by kittyfritters » Sat Mar 08, 2008 7:16 pm
Dave,
I've never built the 500 series Hurricane kit before, but there have been several good looking ones lately, and when James built one I thought that I might as well, so I stopped by a local hobby shop and bought one. When I got it home I opened the kit, weighed the wood and looked at the plans. Now I understand why everyone who builds one seems to have trouble getting a model with good wing area and an ample tail surface to fly. In proportional terms, this thing has more lumber aft of the C.G. than any other kit I have seen. I'm not sure that even a lifting tail will get this one flying i built according to the plans.
This one is 2005 production and the wood is so-so. The sheets with the wing parts are very good, each weighs 3 grams, but the sheets with the fuselage formers are 8 grams each. That's about 17 to 18 pound wood. For this one to fly, without 10 grams of BB shot in the nose, the structure has to be reduced aft of the C.G. and built with contest grade (4-5 pound) wood. Even then, it may need the lifting tail.
Compounding this is the tiny nose. Hurricanes were a little short coupled in the front, and had very pointy noses. At this scale, there is almost no room for a sturdy under structure to support thrust adjustments. It probably would have been much better if the design of the model used an all wood structure without the plastic cowling. One solution is an adjustable thrust button such as the one from Gizmo Geezer.
I'm going to be doing mine as a 56 Squadron bird with the Night and White colors. I don't have the time that you do for building but I will try to keep up.
Howard