I guess it's my fault for saying that I'd have the thing together in a couple of days. Talk about putting your foot in your mouth. I've just gone through a very frustrating weekend of one problem after another. Before I go any farther, I want to state right up front that this is in no way a slam at Brodak or any of their products, merely an honest evaluation of the problems that I ran into while trying to assemble this "ARF".
Maybe I've become spoiled by the R/C industry. Most of the R/C ARF's (maybe 12 total) that I've put together have come from that side of the hobby. Most have been of excellent quality, fit and finish, some haven't.
To start with, someone at Brodak should really take a look at the instruction manuals that Hangar 9 puts in their ARF kits. The verbal instructions are easy to understand, and come with excellent, clear photos. I'm sorry, but this manual that came with this Vector is awful. If I hadn't built a lot of stunters before, as well as a lot of other planes, I would have been lost on this one. The photos were dark, out of focus and almost impossible to make out. The verbage was confusing at times and didn't match up with the photos. I think a first time ARF builder, or even an inexperienced builder would have a tough time understanding this one.
In spite of that, I was cruising along pretty well. Then it came time to fit the wing to the fuselage. There is a piece of balsa that is glued to the top of the wing and I believe that it is there to help align the wing/fuselage during assembly and maybe provide a little extra bearing surface for the glue joint. That piece of balsa was about 3/16" off center on mine. I didn't pick that up immediately, (DUH) and couldn't figure out why my wing was sitting there crooked. When I finally realized what the problem was, I decided to trim a little off of one side of the piece and add a slight amount to the other. I had to very carefully cut throught one thickness of balsa, all the time watching not to cut through the wing sheeting. It took a while, but it came out pretty well. Problem solved, or so I thought. The next problem became evident when I then set the wing in the wing saddles. It wouldn't line up perpendicular to the fuselage as I looked at it from the front, and there were huge gaps between the wing and the fuselage sides. Apparently the wing saddles or the wing itself were out of alignment somehow and no matter how I played with it, I couldn't improve the fit much at all. I spent a lot of time trying to massage the saddles to iimprove the fit, but it wasn't getting much better. I finally gave up and just used Gorilla glue to put it together. There's some extra weight I hadn't planned on. I'll have to go back and fit some balsa into the gap and try to get a good bond so that the wing doesn't separate from the fuselage on the first flight. I also like to use baking soda and CA as a gap filler, it works really well.
Anyway, that was my frustrating weekend. It will be OK I guess. I'm just a little disappointed. In all fairness, from what I've heard about Brodak's return policy, I probably could have made a phone call and asked for a new wing, but I don't like to do that unless the defect is really not repairable in a reasonable amount of time. I'm not sure what could have been done about the wing/fuse fit. It's kind of funny, the manual says to secure the wing to the fuse with thin CA. Yeah, right. There's no way that would have worked at all.
I hope I didn't ruffle anyone's feathers with this account of my frustrating ARF build. That wasn't my intent. It's nice to have a venue where we can share problems like this and perhaps come up with some solutions for future members.
Vince