Glider Guider

Last weekend I bought a Flair Piper Cub off of Ebay. From the photos it looked fine and I intended to take out the Super Tigre GS 45 and use the aircraft to run in a Saito 45 I also bought recently on Ebay.

They say that the camera never lies, but when I collected the Cub it was in a disastrous condition and totally unsuitable for flight.

Some of the main serious faults that are obvious without removing the covering are:

• Fin not glued in place it just pulled out
• Hinges not pinned, they also just pull out
• Engine mounted under the hardwood bearers thus changing the thrust line and a few degrees of left thrust added to endure a spectacular crash on its first (and likely last) flight
• Tailplane cracked across its width at the join with the fuselage

Poor building features were:

• Engine fixed with brass nuts and bolts – up to 6 nuts per bolt, and one had not been tightened
• The bolts are a bit too large to fit through the holes in the engine mounting lug, so what do you do, get the correct sized bolt – of course not, you drill the holes out to fit the bolt, what else!
• One bolt hole drilled in the wrong place, so what do you do to rectify this – obvious, you file out the offending hole in the engine mounting lug!
• You need to fit a tailskid but how do you do it? Simple, hold it in place with a slack handful of ¼”staples, how else!

Some photos to illustrate why you have to be very carefull buying from a photo can be found here

This shows the pitfalls of buying a model through any method where you buy before seeing the model, not just Ebay which I use a lot to buy and sell and find very useful.

Am I disappointed? Yes in one way as I’d hoped to have the Cub in the air pretty much straight the way. However I have an aircraft that will be fine when it has had a bit of TLC and a recover, an unrun engine, a GWS Receiver, 4 unused Hitec servos, an unused Ripmax Turbex 2 starter, three brand new Graupner props and an unused Ripmax Glow Stick all for £65 which is, I think, a bargain. Apart from the airframe it’s all going on Ebay this weekend so if it was a good price time will tell.

The warning is that if a novice bought it they could conceivable try to fly it in the state it was in, it would surely have been a very short flight but with the potential to due a lot of damage both physical and to the reputation of aeromodelling. So the motto here, in legalese, is “Caveat emptor” or “let the buyer beware”.

Greyhead

Well David, that’s joys of ebay, or as they “you win some and you loose some”!!

But I take your point about a novice trying to actually fly the thing, it could easily have killed some one.

alan2525

With Ebay you have to remember that there is normally a reason people are selling something in the first place!

I'd always be a little weary of items which seem to be really good value or "too good to be true"

Saying that though with a bit of time and effort I'm sure you'll get the cub airworthy and it wasn't a huge outlay.

It made me laugh the other week, I was looking for a Laptop with a faulty or broken screen as I've got a laptop with a broken motherboard, one particular item was described as broken. On this occassion though they had been honest about the exact fault:

"Laptop has been run over by a long wheelbase transit van, the sceen is broken but the case appears ok, I tried to switch it on but it wouldn't boot up..."

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Glider Guider

I've started work on the fuselage. The tail skid isn't held on by staples after all it is held in place by lacing nylon cord and smothering it with cyano. Now why didn't I think of that?

Bunkerbarge

Buying other peoples models is always an interesting experience!!!

Glider Guider

As a bit of "before and after" here are the pictures of the Super Tigre GS 45 after a bit of cleaning http://homepage.ntlworld.com/davidwr...r_Tigre_GS_45/

wonwinglo

Just out of interest David,what did you use to clean up that engine ? it seems to work very well,burnt on castor can be a real pain to remove properly,sometimes even paint stripper will not shift the gunge and goop.

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'And there I was oil on my goggles from a broken pipe,then I looked at the altimeter,all I could see was the makers name !'
www.wonwinglo.scale-models.net/

Phoenix

i used nitromors to clean the engine in my plane and the engine in my stadium truck

worked good

Glider Guider

The method I use to clean engines is to drop them into a slow cooker filled with anti-freeze. For a lightly soiled engine a few hours are enough but overnight is required for a more heavily soiled engine.

It does change the colour of anodising and it will remove the blue paint from an OS LA series engine so it is best not to use it with this type of engine.

I position the crankshaft so the inlet and exhaust ports are closed, this prevents the antifreeze getting into the crankcase but I always give the engine a good spray with WD40 and run the engine as quickly as possible.

Someone once told me to use Ariel Bio washing powder, if I remember correctly, boiled in a pan, this cleaned the burnt on crud but also attacked the castings so I wouldn’t recommend it.

Glider Guider

What I thought would be a quick refit turned into a much longer affair. The old covering was stripped off and the airframe inspected and re-glued/strengthened where necessary.

Originally the wing was held on with elastic bands but I modified it to fit with pegs at the front and bolts to the rear which is a lot sturdier.

It was then covered in Solartex and given a couple of coats of Japlac.

Although not required I made a set of struts from 5mm ali tubing from B&Q, eds from ali sheet fixed to the tubing with Isopon body filler and cross struts from brass tubing. A Cub without struts looks a bit undressed.

The fuselage lettering was cut from Solartrim and the Cub Club France logo was printed on sticky back plastic sheet from Overlander finished with a coat of clear car lacquer to fuel and water proof it.

It was only completed yesterday and has yet to fly. My next job will be to complete the Auster.

Looking at the photos I've just realised that I've fitted the switch to the wrong side!

A few photos are shown below.