Take Care:
Composite sandwich parts are extremely strong, but fragile
at the same time. Always keep in mind that these contest
airplanes are designed for minimum weight and maximum
strength in flight. Please take care of it, especially when it
is being transported, to make sure that none of the critical
parts and linkages are damaged. Always handle your air-
plane with great care, especially on the ground and during
transport, so you will have many hours of pleasure with it.
Tools and Adhesives
Tools etc:
This is a very quick and easy plane to build, not requiring special techniques or equipment, but
even the building of Composite-ARF aircraft requires some suitable tools. You will probably have
all these tools in your workshop anyway, but if not, they are available in all good hobby shops,
or hardware stores like "Home Depot" or similar.
1.
Sharp knife (X-Acto or similar)
2.
Allen key set
(metric)
2.5mm, 3mm and 4mm.
3. Sharp
scissors
4.
Pliers (various types)
5. Wrenches
(metric)
6.
Slotted and Phillips screwdrivers (various sizes)
7.
M3 tapping tool
(metric)
8.
Drills of various sizes
9.
Dremel tool (or Proxxon, or similar) with cutting discs, sanding tools and mills.
10. Sandpaper (various grits), and Permagrit sanding tools (high quality).
11.
Carpet, bubble wrap or soft cloth to cover your work bench (most important !)
12. Clear Car wax polish (for protecting painted areas close to glue joints).
13. Denaturised alcohol, or similar (for cleaning joints before gluing)
14.
An Incidence meter is helpful for engine thrustline alignment.
Adhesives:
Not all types of glues are suited to working with composite parts. Here is a selection of what we
normally use, and what we can truly recommend. Please don’t use low quality glues - you will
end up with an inferior quality plane, that is not so strong or safe.
1.
CA-Glue ‘Thin’ and ‘Thick’ types. We recommend ZAP, as this is a very high quality.
2.
5 minute-epoxy (highest quality seems to be Z-Poxy)
3.
30 minute epoxy (stressed joints must be glued with 30 min and NOT 5 min epoxy).
4.
Epoxy laminating resin (12 - 24 hr cure) with hardener.
5.
Milled glass fibre, for adding to slow epoxy for strong joints.
6.
Microballoons, for adding to slow epoxy for lightweight filling.
We take great care during production and Quality Control at the factory to ensure that all joints
are properly glued, but strongly recommend that you double-check these yourself and re-glue
any that might just have been missed. See ‘Pre-assembly Checks’ on page 3.
Composite-ARF Yak 55
(2.1m/83”)
6
