Kit 703 Edge 540

[Bill Gaylord]

Looks like the wood weight isn't as much of an issue when they use less of it. About the only thing I may replace is the LE, since it seems to be an LE/main spar all in one. Some of the stick stock I've received in the past is stashed away with my basswood collection, being about the same density and sometimes closer to spruce. I actually weighed this kit, wrapping and all and came up with 9.25oz +/- 1gram. I've actually thought about having ideal published weights for these kits, so we could bring scales to the hobby shop and get an "x-ray" like idea of what grade of wood is inside.
Looking at the wing design, I may be tempted to modify the former fronts to use 1/8 square stock for the LE, partly since shaping larger stock sizes for LEs is not one of my favorite activities. I'm sure we've both put our time in on that activity over the years! There appears to be enough stringers to provide ample strength with a less beefy LE, granted the stringer stock used is reasonably strong. You made a good point in that laser cutting does not insure perfect fits. I regularly notice the difference in balsa sheet thickness to have considerable variation. Some claim it to be metric versus English cutting, but it's simply tolerance, especially when the sheets are all marked in English thicknesses.

[squirlye]

I know this is topic, but breed of cat is that? I am a vet tech and I have never seen a cat with that shape of head.

[Steve Blanchard]

Did patches lose his teeth in some street fights? He looks like a thug. A face only a mother could love. Gotta love the odd balls.

Otherwise my wife never would have married me!

[paul]

Was not a great fan of cats, but Patches seems to have changed my mind

[ADW 123]

Looks great. This kit is tempting for a R/C converstion...

[hellcat]

I like the way it looks but why did you filling in

[Wildpig]

Just wait until he gets it finished. You'll see why.

[Bill Gaylord]

Looks good with the planking. I'm going to have to resist the urge to sheet the entire plane now.
Looks like you've put a good bit of effort into the spinner base and prop. I imagine you plan to hand fabricate the prop also. I hadn't noticed that the Edge 540 uses a 3-blade prop, and may now use a small Horizon replacement 3-blader that should work well with the relatively high kv motor planned for use.

[Bill Gaylord]

David your Edge build motivated me to finally open the box and get started on this build, for micro rc. I got all decent wood for the first time, although some have come close with only one heavy sheet. That makes the 9.75oz +/-1gm of the unopened plastic wrapped box a good reference, for anyone building for free flight. Bring you scale to the LHS and weight the unopened box.

Once again, I learned to very carefully read and review the instructions, as I had a minor correction to make. The center keel only sat partially in the firewall notch, in order to set the firewall at 90 degrees. With the old kits, that was par for the course, but with these new kits the alignment is basically perfect, when built correctly. The fine point is that the center keel butts against the rear fuse former, rather than a tab-and-slot fit. They don't point out this detail, although the CAD drawn designs are excellent, in that you can see these details if you really look at the somewhat small assembly view. Fortunately the fix amounted to simply extending the notch 1/16" forward into the keel where the wing locating former mounts, and then trim 1/16" off of the rear of the keel. I even filled in the tiny 1/16" notched void behind the wing former TE, so nobody can tell. As for the older kits, no 2 builders ever quite set the stringers in the same fashion, when they had butt joints shown versus notches. With the old hand drawn kits, some details were anybody's guess, although I still love old die-cut hand-drawn kits.

[Bill Gaylord]

57 grams is not bad at all. I've flown planes this size (electric rc) at 120gms that fly well.
I'm half tempted to use your favorite inset planking technique, especially after noting that the cowl is an exact fit with the front fuse former. I could always sand it down to accomodate 1/32" sheeting, but then the top fuse front would have an increased taper and not match the cowl. Inset planking is definitely a task, but I imagine you like the laser cut kits, as you can use each plank as a decent template for the same plank location on the other side, due to the accuracy of the kit. I just finished an inset planking type task that I'm sure you can relate to: trimming 10 windows for a perfect, light interference fit on my AG Crusader project. I may need a break before I do anything more that is inset fitting related.

I noticed that you are using the same wheels I have. Actually it gave me a chuckle, thinking about what I did with mine. GWS has them with both solid rubber tires like yours, and lighter foam. I had a set of each style, but I stole one from each set in the past. The solid tires are really nice for display (tyres for you Brits here) but heavy for rc, and were bought by accident. Wanting light foam tires, I pirated from another set of foam tires that had the same hub size, but with ridiculous balloon width. The solution was to cut them thinner, which ruins exacto blades and doesn't look all that great. Then, you sit there for a full half hour or so, and sand the foam tire down like a giant eraser, until properly sized and smooth. Of course I could have just ordered another set for a few bucks and shipping.

[Bill Gaylord]

Looks good. Using all the decals would be a bit overkill. I'll probably be a bit conservative with this one also.
The GWS 5" 3-blader is pretty close to correct scale for the plane. I had one in the drawer that will be used for the project.

[Reamon]

Sorry if this is a silly question... I've noticed your filling technique on several of your build log threads, are your planes then too heavy to fly? I understand that there are several groups of builders including those who build for static display. Purely from an aesthitics standpoint your planes are absolutely beautiful but i just wondered if they were also capable of flight.

[stx44]

Thanks mate! Any hints are greatly appreciated!

[Mitch]

Another great model from Dave...

Just one question. I noticed you used a light weight wheels not supplied in the kit. Why did you use those, and did you use a different tail wheel also?

For viewers who do not know the kit comes with wooden wheels.

Mitch

[Wildpig]

...... so my layman's suspicion is that if you put a big enough engine on it, all other things considered, it will fly. Course, that may be why I'm not an engineer.

As pictured, the Edge weighs 2.7 ounces, 79 grams.

My high school Aerospace Ed. teacher used say, "anything will fly if you attach enough horsepower to it"