Despite the fact that I kept calling Andy Steve during the whole of the International Aerotow weekend, he still put pen to paper to give us the low-down on this excellent kit. . and so he should seeing as it won such a major prize...!

Graupner 5.5M kit purchased from Andy's Hobby Shop http://www.andys-hobbyshop.de/

The price was 886.70 Euros (about £540 at the exchange rate back in February 2002).

The kit was ordered by fax on a Tuesday and arrived at my home on the Friday of the same week. This was excellent when you realise that the box was about seven and a half feet long, and about a foot by 18 inches wide. Postage costs were in the region of about £13, if my memory serves me correctly.

On opening the box I found that this was truly a kit, a complete kit with almost everything there to build, and finish the model (it even included two rolls of white covering film!). Just about the only things 'missing' was the glue, and a pilot!!

Going through the various parts I was very impressed with their quality, and build accuracy of what is obviously a mass-produced kit.

The fuselage moulding was extremely good, with a high gloss finish and a very neat seam line. The strength was also very good and needed no additional work at all.

The wings were close to perfection. This is a four-piece wing with each tip panel being just over a meter long (this is great for transportation and storage). The tips have the classic Ventus double dihedral break, these are already cut and set correctly. The kit supplies 3 inch wide fibreglass tape to reinforce these joints. This does work well although it requires a little time to then fill, and flare in to match the wing profile and make the fibreglass relatively 'invisible'. An alternative method of reinforcement would be to make a plywood spar and insert it from the underside of the wing and thus retaining the original wing profile more accurately. The quality, and strength of the wings are extremely good. The obechi veneer is bonded to the foam with a layer of glass cloth in between. In addition to this there is wide carbon cloth covering the main spar all the way from root to tip. The overall result is a very hard finish that feels, and sounds, like a hard glass finish - very strong and good quality. All joiner boxes are completely installed (tips to main panel and main wing joiner). The joiners are all high quality round steel (tips 10mm and main joiner is 18mm diameter). The fit of both the tips to main wing panel and root to fuselage are almost perfect, only very small sanding adjustments were needed to keep the leading edge in line on the tips. Servo wells and cable runs are all pre-cut. The ailerons and flaps (and the elevator) all have this Kevlar hinge built in under the veneer. I followed the instructions to free the elevator by lightly cutting along the pre-scored line on the top with a hacksaw, and removing the balsa from the underside. This was successful to some extent although the elevator movement was "stiff and not as good as I would like. I decided that I would simply cut the elevator, ailerons, and flaps off and hinge them in the conventional way with Diamond tape. This I did and I am very happy with the end result. The air brakes are pre installed but do require the veneer to be removed from the top to allow the blades to fit into the boxes - not a difficult job.

The tailpiane has a 'unique' fixing method. It has two large alloy studs that push in through the top of the tail. The studs have a 15mm flat head that is designed to be filled over once installed and are therefore invisible. Inside the fin these studs pass through an alloy plate and are held in place by a steel pin that is inserted through the leading edge of the fin, it screws into a thread in the rear of the two studs. This is a great idea as it saves those unsightly bolts that are normally visible on the top of the tail. However, it requires the holes in the tail, the top of the fin, and the retaining pin to be accurate to within a fraction of a millimetre. Any error at all means that either the retaining pin will not locate in the threaded rear stud, or the tail will move slightly on the fin. The additional problem is that once installed this method of retention gives no room to adjust the angle of incidence. These problems proved too great for me to easily overcome so I reverted to the conventional bolt and captive nut system that is used on the majority of 'T' tail models. (As it happened the angle of incidence was exactly right and needed no adjustment - perhaps I should have trusted them !!)

• The rudder is moulded and fits well to the fuselage. The fin is strengthened with two vertical and one horizontal 'fin posts'. They are supplied, and already profiled to fit the fin, and are made of light ply. A good strong finish is achieved.
• The canopy frame is moulded in fibreglass and fits to the fuselage well. The canopy requires the normal trimming to fit the frame. My only comment about the canopy is that it is a fairly dark blue colour, which is not to everybody's taste. However, now my model is complete I think it actually make the whole thing look very attractive and enhances the look of the pilot and cockpit detail - I like it.
• The retract doors are already scored and just need to be cut out. The mounting bulkheads are supplied and profiled to fit the fuselage - great time saver. I purchased the recommended Graupner retract unit so that it would fit into the mounting holes that were pre-cut in the bulkheads. The retract unit costs about £60 but needs a little work to get a smooth operation. The wheel that is supplied with the unit is not fit for purpose, it is very light and soft and could not take the weight of the model, I replaced the wheel with a Fema wheel that I bought from Thomas Budszus in Caen.

