Brodak Baby Ringmaster

I recently attended our last swap meet of the year. We used to have one the Sunday after Thanksgiving and I certainly miss that. It was a good time to have it and I always looked forward to it. However, renting the firehouse hall became increasingly expensive, guys have gotten older, and just the lack of attendance brought a very enjoyable day to a stop. While the attendance was low at our current location, the items the attendees brought were high quality items. I have a lot of 1/2A stuff dormant on the shelves and I wanted a quick build for one of my engines. I purchased this Baby Ringmaster for $50. I was thinking, I'm out of my mind but it would've been + $70 from Brodak.

      I purchased it 2 weeks ago and I opened it last evening. I should've looked closer at this model prior to buying. I opened the plans and immediately noticed the no room for a fuel tank behind the engine. Keep in mind this is the newly redesigned kit for beam mounted engines.  I was highly disappointed and I kept my head high and moved on to the rest of the kit. Leading edge is solid and hard. While it might be a bit heavy, I was very satisfied with this part with the exception it was really bowed.

         The trailing edge is so bad I threw it right in the trash. Absolutely useless punk wood which has no integrity whatsoever. The fuselage even though laser cut, took multiple knife passes to get it out. I found that quite poor and the wood was badly charred. Now that the fuselage is too short due to no tank area, the doublers provided were now also too short which now has me throwing out 2/3's of the kit. I now have a rib kit which cost me $50. The elevator is ok but I would've preferred better.

         Essentially, if one was to use a integral tanked bee this plane would be satisfactory. Pat King does a exceptional job at providing high quality good fitting kits. I could kick myself for not going that route. I jumped on something without looking and now I have a useless turd in a box.