Spirit of Saint Louis - Thunder Tiger

Construction / tuning:

The box was rather small,, but contained all materials needed (incl.
glue) to put together this plane.
The foam finish unfortunately was not as good as from Multiplex. It is a
kind of styro-foam that gets dented and marked easily during the
building phase.
The wings are also from foam but with a hard plastic surface. Very nice
is the historic finish showing the ribs.
As the original plane had ailerons and as they were marked on the
wings I cut them out and supplied each with a small micro servo which
I glued directly on the underside of the wing (it has a concave profile).
In addition I strengthened the wing with a 2 mm CFK rod almost from
tip to tip.
The gearbox was assembled and you only needed to mount the motor.
The longest part of the construction was the fixing of the motor cover -
22 pieces of individual foil needed to be fixed on the plastic part (to give
this remarkable shine)! Well that is part of modelling anyway!
Another part of rather detailed work is the fixing of the wing supports.
Each is held in place by two mini-mini-mini skrews! Basically that
means you fix it once and leave the plane assembled for the rest of its
plane life.

Flight Experience:

Well, the first flight ended almost in a crash as the propeller got stuck
after a few minutes flight. Somehow it got jammed with the glued motor
cover pieces. The plane wheeled over its wings during a forced landing
and some of the wing supports came loose.
Since then the wing is a bit crooked, but it still flies. Not great though,
so the Spirit of Saint Louis is more a "Beauty Plane" then a good flying
plane and it serves as nice decoration of my work shop. Still once in a
while I take it for a spin ....

Update - August 2010 - R E T I R E D

After several experiments to get satisfactory flight experiences I gave
up! The wings are very flimsy and dent or brake easily. The flight
performance is just acceptable for some scale-like horizontal flights
with wide curves. A beautiful plane to look at but a boring plane to fly.
So I decided to retire this plane and now it hangs from the ceiling in the
room of my 5 year old son Dominic!

RCSKYLINER.com
Site for radio controlled airplanes and more ...