I have two ideas here - either, somehow, directly use the old cowling as a plug to form a new one, or make a plug out of foam using the cowling and firewall dimentions and coat it with release wax, and use that instead. Not like I would want the stock cowling anyway, as much of a chunk of garbage as it is. Problem is - this kit was probably discontinued before I was even born. So, needless to say, a new cowling is in order. This is why we don't make things out of ABS!! When I removed the cowling yesterday to add extra ballast, I noticed the cowling had some visible fatigue around the bottom edges where it meets the fuselage underside and around literally every single screw hole (even though I was careful to avoid overtightening it!) Well, after today's flights, there appeared cracks a solid 1" long in the bottom corners of the cowling, and cracks extending to the edges from the screw holes. First and foremost, ABS is pathetically weak. I did not have much in the way of high hopes for it initially, and my sentiment remains unchanged now that it has some use on it (and by that I mean barely four flights.) I don't like it for a multitude of reasons. It's the standard ABS cowling that came in the kit. Oh boy, ain't that a circus and a half! So first and foremost, the cowling. The way I did the servo mounting is they actually get mounted to the doors, that way they can be easily removed for repair or replacement. Here's a picture of when I had prepped the wing for installation of the servo door mounting blocks. So the day after I tore the wing apart to replace the cruddy servo system. I'll bind and solder that, since zip ties clearly don't work. Use cables, not music wire kids! The landing gear suspension also popped out of place. Other less severe problems included a crappy CG requiring a bit more than the 1 ounce of nose weight I'd already stuck on and the sad excuse for tail rigging I set up fluttering horribly. A cub just looks wrong without them honestly. This is entirely caused by there not being any jury struts, which is stupid from both a structural and a visual standpoint. I found it later in the bean field and some damage to the nylon strap that holds it on was the only harm. The wing struts also fluttered severely and one of them actually failed in flight, but luckily it just fell away harmlessly and they serve no structural purpose so it's not like there was any problem with it not being there. This has on the plans the old style of driving both ailerons from one centrally mounted servo using bellcranks nowadays there's no real need to do this as servos come pretty cheap. After that I had to do some changes because there were.
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