House of Balsa T-6

I built this in 1989. Overall I was not very happy with it. The aileron setup (bent pushrods) leaves a bit to be desired. Two independent micro-servos driving the ailerons would have made a big difference with this plane. I ultimately lost it when the aileron pushrods jammed and it spun out of control.

Some other points to consider on this kit:

• Strengthen the landing gear -- the kit setup is very weak, the gear ripped out on mine on the first landing. I ended up putting a large (6" or so) square plywood plate on the bottom of the center section (1/16" thick ply) and then bending the landing gear in a pattern resembling a radio wave "spike" as follows. This wire was epoxied to the plywood plate. This was a bit heavy, but it was finally strong enough. The view below is "as seen from below the airplane"

               /\
              /  \
   0----\    /    \-----0
         \  /
          \/
  

  I found I couldn't "beef up" the internal structure used in the kit enough to make it withstand a hard landing. If you want to widen the "stance" of the gear, just bend the wire outward at each attach point (the "0"s in the picture above), so it looks like this from the front of the airplane:

    
             ---------------------
            /                     \
           /                       \
          /                         \
  

• Don't do the "bent pushrod" installation recommended in the kit for the ailerons. Two micro-servos, one in each wing, is a much better solution. I lost mine when the ailerons locked up because of binding in the pushrods.

• Be very careful on takeoff. This plane needs to fully come up to speed before takeoff. If you try to pull it up too early, it will lift off and tip-stall. I nearly lost it several times because of this. Let it build up some good speed before pulling back on the stick.
  

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