Great Planes Ultra Sport 40 ARF (Red)
Initial Comments
This was my b-day present for May, 2002. My super sportster 60
construction project has been mostly stalled so I thought I'd see how
things fared with an ARF. By the time my Super Sportster is ready to
fly, I'll have a large time/emotional investment in it so I would like
to have some low wing tail dragger time in the log books before I
actually try to fly the Super Sportster 60.
The skin of this aircraft is interesting. Typically, kit construction
has you building up some sort of frame and then sheeting over the top
of some or all of the structure with thin balsa sheets and finally
covering with a thin plastic heat shrink film. This ARF takes a
different approach. Instead of balsa sheeting they have a thicker
layer of covering that is made of some dense foam laminated with a
thin plastic external layer. This plastic/foam sheet wraps around the
underlying structure (which can be rough cut because it doesn't show
through the foam layer) and has "cool" designs printed directly on it,
so there is no need for painting or decals. All in all it's about
1/8" to 3/32" thick or so and structurally significant. The wing for
instance is built up with standard wing ribs and stringers, but then
wrapped with this foam/plastic composite instead of sheeting with
balsa. The advantages I see are that it is light, probably cheap, and
you can directly print your cool color scheme to it. The disadvatage
is that if you ever ding it up significantly, I'm not sure how it
could be repaired. There are a lot of plastic pieces on this plane in
addition to the plastic/foam sheet covering. If you crashed and did
any kind of substantial damage to this airplane, I think you'd have to
toss the whole thing. Especially since it is discontinued so you
probably can't find replacement parts for it.
Assembly
I've just begun construction so I'll share some thoughts and photos as I go.
I don't have a separate work shop so my work area is very tiny and shared
with the rest of the family. My apologies for the clutter in these
pictures. :-)
This is my first ARF. Generally construction is straightforward. Things
always take longer than you hope/plan/expect, but the sorts of things you
need to do with an arf, you would have to do anyway with a kit, and the arf
saves you building up the major structures.
Things don't always fit together perfectly, so expect to shave a bit
off here and there and do a good amount of sanding. The box says
sanding is not needed, but the instruction manaul correctly says
otherwise. I have a power sander I bought for a house project which
actually works very well for the various sanding chores. Even with
ample sanding, it's hard to get everything to go together just
perfect. Oh well, hopefully it will be good enough, and I'll just
slop a little extra epoxy in the cracks. My assumption is that with
no extra sanding (as per the claims on the box) I would get a
functional and safe plane, and any tiny discrepancies may affect looks
and perhaps subtly affect tracking through the sky, but I don't think
it should be a safety issue.
Wing
05/20/2002 - Here are pictures of the wings. The two
halves are joined and the landing gear is installed. I'm sure this
hotrod will fly as fast as I need it to go, so I opted for the
simpler, fixed gear installation.
wing1
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wing2
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05/20/2002 - Just for fun I placed the fuselage on
top of the wing to see how things are shaping up:
test-fit1
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test-fit2
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05/22/2002 - I glued in the wheel well covers and the
top and bottom wing fairings, as well as the front dowl (for securing
the front of the wing) and some foam to seal the exhaust residue out.
The wing is almost done with the exception of installing the aileron
servo and lincages.
05/23/2002 - Doh!!! First major setback. Once the
wing is assembled, you need to mount it to the fuselage. This ARF
uses a single dowl in the front of the wing and two nylon bolts in the
back. The dowl is installed in the front, center of the wing during
wing assembly and the corresponding hole comes predrilled in the
fuselage. The problem is that it doesn't fit right. (Or at least my
resulting wing didn't fit right.) The wing chord is too long, or the
dowl mounting hole is too high, or a combination of both. The
fuselage has major structural bulkheads on the wing front and back, so
the fuselage opening can't easily be made bigger. So I carefully
sliced open the plastic wing fairing in the back of the wing and
started hacking away balsa and plywood from the trailing edge. I also
got out my knife and worked on lowering the front dowl hole a bit. I
probably need to close off the top of the hole with some sort of
filler so there isn't any opportunity for movement of the dowl.
However, the wing is already so tight against the saddle in the
fuselage that I doubt that could ever happen. I don't know what this
is going to do to the wing incidence, but I suppose I should
check/measure before I fly the thing. (Update: I never got
back to checking the wing incidence, but she flies pretty great as
constructed.)
05/24/2002 - I finished installing the aileron servo
and lincages and did a bit more carving to get the wing to fit better.
I think the wing is pretty much done. The powerplant hasen't arrived
yet, so I'll just skip working on that end of the fuselage until it
comes. Next up is the wing mount.
aileron-servo
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05/25/2002 - Finished the wing mounting. I was a
little nervous about the two main wing mounting bolts. I tend to have
a hard time drilling holes that line up when I'm done, but in this
case I followed the technique outlined in the manual and everything
worked great. Next up are the horizontal and vertical stabalizers.
ruth1
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boss
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wing-mounted
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Tail
05/27/2002 - Working on mounting the horizontal and
vertical stabs. I followed the instructions and things seem to be
progressing in a straightforward manner. The structure is pretty
chinsey/weak back there though. I can see why they add two aluminum
brackets to reinforce the horizontal stablizer. And then the plastic
fairing around the base of the vertical stab also is a significant
structural component. It makes me a little nervous, especially
compared to other kit's I've built, but I'm proceeding with faith in
the instructions. This will be a very sharp looking aircraft, but not
one you want to bang up. It has very light weight construction.
(Update: after putting the tail together completely, it came
out very sturdy. The braces make a big difference. All in all, this
is as solid as any other kit I've built.)
horiz-stab1
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horiz-stab2
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vertical-stab
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In this next image I have the rudder and the vertical stab fairing
positioned, but not glued. Next up is the tail wheel.
tail
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05/28/2002 - Except for the control lincages, I
finished up the tail. This involved gluing on the fairing for the
vertical stabalizer. This fairing is a major structural component so
it needs to fit and be glued securely. However the instructions were
careful to point out that the horizontal and vertical stabs needed to
be slid back far enough so that the rudder line is flush from the back
of the fuselage to the back of the vertical stab. This unfortunately
meant that the vertical stab fairing wouldn't fit correctly. I hacked
on it and chopped off a bit from the back until it would fit flush
along the sides and the front. This means it isn't quite as pretty,
but it should serve it's structural duties just fine. (Update:
once everything is together, this blemish is almost impossible to
notice.)
I then proceeded to install the tail wheel and rudder.
tail-wheel
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Then I proceeded to install the horizontal stabalizer braces. These
actually add a lot of support and structure.
tail-brace
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Finishing up ...
04/30/2003 - Ok, finally, I made some time to
do a bit more work. I'm so close, I just need to push through
and get it done. Recently I've installed the control
lincages, installed the fuel tank, and installed the engine. The
two major remaining items are to install the cowl and the canopy. I might
do the initial flights with the cowl off? That OS .46 Max sure swings
a big looking prop ... :-)
almost-1
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almost-2
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almost-3
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