My Next Plane

Have been doing some contemplation over what plane I should go to next. Some of the criteria I am looking for:

1. Something that has a slow flying speed - the field I am flying at is reasonably small (although there is another good oval nearby at Lyons - it may be magpie free - I should check it out).
2. Reasonably rugged and forgiving - meaning balsa kits are probably out - looking at a foamie of some sort.
3. Ready To Fly or very short Kit build time - I'm in the hobby to fly. Building a few things does give me a sense of satisfaction, but I am busy, and I don't have 30 hours to build aircraft.
4. Something forgiving, but with airlerons - The Electrafun is a three channel plane - no airlerons, so it can't roll meaning you are pretty short on aerobatics that you can perform. However, the plane , whilst having airlerons needs to be somewhat forgiving - a super touchy plane will almost certainly see me on the ground in pieces in pretty short order.
5. Something with scale appearance - The Electrafun flys okay, but it is not a pretty plane. My plan when getting into the hobby was to work my way towards some WWII warbird park flyers. That's still the plan. Something that fits in that theme would be nice.
6. A plane that I can reuse my avionics from my dead Electrafun fuselage would be nice - might save me $100 or so on the cost of setting up the plane.
   

I had a chat to the hobby shop based on these ideas. There seem to be a lot of Cessna 182 kits and RTFs out there with airlerons, and it is supposed to be a quite forgiving and stable aircraft. However, most come with a set of radio gear etc - which I already have.

There are quite a few balsa kits, like the Piper Cub, but here the question of ruggedness is immediately apparent, as well as build time.

I'm still considering both these planes - which would be good "advanced trainers", but the one that I am now strongly leaning towards is the GWS Tiger Moth 400 (sometimes called the GWS Big Tiger Moth to differentiate from their pico Moth).

The 400, which is a pretty good scale appearance for the de Havilland Tiger Moth is:

• 4 channel bi-plane with rudder, airlerons, elevator and throttle.
• Foam constructed.
• Comes as a kit requiring about 6 experienced hours to build (so I'm allowing 12).
• Includes an engine, and should be able to use the batteries and spare servos etc from the dead Electrafun fuselage.
• Has quite a low stall speed due to the lift of two wings (so can fly slow).
• According to reports has scale roll in for airlerons, meaning it is not so quick that you flip the thing on its back and it crashes.
• Once mastered can do most all the tricks. In fact with a bigger engine it seems you can almost make it a 3d plane.
• Kind of fits with my theme of WWII warbirds given many allied WWII pilots trained on the TM before moving on to the Spits, Hurricanes, Mustangs and the rest.
  

Having read a few reviews on the web almost every single one is glowing of the 400's flight characteristics, with quite a few people describing it as a good first airleron plane. There were some negatives:

1. The landing gear is flimsy and needs to be reinforced, or discarded. It seems some people are making perfectly happy belly landings and given the roughness of the fields here in Canberra, that might be best for me too.
2. The kit instructions sound a bit average, but there are plenty of reviews of the build process on the web which give guidance in the area where the instructions are not brilliant.
3. It sounds like the wing struts need some sort of reinforcing.
   
4. Some people have reinforced the wings to prevent folding under extreme maneuvers.
5. The glue included with the kit is useless. Use epoxy resin or a hot glue gun was the other suggestion.
   

So, the price of the 400 was around $120 when I checked the hobby shop the other day. I'll need at least another servo, and probably a speed controller as well. Maybe another $60-70 dollars.

Anyway, I've done 27 flights on the Electrafun. I'd this number to be 50 before I take on the Tiger Moth - maybe I'll let myself buy it and start building it at the 40 flights mark.