ARF Oriental Rework

I lost my favorite ARF Oriental last season due to a problem with the controls. I was recently given this Oriental which had 5 flights on it. The plane was completely re-kitted so to speak. I removed all the parts, stab, elevator, etc. I basically now had the plane in the form which it's received within the box. First step, strip the horrible covering off. If one chooses to leave it on, it will peel off for you typically in flight. I've lost entire wing panels. Oil soaking quickly ruins the raw balsa. Removing the covering was a difficult chore due to some of the underlying color becoming almost impregnated within the balsa. Seeing I was using white and it's translucent, I knew any underlying darker colors would show through. I got a bit creative with the covering prior to assembling the cowling by putting blue in there. The cockpit is sunk into the fuse and epoxied. I like the two tone look. I did this with my original yellow ARF by installing red in the canopy.

The next step, I'm not a fan of the 4" bellcrank in this plane. In my opinion it's not needed and is too slow for this plane. It therefore requires excessive hand movements and control inputs. I almost lost my original ARF due to this problem until I started flying it with a larger handle. Out with the 4" and in with the Sig 3". All hinges were completely redone. This required some fancy woodwork in terms of plugging existing hinge slots and also completely redoing the flaps. Most of the flap materials used are poor choice and flutter in flight. I used harder and heavier flaps with the heaviest being outboard. New stab and elevator and rudder were also cut and installed. The wood of the existing model was very poor in my opinion in terms of strength. The stab of the Oriental can easily be broken where it exits the fuse and I have solved that problem by using a shim of ply underneath the stab and also triangular braces on the underlying side.

The prior owner crushed the you know what out of the motor mounts so I had to fill the recess with 1/8" ply pieces and plug the holes to redrill for my engine . The existing holes were poorly drilled and I resolved that. I chose a OS MAX-S .35 due to it's weight. The original owner used a FP.40. A FP or LA .40-.46 is going to require 2.5-3 oz's of tailweight in this model. While it has a lot of wing area, this is a boat load of nothing you have to carry around. I took a better approach and decided to fly it using a lighter engine. My Fox .35 version flies quite well.  I then epoxied aluminum bearer plates to the mounts using structural epoxy (T-88). The belly pan under the wing plus the gear block under the F-2 former all have fiber glass installed. Anywhere there was a joint, I used 1/2 oz. glass cloth and epoxy.

All the hardware of the ARF is metric so no standard pushrods will fit the hardware. SO it's either purchase new hardware or bush the existing I should've just replaced it, but this was on a budget. One where I didn't want to spend any $$$$$. I used anything I had laying around, covering, glues, miscellaneous hardware, etc. Properly retaining the flap horns is a must as the stock units are made of incrdibly weak wire. They need to be properly bushed and also properly attached to the trailing edge with bushings and retainers. I used pieces of nyrod and U shaped pieces of music wire epoxied in to retain them .

I took the plane to the field, I knowing better but took a gamble used the tank that was within the plane. Sure enough as luck would have it, it's a POS and doesn't work. Something internally is wrong with this tank so it was back to the drawing board with this one. I suspect corrosion is within the tank due to the junk that was coming up the line. I've encountered this before and a simple flushing wasn't going to resolve this. The ready to fly weight of the plane with the stock muffler is 38.56 oz's. This is real good for a Oriental and also the Max.35. I have acquired a tongue muffler for the MAX but the case will need to be machined in order to accept the tongue due to it's through bolt installation vs the strap that OS uses. The tank is undergoing some surgery currently.  The plane didn't get to fly but I will try again this weekend. The cowling is still getting a makeover. I had to glass the inside of it due to bad cracking . There's very little resin used in the making of these and they just crack due to vibration. I repaired the existing needle holes and relocated for my new engine. This should recapture some fun this season as I intend to do a bit more on the stunt side of things. I put a lot of emphasis in combat and lost a bit of touch with the stunt side. This will make a great model for sport and competition. Ken