Advice for First Build

[HLM]

Thanks for your support. Just a bit of an update - I attempted to test glide the thing in the garden a week or two ago. It sort of glided a bit but would bank and dive to the left. I thought I'd be able to make some adjustments to get it flying better - that is until a particularly nasty landing sent it tumbling and snapped one of the wings. It's still hanging on in place, supported by gravity but obviously is now even less airworthy than it was before. It will now be left to sit pretty on my shelf.

But this does leave me wondering, how common are these sort of accidents, and are repairs something most would even bother with? I imagine to fix a broken wing like mine would require tearing off a good bit of the covering to get at the balsa inside, gluing whatever needs gluing and then doing the whole covering and painting process over again on that part.

[Wildpig]

Accidents do happen fairly often with these models. Test glides need to be made over tall grass. Knee high grass.
Repairs of part of the game. I have had to strip off the tissue and repair parts of wings and things on these models, several times. And sometimes when they break, you learn where they need reinforcement.
But, I will say it's not always the case. I have a Guillow Fairchild 24 that has made approximately 80 flights and never needed any significant repairs.
Sounds like from your test glide, that the plane stalled. You may need to steepen the glide angle or make the glide speed faster. From what I hear, the Stuka is tough one to get to behave properly.

[WIDDOG]

I also don't think the Stuka is a very good first model for flying rubber powered free flight. I recommend for your next build a kit that is designed to be flown specifically for rubber power. I recommend the 600 or 900 Series kits.

[davidchoate]

I am still in the learning beginner stages of FF, but I know this. Crashes are going to happen more frequently than a good flight, and that scale fighter type models are not good for us beginners. I have a Javelin that I use for learning because its easy to make adjustments on, and to rebuild damaged parts. I am only building high wing trainer style planes for flying FF until I get a bit better understanding of how to set up planes to fly well. Oh, and I also learnede that if a model does not glide well, it more than likely will not fly too far.