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!