Dope free build

Ken Cook wrote:             I can't comment on r/c wing loads because I don't fly r/c. What I said was that there's a lot of load on a control line plane wing. Due to the fact it's tethered is one factor and the other is the wood and construction practices used to keep the weight of the model down. All new kits are laser cut. The weight of the models are down considerably compared to models of 30 years ago due to wood selection.

          I have mentioned this dozens of times on here. Die cut kits used the hardest heaviest wood possible. Why? because it cut better. The lighter wood was discarded. Most sheets for ribs and elevators, etc. were all heavy C-grain. New laser cut kits use a very lightweight A grain which I've seen fall apart just from engine vibrations. I have broken ribs just launching the plane from lightly squeezing the wing. Lasers will not cut heavy wood due to burning it up. They hardly fair well with 1/8" ply and most times and your Shoestring kit has this for example is the bellcrank platform. Rather than 1 piece of 1/8" they had to cut 2 pieces of 1/16" to glue together.

             The strength of all of the old profile models of years ago was due to the solid leading and trailing edges. These are no longer offered in kits. The other reason is due to wings being doped and silked or silkspanned. Now it's iron on and it doesn't strengthen the wing like the old practices did.

          You can forego the webbing, and hopefully your using iron on covering because it doubles as a trash bag to pick up the pieces off of the field easier.