BrightStar

The BrightStar comes in the standard ARF condition, wing-halves to be joined, tail to be attached, engine and gear to be added.

It looked good out of the box, unfortunately covered in that nasty sticky-backed vinyl crap that so many ARF's these days are covered in... I don't know why the manufacturers continue to use this stuff -- it must hurt their sales to have this junk on the aircraft. Or is there a class of R/C pilot who buys, flies, and if it breaks just throws it away without attempting to repair?

I used 90-minute epoxy to join the two wing panels and the join covered with a strip of white tape for cosmetic reasons. The aileron servo is an HS-300 fitted to a centrally located pocket and controling the strip-ailerons via torque-rods..

I cut away the covering as directed to reveal a ready-made slot for the stab. Plenty of epoxy and the stab was in place. The control horn was attached with two screws, and a pushrod connected.

Similarly to the stab, I cut away the vinyl covering to reveal a ready-made slot for the fin. After the fin is glued into it's slot, the rudder control horn is screwed into place and the push-rod is attached

Note exit hole for Rx antenna, added before assempbly began.

Main gear is of a standard torsion-bar design held in place with plastic straps, and with ABS booties for looks. The booties looked good, but didn't last long before they started to work loose and give trouble. They were removed later.

Standard tricycle nose-gear with a shock-absorbing coil and steering via a pushrod off the rudder servo. Again, attractive ABS booty was originally fitted but as it deteriorated it became problematic and was eventually removed.

Up at the pointy end of this aircraft is the Thunder Tiger Pro .46 engine which has always worked well for me with the 11x6 prop. Nominally 1.43 horsepower and 17,000 RPM it's more than gutsy enough for this airframe.

Servos fitted in the bay neatly, and I used an internal switch with a wire push-rod raher than mount the switch directly on the side of the fuse. The receiver selected for this model (not shown) is anxi FMA X5. Battery-pack is homemade.

Ready to fly, and looking good!

The BrightStar is a relatively clean-looking low-wing trainer, and in this photograph looks anxious to get into the air!

The one thing about this vinyl covering that this photograph doesn't show is the dents and sags that can be picked up during handling on the bench. With a regular heat-shrink covering you would pull these out with a heat-gun or iron when you were finished. But I'm afraid to apply heat to the vinyl in case I end up with a molten puddle where my covering used to be!

She looks as good in the air as she does up close!

Manageable and docile on low-rates, she is capable of respectable manoevers with the rates on high. Alas, the fin and rudder are a bit small for knife-edged flight, but it loops and rolls well enough and holds an invert quite well, despite the flat-bottomed airfoil.

More time spent flying means less time photographing! I'll try to rectify that situation!

Doing touch'n'go's I had a little difficulty after a bouncy touch, powered up for the go... and flew into the bush! The firewall was knocked out and broken into four pieces and there was some dammage to the upper deck...

The left stab and elevator folded back on itself and broke like a bread-stick! I was really pissed because I was having a great afternoon up until that moment! Fortunately, I still had the stab and elevator from the old SkyVista which was the exact size!

On the face of it not a difficult repair job. But that nasty vinyl covering was the problem! It kept me from working on this model for months, and eventually I had to strip the entire fuse.

Eventually, I removed all the vinyl, cut out the broken stab, and glued in the new stab and elevator. Then I recovered the entire tail and fuse with red and white EconoKote and stuck on a few stickers.

And here it is, all repaired and recovered. After stripping off the vinyl covering from the entire fuse, I was then able to re-cover the whole thing in red and white EconoKote. Note the original vinyl covering on the wing. I'll get around to re-covering this part of the airframe another day!