An RC friend of mine bought a box of CL stuff from someone and in the box was a steel fin Fox .15. The previous owner had kept it oiled and it has good compression. Being a cheepskate I immediately thought of the Sig Akromaster because it's only $27.95 from Sig. I needed to buy some balsa from Sig for one of my winter projects anyway (two Ted Fancher Medics), so I ordered the Akromaster kit. They asked me if I could wait on my order for a few days since they were going to make a production run of the Akromaster kits at then end of the week.
Anyway, it all came last week and the box looks exactly like the one pictured above in Mikey Pratt's post. The wood was good to excellent. The elevators are a beautiful C grain, but the horizontal stab is A grain and a little warped, so I'll replace the horizontal stab with some nice C grain. They are now lazer cutting the fuselage blank and the plywood nose doublers. The airfoil on the ply nose doublers will have to be cut back since it doesn't match the fuselage cut out for the wing. I was surprised the kit didn't have any lead-out wires, but the box does list lead out wires in the things you'll need. I plan on color dope on the fuselage and tail and clear dope only on the wing.
I should have reread this thread before starting on the leading edge and trailing edge. I cut the wrong ends off.
Five Questions: 1) Which would you use on a 250 square inch model like the Akromaster, light silkspan (00) or medium silkspan (GM)?
2) The instructions say to use .015 lines, 52 feet long. The AMA rules say you can use .012 stranded wires up to a 40 oz. model, so .015 lines seems like overkill. So, a) Are there any good reasons for using .015 wires instead of .012 wires on the Akromaster, and b) using a steel-fin Fox .15 is 52 feet long lines seem about right?
3) The instructions don't call for tapering the fuselage behind the wing. Would you taper the fuselage behind the wing? If it helps, the fuselage wood is pretty light. I would guess it's between 8-9 lb density.
4) I'm still in the Sir Crashalott stage. Should I use the wire landing gear or replace it with an aluminum one? If aluminum, would the Brodak 1/16" thick tapered flat gear blank (part number BG-1961) be right for this size/weight model or the 1/32" thick (BG-1960) or the 3/32" thick (BG1964)?
5) Is it worth the effort and expense to replace the wire pushrod with a carbon fiber pushrod on a model like this?
Thanks,
Joe Ed Pederson
Cuba, MO
AMA 103434