Need Freewing A-10 80mm build improvements please

[tommyt]

I'm about to start assembling the Freewing 80mm A-10. Since it's been around a while and many of you have found its weaknesses and areas of improvement.

I am looking for recommendations for improvements to immediately incorporate into the build before I ever get it in the air.

Thanks and kind regards,
Tom

[crxmanpat]

The only "mod" I would consider would be getting all of the landing gear to be the same type. The stock plane has trailing link gear on the mains, and scissor link on the nose. I would suggest getting the trailing link nose gear and swapping out the stock nose gear.

Some of us have opened up holes in the nose, mainly where the refueling door is, to get some more airflow into the battery area. Not a "must do" but it helps.

[themudduck]

One of the improvements mentioned in the A10 thread, which many of us have done, involves strengthening the nose. If you look at the inside edge of the fuselage (inside the battery bay) you will see there is a slot already molded into the foam on each side - this is so you can install a 5mm Carbon-Fiber tube in there, one on each side. For some reason this wasn't included in the kit - so its optional, but if you epoxy a tube on each side it will greatly strengthen the battery bay. During hard landings or other "gravity-hole" accidents this modification could help prevent catastrophic nose separation (CNS).

Some of us have taken off the canopy and covered all the foam surfaces inside the cockpit with cardstock. (which is then painted). The foam in the cockpit is prone to "gatoring" because it gets hot inside there when the plane is outside in the sun..

The only other modification that I did was to increase the flap travel slightly - you'll notice that at full deflection the flaps will hit the back of the landing gear nacelles. So I trimmed about 1/8" off the nacelle and this allowed the flaps to go down even more. With full flaps this airplane lands like a butterfly so that has worked well for me.

[bbolz]

I like the idea of holes in the refule bay. This does run hot, especially if you use a sound card which also sheds heat.