Guillow Lancer Final Assembly

[TheDope]

Hi,

Brand new here, and busy with the final assembly of a Guillow Lancer. You can see it mocked up in the attachments. The two main things that are still to be completed are attaching the wheels to the landing gear and securing the tail assembly to the fuselage.

The instructions are quite explicit about how they want the wheels attached to the landing gear, but I wonder if it will be durable enough? I've searched and read previous threads about this part of the construction and the advice seems overwhelmingly to do without the landing gear because they don't last more than a few landings. Well I don't believe that, somehow I think my landing gear is pretty darn sturdy! The trouble comes in with what I feel to be the flimsy attachment of the wheels to the landing gear. I wish that the instructions had me leave wire stiffeners a little long so that I could have bent them into wheel axles. I think that would have simplified things.

More importantly, the instructions are very vague about how the tail assembly is attached to the fuselage. I can't believe that it's just glued on. That sounds like a recipe for disaster if the tail assembly is knocked or landed on. My personal feeling is that I should try and copy the assembly as shown in the Cox powered variant instructions. This variant offers the possibility of using a dethermaliser. I doubt I'd need the dethermaliser but at least the tail would be knock off instead of break off.

Just looking for some discussion and opinions about this and thought I'd share some pics of how the kit shaped up in the end.

TheDopeLancer2.JPG

TheDopeLancer1.JPG

Thanks!

[Wildpig]

This might be your first time on this forum, but, that's not your first balsa model. Very sharp looking airplane.

the landing gear is prone to breaking off. I built mine with the gear and made the wire longer. You said' you wished they had left the wires a little long'.... it's your model, build it the way you want to. Next time make the wire longer.
Best I can remember, the tail stabilizer is just glued on. Never had it break off or damaged.

[TheDope]

Thanks for the compliments.

I will most likely glue the tail on then. I think a couple of dots of balsa cement would be best, it'll probably let go before any wood can be broken in the event of being knocked badly.

The landing gear I'm just going to suck it and see what happens. Though I'll most likely replace the red wheels with the peck polymers equivalent in black because I think they look much nicer (and then the landing gear will likely break off and replacing the red wheels will have been pointless. Hehehe).

Thanks for sharing your experience with the model.