Hi !

I have just begun building the Guillow Aeronca Champion kit. It will be flown with RC and have a TinyBriteLights deluxe kit installed.

Motor and ESc are brushless from Hobby King. I'll use a Spektrum AR6100 receiver and 2 4grams servos from Hobby King. I intend to fly it in the gym this winter and it will be 3 channels (throttle, rudder and elevator).

Thanks for reading along and feel free to post comments and ideas.

Let's begin:
- I am building of a 2x4 fiber board so I can pin the wood parts. I'm using needles because they are smaller diameter than my T-pins and I don't want to split the small wood parts.

- This is NO laser cut kit. In fact, the diecutting is not to good and every part so far needed a run of an X-Acto blade. It requires patience and good eyes to free the parts but the design looks good.

- I am gluing parts with Well bond white glue and CA.

- I also trimmed and primed the cowl.

The joke around here is that die cut should be rebranded as die crushed. Those dies were nice and sharp back in my grampa's day but they have gotten a bit dull over the years.

I hav just started building a Herr engineering Champ but mine is going to be brushed and using a parkzone brick for control. How big is the guillows Champ? The herr one is 18" WS.

ooo, wonder if that cowl would fit the PZ Champ?

hey Helno ! Yep the dies are not that crisp...The Guillow champ is 24 ". Sure yours is gonna fly with the UM stuff from parkzone. I tough of using it for mine but I had a AR6100 lying around so I figure with the extra weight of it and the light kit might as well go brushless.

If the PZ champ is like the cub UM, I think it will be too large for the plane.

Added side keel then unpinned the half frame from the plan and added other side's formers and keel. Also added front BB former (dash ?). Alignment looks good. Most of the time was spent to remove the die cut parts and cleaning them. The wood is not crushed too much, but separation is not perfect and the die doesn't go all the way in the wood.

Tonight I added the stringers and the landing struts. Went quite well. Everything is still aligned. read in some posts in the scale forum (lots of articles on Guillows RC conversions) that you need to put a stringer on each side alternately. This prevent the tension to deform the fuse. I did just that and worked well.

After sanding it will look quite nice. Here are some pics:

I see they are still using Pine balsa. Ha Ha. Your build is coming along nicely.

Thanks Scott, although I have built a couple of kit before and know there are various density of balsa available, what is exactly "pine balsa" ?

I find their wood quite heavy for the plane, and the lack of sharpness in the die cutting makes the assembly less precise. With laser cutting the wood could be more light and the build would be easier. Although I am sure it will fly Ok with the 2S power system.

Tonight I installed the cabin's sides, remaining of stringers and made some end to the fuselage so the covering can be attached easily. I just added some wood between stringers where they touch the end of the fuselage.

All went well, everything is aligned except for the cabin sides where one is a little bit advanced on the fuselage. This shows where the top front piece "L" is glued. Will have to see how it affects the wing installation and make some correction. All in all it is fairly easy to built but I tought it would be easier. I guess the small size doesn't mean it is easier. Lots of fun for the price tough, and it will be different than all those foamies in the gym

Carguy, I was making a joke about the "Pine balsa" being as heavy and hard as hardwood. I have built many of the Guillows kits over the years and have always wished they would use lighter better quality balsa as I'm sure most folks would. Your champ is really looking good. Your doing a nice clean job. Do you have a max weight goal your shooting for? I have a small Herr Champ I want to convert using a PZ 3 channel brick.

I copy about the wood joke It is indeed overkill for the task.

I tried to find what AUW should be but I didn't find "standard" wieght figures for this RC conversion. I saw most were in the 3-4 oz weight ? I am trying to build as light as possible and I hope it will be able to sustain the rigor of flying in a small gym. The lite kit is not heavy (tinybritelights) and adds 2 grams (.07 ounce).

I will use balsarite and coverlite to cover the plane.

Tonight was wings and beer night , so didn't work much on the champ. I did manage to program the champ in the DX7, bind the receiver and install the servos. Weight with receiver is 26 grams so far, Can anyone give me some weight figures I should shoot for the completed model ?

HI Car Guy,

I built one of these years ago. I think my final AUW was some where in the 4oz range.

If you go to this thread and scroll down a little bit you'll see threads on this plane. Mine is in there it has more details. Also Konrad's has some good details for building.

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=827861

Henry

Thanks Henry for the weight figure.I should end between 4 and 5 oz, judging by what its weight now and what is left to build and install.

I saw after beginning this tread that there was lots of conversion tread about the Guillows kit in the scale forum. I don't think this one will add much. I looked at most and found the planes beautifull. But it will permit me to share my build and toughts about the kit. Also, I didn't see one yet with lights

Thanks for reading and sharing

Carguy