longer machine screws than they indicated to mount the xmount to the firewall.  I went with some 16mm length rather than the 10mm called for.

For the control linkages I took the clevises provided and tossed them in a drawer for later use on a 40 size trainer or something similar for which they are adequate (please note the dripping sarcasm).  I then pulled out the new 2-56 rod and DuBro bolt through ball links and created new linkage for all the control surfaces.  One I had them all built   I also some new 2-56 nylon insert aircraft nuts for the standard nuts that came in the Dubro pack.  I’m really NOT planning on having linkage issues on this airplane this time!

Here is an example of my reimagined linkages

I of course did the cowl scoop modification… I think it should be molded in from the start really… and replaced the wing bolts as well since I really dislike the very yellow bolts against the very white covering.  Plus I prefer the bolts with built in washers/flanges and a hex head for screw driver free attachment.

That about covers the build/assembly phase.  I did take the opportunity to install resistors in line with ALL the LEDs since I cranked the BEC circuit up to 7.4V and found out the LEDs are not wired to handle that voltage even if everything else is in the plane is capable.

Next I’ll get back to flying and dialing in balance, mixes, rates, etc… I’ll relate some of my experiences and what I’ve been dialing in to make the plane fly in the manner I enjoy!

This will be final installment in my series on the OG Turbo Timber BNF.  After this I will start a new installment on the TT SWS ARF or Mark 2. 

This is because after almost a month of back and forth with Tower Hobbies/Horizon we came to an agreement and they offered me an ARF as a replacement for what I suppose is likely the cost of shipping or therabouts.  I consider this very fair and am very happy with this outcome.  I actually suggested this remedy early on… whether they followed that or came to a similar conclusion on their own… I don’t know. 

By the letter of their warranty they could easily have just said… “Sorry for you loss, but we are not liable for any crash damage.” and just moved on.  They, of course, are not making any admission of responsibility.  In this litigeous world I didn’t expect they would.  I have hopes that they will someday upgrade the clevises on this airplane but in the meantime I will spread the word as best I can and encourage others to spend a few dollars and upgrade the clevises.  Here is my recommendation… 

The control linkage on this aircraft is (IMHO) incompatible with long life for this airframe.  My GPS shows the airplane is easily capable of 90+ MPH and weights ~8 pounds.  With the size of the control surfaces, the weak point is apparently the nylon clevises.  See previous posts for the possible result.

The servos seem sufficient, the control rods are pretty short and the L bend type snap on connectors all seem fine.  If you take my advice and replace the clevises I expect this would be a nice robust setup.  To replace these, you have a myriad of options.

In my case, I tried threading a 2-56 name brand clevis onto the existing rods and found that the threads cut/rolled on these are “not quite” a match.   The clevis seems to be “wobbly” and I can’t find a metric size that fits any better/at all… so I’m just assuming the threads are poorly done.  When you are essentially cutting threads into a nylon/plastic clevis it doesn’t much matter…. the existing rods works fine.  But, if you want to go to a nice metal clevis… I’d replace the entire rod as well with a good name brand piece of hardware and use a jam nut.

My own solution is to use a Dubro 2-56 swivel ball link.  They are made of a tough plastic of some sort on the end that the control rod threads into and has a small bolt (2-56 as well) that bolts through the control horn.  If you use thread lock or some other method of insuring the nut on this bolt does not come lose (I’m considering a nylon insert nut) I’d expect these things to be attached “for life”.

I’ll be starting my build on the ARF very soon so it won’t be long before I put this in use.  I’ll be doing my best to insure this is NOT the reason for the demise of TT SWS mark II.