Hanging by a thread...

The other day I broke the prop on the Exceed J3 Cub 4ch. I went back to nitroplanes.com and found replacement 8x6 (8 inches, 6 pitch (6" per revolution) slow flyer props for $3, but shipping was going to cost me $9, so $18 for 3 props. No way... shopped around and everyone is not-in-stock. I go to eBay, where I usually start for these very reasons and find I can get 5 for $8 and shipping is free from rctimer in Hong Kong. So, $16 later I have 10 coming from China, but that's not helping me now. I call my LHS this morning and they have one 8x6 prop, but its not a slow flyer, however it is for an electric plane. That's the shiny new silver one on the Cub in the pic, nicely installed. It means my Cubby will be rather fast, which isn't likely a good idea as I am just getting the hang of it. But Daddy wants to fly, and as we read in the previous post, he has piss poor judgement, so I bought it and put in on the Cubby today.


The housing rubbed a little, and I could tell it was because the motor wasn't precisely centered, so I took the fairing off to widen the hole a bit, when I discovered that the motor was hanging by a thread... one bolt where three were supposed to be. (I've turned it on that bolt to see the holes where the other bolts were supposed to go. You can see they are pristine). The other two holes were virgin...no screw had ever been there! Jeez... I couldn't figure out how they mounted this thing since you can't remove the motor without the mount, so I tried to work a couple screws in the existing holes without direct access. Maybe that's why the guy who put it together cheated out the other two? It worked, but it ain't pretty. I had to use a smaller screw under the motor, a larger one I just couldn't drive. So I repaired that, and I installed the prop. It has a slightly shorter chord at its widest point than the slow flyer blade it's replacing. Its also a bit stiffer. We'll see just how much difference this makes tomorrow.



All fixed. You can barely see the tiny black screw.

I need to go back to work so I stop crashing my aircraft...