Bouncing around again for the TE3

Well, as Y’all have probably figured out, I bounce around a lot.  I was going to take a day and build a plane for the Travelling Engine III.  I have a SIG Buster that I was going to put the Medallion .15 in, and with the pre-shaped solid wing I figured I could get the whole thing done in a day easily using CA and Monokote.  Then after the TE3 is gone, I can use it as a loaner for someone wanting to learn.

I took the kit out this evening to look at it and do a little planning.  Man!  This kit is terrible!  The pre-shaped wood is warped, and part of the trailing edge is broken off.  And I didn’t notice it when I picked up the kit, but it only has 140 square inches on the wing.  For racing that may be good, but for training and sport flying it’s not nearly enough.  Not for a .15 sized engine.

So, on to the next plan.  I mentioned last month that I bought a SIG Akromaster on their Black Friday sale.  No biggie, I’ll just build that for the TE3 and keep it for a loaner trainer afterwards. I have an older Akromaster in a box in the closet, but I figured I’ll use the newer one as the wood is supposed to be better.

I opened up the plastic while sitting in on Rusty’s chat this evening.  Better wood!  Hah!  The stuff was also terrible.  The fuselage felt like hardwood.  So did the other sheets of balsa.  I pulled out the old kit from the closet and started comparing wood.  Here’s the fuselage wood between the two kits:




The new wood isn’t finished nearly as good as the older fuse blank, and it’s MUCh heavier.  The new fuse weighs 46 grams.  The older fuse weighs 25 grams.





And check out these two sheets of 1/8” balsa that the elevators are stamped out of.  The older sheet weighs 11 grams, and the new weighs a whopping 27 grams!  That’s more than the new fuselage blank!






Now, I know the two 1/8” sheets have more than just the elevators on them, but the weights are just to illustrate how heavy the new kit wood is.  So, to get an accurate detail of how heavy the wood is, and to get the lightest plane possible, I separated the parts from their parts sheet for both the old and the new kits, and weighed all the parts.  Where there was lighter wood in the new kit (only a couple of items), I swapped it out with the older kit.  Then I weighed the complete lighter wood kit vs. the complete heavier wood kit.

I didn’t take pictures, but the total weight for the lighter kit wood was 175 grams, or 6.2 ounces.  The heavier kit was 229 grams, or 8.1 ounces.  A difference of two ounces!!!  Just for the bare wood!  Hopefully with the two ounce saving I’ll have a nicer plane for the TE3.  Pics as I slowly go along.

The Lightweight Mark