Alright ladies and gent's, I was going to post this in the main F6F thread that's going on but its going to have a good amount of photos and I didn't want to derail that thread so here we are:
Got the big box from the big brown truck this morning.
Packaging was fine, wings, fuse, tail and horizontal stab have their own individual boxes wrapped in plastic, everything was fine no dings or dents:
Overall finish was good, paint was clean and crisp, no blemishes, on par wit the FMS and Freewing aircraft that I've had, decals are on a sheet, there are none factory applied, we'll get to that later. Only thing I didn't like was aft of the cockpit it is clear that they glue to halves together and there is a gap, could use a little better QC.
- Assembly, largely easy, the directions in the book are quite simple and lack detail, but anyone who has assembled before will have no problems.
- Screws, I don't get how hard it is for manufacturers to label what screws are what, again an experienced flyer can figure it out, but labeling the bags with screws would just take the guess work out.
- The tail assembly, the plastic bit that the screws go into, appear to be put in place before the two halves are glued together, they were both canted at an off angle to where the screw needed to be, didn't take much to orient them correctly, but again something a quick QC check may have caught.
Aside from the small bugs above assembly was done quickly within an hour, retracts appear decent, they are certainly not made of steel but they seem sturdy enough to hold up to a fairly hard landing. Now that said they do rotate when they retract so that is something I have not dealt with yet and adds another failure point, so I'm going to do my best to get my approaches down and try and avoid any hard landings. I picked up an overnight OT shift tonight so I still have to check the CG and all that tomorrow before I maiden, weather is looking good so hopefully it will be a successful flight.
[hr]
Ah yes the decals..
[hr]
So as I mentioned up top the decals come from the factory on a sheet, there are ZERO decals applied to the plane out of the box. This is not a complaint by any stretch, but when I saw that and the clean foam was begging for some paint. Now those of you that have seen some of my other planes know that I can't resist a custom paint job, so I cracked the box open at noon and finally finished painting around 7pm.
The pre-shading/weathering and exhaust I did with the airbrush, motor detailing and cockpit by hand, and the rest was all Krylon rattle cans.
Primed the entire plane with flat Krylon white, few light coats. Then repeated the process with the orange and green, and here's the finished result, of which I am super happy with and almost want to hang the thing up and not risk loosing it in a crash or something.
[hr]
[hr]
And just in case anyone thinks I was on drugs when I painted today, I swear that I am not.
Here is the inspiration, the US Navy used these brightly colored F6Fs for testing during Operation Crossroads in '46 as drone aircraft to test atmospherics after atomic bomb testing, as well as for other pilot-less aircraft tests.
[hr]
Oh yeah, and the retracts (sorry for the vertical video)
Got the big box from the big brown truck this morning.
Packaging was fine, wings, fuse, tail and horizontal stab have their own individual boxes wrapped in plastic, everything was fine no dings or dents:
Overall finish was good, paint was clean and crisp, no blemishes, on par wit the FMS and Freewing aircraft that I've had, decals are on a sheet, there are none factory applied, we'll get to that later. Only thing I didn't like was aft of the cockpit it is clear that they glue to halves together and there is a gap, could use a little better QC.
- Assembly, largely easy, the directions in the book are quite simple and lack detail, but anyone who has assembled before will have no problems.
- Screws, I don't get how hard it is for manufacturers to label what screws are what, again an experienced flyer can figure it out, but labeling the bags with screws would just take the guess work out.
- The tail assembly, the plastic bit that the screws go into, appear to be put in place before the two halves are glued together, they were both canted at an off angle to where the screw needed to be, didn't take much to orient them correctly, but again something a quick QC check may have caught.
Aside from the small bugs above assembly was done quickly within an hour, retracts appear decent, they are certainly not made of steel but they seem sturdy enough to hold up to a fairly hard landing. Now that said they do rotate when they retract so that is something I have not dealt with yet and adds another failure point, so I'm going to do my best to get my approaches down and try and avoid any hard landings. I picked up an overnight OT shift tonight so I still have to check the CG and all that tomorrow before I maiden, weather is looking good so hopefully it will be a successful flight.
[hr]
Ah yes the decals..
[hr]
So as I mentioned up top the decals come from the factory on a sheet, there are ZERO decals applied to the plane out of the box. This is not a complaint by any stretch, but when I saw that and the clean foam was begging for some paint. Now those of you that have seen some of my other planes know that I can't resist a custom paint job, so I cracked the box open at noon and finally finished painting around 7pm.
The pre-shading/weathering and exhaust I did with the airbrush, motor detailing and cockpit by hand, and the rest was all Krylon rattle cans.
Primed the entire plane with flat Krylon white, few light coats. Then repeated the process with the orange and green, and here's the finished result, of which I am super happy with and almost want to hang the thing up and not risk loosing it in a crash or something.
[hr]
[hr]
And just in case anyone thinks I was on drugs when I painted today, I swear that I am not.
Here is the inspiration, the US Navy used these brightly colored F6Fs for testing during Operation Crossroads in '46 as drone aircraft to test atmospherics after atomic bomb testing, as well as for other pilot-less aircraft tests.
[hr]
Oh yeah, and the retracts (sorry for the vertical video)
Comment