A couple questions while assembling my Oriental ARF

[john e. holliday]

When you assemble your ARF Oriental,  make sure all joints are wood to wood with epoxy.  Also a decent control system like Tom Morris makes.  Powered with a decent engine electric.   The covering is okay if you don't shrink it too much.  Mine started coming apart while in Colorado contest years ago.  Need good glue joints for wing to fuselage.  Also the flap horn was wollowed out by the pushrod.    Had maybe a couple of dozen flights on it til then.  Don'tforget to use good pinned hinges.  Feel better now.

[Juan Valentin]

Hello frank
                          What I did to my Oriental was to replace the Bellcrank and pushrods, I cut a square hole in the fuse to be able to adjust the elevator linkage.I used the kit control horns and the modified kwik link  for the tail as shown in previously posted photos on this thread. I also drilled the corners of the aft fuselage to be able to glue small dowels and tie the bottom wing pan to the rear of the fuse. I also drilled the bottom triangulars at the nose to be able to push dowels from the front of the fuse and strengthen  the bottom of the fuse. I made a 1/8 inch plywood Horse shoe bulkhead that I placed against the landing gear block to be able to use aluminum landing gear and avoid ripping it at every landing. I had to add tail weight because I was using an OS.40FP but the plane flew beautifully .

[frank mccune]

    Hi Juan:

    Thanks for the great post!

    I will drop you a PM next week when I return home.

    I have been using chopsticks for dowels since the dowels that I can purchase locally are made from a wood that appears to be very soft mahogany.  Yes, I do enjoy "good" Asian food! Lol

                                                                                                                Be well,

                                                                                                                Frank

[Juan Valentin]

Hello frank
                      I found the motor mount section of the Brodak Arf that I saved to make a new fuselage for my oriental. In this picture you can see the horseshoe bulkhead made out of 1/8 ply that I used to reinforce the landing gear block. I fly of grass and thought it would be a good idea to tie the gear block to the sides of the fuse since I was using an aluminum L/G. good luck on your arf build.
                                                                                                                                                                                             Juan

[Matthew Brown]

I've been flying this thing a bit. It's getting better but I definitely need a new needle assembly. Does Randy Smith have a website or do I just contact him on here? I also need a smaller tank if I'm going to fly the beginner pattern. I'm running well over 6 minutes on a full tank.

Thanks, Matt

[Air Ministry .]

WELL , thats all right then ! 

Thisisim : http://www.aeroproduct.net/

Generally you use a bleedy great syringe , and milk off the excess after fueling. Though you can just throw in ' the correct ' ammount .

So you need stopwatches , & maybe tachometers .

[Matthew Brown]

Forgot about this thread and thought I'd post an update/obituary.

I finally got things working well on this plane back in the spring. I never felt it was all that great though. It had a very heavy feel on the controls even though it was lighter than another of my planes with a bit less wing area. On the ground everything felt nice and free but in flight the handle felt stiff.
As the spring turned to summer, I had a few minor dorks with it but it was surviving. Club guys had suggested several times I should enter beginner stunt at the Nats. About two weeks prior to the Nats, I had a particularly lean run and the fuel seem like it was never going to run out. I was just playing around wait for a signal from the engine it was about to quit. It never gave any signal. I had just pulled up into a wingover when it cut off clean. Lines went slack catching me off guard and it dove straight down. Wing folded, front of fuse all crushed. It's still sitting out in my garage but it is dead. I'll strip it out in the next few months and decide what to replace it with.
None of my other planes were suitable for the Nats so I skipped them this year.
Maybe next year!

Matt