As If I Didn’t Have Enough to Do Already

The B-25 that I’ve been waiting on for months finally arrived today. It’s a new ARF kit from KMP in Canada, and it’s a Christmas present from my wife. I need to buy a couple of engines for it, so I guess that’ll be my anniversary present to her. 🙂

Here’s a shot of my son sitting next to the parts fresh out of the box. Since the plane’s an ARF (that’s short for Almost Ready to Fly, which is a cruel teaser designed to fool you into thinking the plane’s almost ready to fly), the fuselage and wing are mostly prebuilt. Still, I’ll probably spend 80 hours getting it ready to fly. Besides getting the hundreds of little pieces assembled and mounted just right, I’ll need to add engines and electronics. The manufacturer recommends a pair of .70-size 4-strokes, but I think I’ll go with a pair of Saito 100s because I’ve had good luck with that engine on other planes and this one feels like it’s going to need plenty of power. I haven’t figured out yet how many servos I need, but I’ll probably need several because the plane has split flaps (two flaps on each wing separated by an engine nacelle), twin rudders, and, of course, two engines. I’m also going to build in redundant power systems so that an in-flight electrical failure won’t be catastrophic.

The wingspan’s 85 inches. Weight won’t be known until the plane is finished, but I’d be surprised if it comes in under 15 pounds. Unlike most planes, which come without retracts, this one came with air-operated retracts. That will (hopefully) prevent me from having to modify the wing to install a set of generic retracts. One point of concern is that the manual looks to be only a few pages long. I have a feeling this thing will NOT be easy to put together.

My knees are already feeling weak at the thought of putting it in the air for the first time. And I thought my P-51 was scary to fly…