Overall I would rate the kit as 9 out of 10. The only things that I think it falls down on are :

• The 'elastic' hinges on the wings and tail (that could just be my personal preference as Graupner market this as a real advantage).
• The tail fixing method.
• The control horns are made of a fibrous material and I don't think they are strong enough. I cut my own horns out of epoxy board for the flaps and ailerons. However, I did use the fibre horn supplied for the elevator but after connecting and disconnecting the pushrod only three or four times, the horn has already split and started to 'crumble'. I have no choice now but to cut it out and replace it with one made from epoxy board - should have done that in the first place.
  

The radio gear I used is as follows:- Volts metal gear servos in the wing, a Multiplex Micro Digi on the elevator with a Multiplex DSI2 IPD receiver using two 6V 2400ma nicad packs plugged directly in to the receiver (no battery backer is needed as the receiver has that facility built in to it). The model uses 13 servos in total, a factor that I hadn't taken in to account when ordering it back in February. This immediately gave me another problem; my Multiplex 3030 transmitter only has 9 channels. To overcome this problem I have had to wire together the servos for the outboard two ailerons on each wing - i.e. 4 ailerons using only 2 channels. I have also joined the tow release, the brake on the wheel, and the vario all in on one channel (this means I must put my tow release back in the take off mode before I land otherwise I will land with the wheel brake on !!!). I have also put both air brake servos on one channel. Because of the position of the servo wells and the two servos, this means that when one air brake opens, the other closes - not ideal !. To overcome this I have used a Simprop Dual Rate and Reverse 'Y' lead that I purchased in Dortmund. This plugs in to the receiver and allows two servos to be connected to it but enables you to reverse one of them and adjust the throw rate - an excellent little gadget that cost about £10.

I didn't use the covering film supplied in the kit, as I wanted to try covering with vinyl, I had read about it in one of the mags several months ago and wanted to give it a go. The vinyl comes in various grades and ranges in price from around £2 to £5 per meter. I chose the more expensive grade as they told me that it was thinner and therefore a little bit more flexible. In future I think I will go for the £3 range as I think it's just as good. I prepared the wing by simply filling the grain with a mix of wing skinning epoxy loaded with Fairing Compound. This gave a relatively light but hard seal to the veneer, which only needed light sanding. Once done I applied the vinyl by wetting the wing root a little (about 2 or 3 inches only) which allowed me to slide the vinyl into position before finally 'rolling it across the whole wing. As the vinyl is self adhesive, all I did was to slowly pull the backing away at the same time as lightly rubbing the vinyl down on to the wing using my other hand. The edges were also very easy, all I did was to trim them to length and fold them round the corners with my fingers - easy. Compound curves are great, all you need to do is pull the vinyl and warm it a little with a hair dryer (NOT A HEAT GUN - this is far too hot), the vinyl then goes soft and you can simply pull it round the corner and trim it off. On some compound curves I found it necessary to seal the edges with a normal sealing iron set on a cool setting - this worked very well and stopped the edges lifting. A great finish was achieved and one that I will certainly be looking to repeat on my next model.

Overall I think this is a great kit, excellent quality and nice to have a complete kit with all the hardware, unlike so many other expensive 'kits' that are often just a fuselage and wing/tail. There is also a detailed build manual, which is nice to see. The completed model weighs in at 1 9lbs, a little higher than I expected but I think this is due to the great work that Graupner have done on the wings, as they are very strong indeed. The weight is certainly not a problem as the maiden flight at Middle Wallop showed. It took off, and flew, 5 or 6 times over the weekend with absolutely no trim changes at all, all control surfaces are set dead level - a first for any model I have owned, including my Schuler DG 505! It seems to float well but also has a fair turn of speed when you drop the nose. It's a shame that the summer is just ending as I'm looking forward to catching a few thermals and having some fun. I'm sure there will be some days coming up that will let me test it out on the slope - fingers crossed the weather will be kind to us for a little longer this year?