Wots Wot foamie

My FunCub (second) is now at the stage of circles and figure 8's only, so in anticipation of the arrival of a friend early in 2026 I decided to buy one of these.
 
It arrived the day before I had to go to Pretoria to repair a roof so has sat here waiting for me to get back.

They fly like a very draggy Acro-Wot 

Thank you for those few kind words Eric!
 
The Ripmax legend had been blanked out.
 
All very nicely protected
 
 
 
All excellent quality pressings/extrusions
Washing of hands is very necessary before starting a build session!

Sadly not available in this country Tony.
Anyway I started by fitting the tail plane and immediately ran into a problem. The keeper for the push/pull rod was binding on the horn
 
A little work with a file sorted that.
Next up was I had lots of up elevator and relatively little down.
 
The inner Bowden tube had been left overly long, once shortened I had plenty of movement.

At this stage I decided to do the decorations to minimise hanger rash which is bound to occur when done at a later stage.
 
There's no glueing at all, it all just screws together with instructions in both English and German, the fit and finish is excellent. At this point I fitted a receiver and found the servos perfectly zeroed. I also added a small piece of tubing as belt and braces to the elevator keeper.
 
Probably not necessary, just piece of mind.

The last part of the fuselage build is the tail wheel.
 
So much better than the Funcub which is glued in and detaches every time you ground loop.
Last is the undercarriage
 
It's not obvious which way round it should go so I opted for the wheels as far forward as possible.
That completed the fuselage section and so on to the wings,
 
2 servos, 1 plug! and how short is that cable, definitely not fit for purpose, without differential on the 4 (yes read it, four) ailerons the adverse yaw must be huge! I cut off the starboard servo wires and crimped on a new plug. (Port ailerons always go to channel 1, Starboard to channel 5 or 6)
We're now ready to mount the wings

Wings on and everything connected

The upper ailerons are connected via 2mm push/pull rods.
At this point I did a power test, 200watts on a storage charge 3S battery, at 2.42lbs that just over 80watts/lb, hmm, hardly electrifying!
Did I have to say that?

The supplied propeller is a 12x6.
At this point I decided to have a good look at the front end, maybe go up to 4S?
 
Access is easy, you take the nose cowl off (2 screws) and everything is right there
 
Quite a lot of side thrust
 
That looks like up thrust to me, I've measured carefully, assuming that the cowl is square to the thrust line the motor mount is exactly square.
The motor carrier is a very nicely pressed piece of steel plate, 2mm thick
Moving the motor forward or back (more likely) should be easy

The eagle eyed may have noticed that the spinner is 4mm forward of the cowl, I've decided to leave it at the moment, the fix is to move the motor back (easy) or cut the shaft. She balances 95mm back from the centre point of the upper wing, the rearward balance point. For the maiden I may put a lump of lead in the spinner.

The air gap is for motor cooling!
If you need lead, don't put it in the spinner, unless it is perfectly balanced in rotation, that will stress the motor bearings!
If I recall, the metal motor mount is screwed to a small ply plate which is glued to the foam. Any oscillating mass on the bearing will quickly weaken the foam to the point where the motor goes it's separate way.

 

Probably not Jon, I was going to 3D print some in TPU

I have a number of 'in spinner' weights, machined by myself, each turned in one setting.
However, as Jon pointed out, the wheels might be a bit small so I'm going to change them for those from a long since crashed Focker Eindekker