Trojan Horse

Today my new (okay, Luke's new) Airfield RC 800mm T-28 Trojan arrived from Nitroplanes. I had felt done with foamies, but wanted to get Luke something inexpensive and small. I also wanted something small and stable to do carrier landings with my arrestor system. I liked the price, look and model of this nice plane so I ordered it. I just looked at possibly getting another one, and they are already not-in-stock!

Wow, so far I am quite impressed. The foam feels denser than other EPO foam. It is painted with a grey paint that lies down nicely and even seems to strengthen it. It gives the plane a nice texture. The decals/stickers are applied nicely though  they do wrinkle up a littler here and there, but are easily pressed back in place. The parts pieces are nicely formed, the hardware seems to be of very good quality. It was incredibly easy to put together, though the instruction poster (nice looking) wasn't as informative as it could be.

Das box.

Unboxed. The parts were formed and finished exceptionally well.

I really liked these control horns. They had 2 different kinds of legs. Two were posts, two (diagonally opposed) into which the securing screws are secured. Easily positioned, easily screwed together! There were two sizes of screws, which might be lost on a novice builder. The longer ones go in the forward holes, the smaller ones in the more aft ones.

I thought I'd share this simple tool I bought from Harbor Freight for about a buck. It is for loosening C-clamps. Using the old idea of taking fuel tubing to secure a clevis closed on a control horn, I use this tool to get it on.

I stretch the rubbber band over the tines, and then push it easily over the clevis. 

There it is, on one of the aileron clevi.

I thought these were ingenious! This is the landing gear attachment. A snap lever opens...

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An end of the gear wire slips into a hole under the space on the right...

The gear is pushed back and the snap lever is pushed over it. There is a piece of the wire angling 90 degrees, under the two squares on the right of the block.

These are the aileron servo wires coming up through the center of the wing.  I use the Eflite technique of tying dental floss across the connectors from the ailerons and the Y-connector to secure them.

I installed a Hobby King Orange reciever and satellite receiver.  I set it where I had to, trying to keep the antenna away from the ESC... The satellite runs back into the hollow of the fuse, between the elevator and rudder servos. The elevators have separate control horns attached to a single servo. The rudder control rod runs aft, the steerable nose wheel control rod forward. The 20amp ESC I secured in the center. You can see the battery as the left (forward) most object in the compartment. I happen to have a bunch of 2S 1000 mAh batteries with the little red connectors from my days flying the Walkera fixed pitch helis. Excellent!

All done! I am worried the wheels are too small for our grass field and I may need to try putting the old Alpha wheels on her. Not sure that will work. I may have to accelerate my plans for the foam rubber runway.

I painted the prop tips white. I'll pen in a red stripe tomorrow after it dries well. I bought two extra props and also painted them. There is very little clearance between the prop and the ground... Another issue with taking off from a grass field.

I plan to take her out to BMF in the next couple of days and see how she flies. I expect she will be awesome! I am not sure what rates to fly her at. I fly the Cubby at 100%. I set up 3 rates in my Dx8: 40, 65 and 100 with 25% expo all around. I plan to start with 65 and go from there. The hatch doesn't secure very well, so I am working on a small piece of Dual Lock Velcro to secure it.

Nice plane, easy build, looks and feels awesome! CG was nicely in, a touch nose heavy. This should be fun! I think this Trojan horse has snuck into my heart!