After opening the boxes, and a close inspection I have this to say:
For this amount of money spend, I like it!

There is a thick carton partition along the length of the box, dividing the top & bottom, the bottom part contains the fuse and
the bits & pieces, and the three wing panels are in the top compartment. All parts are in seperate plastic bags and
individually taped to the box. You'd have a hard time shaking the box, and loosening any part!

The Monokote covering is not without a wrinkle here and there, but I suspect a touch with my covering iron will take
care of that. In any case, it's much better then I would've done! I expected the rudder to be solid balsa, and had
already planned on taking the covering of and making lightening holes. No need! The rudder is build up as well.

The fuse seems pretty good as well. Holding it up against a powerfull light I could not detect any change in the thickness.
The front part has a light-ply frame (what seems like) hot glued in place. Contrary to what is written in the manual,
the opening in the tail for the elevator servo has a fiberglass cover that you tape in place. All wing hold-down holes are pre-drilled.
The only blemish I could found on the fuse was on the tail part where the fuse extends down to protect the rudder during
hard landings. Here the gelcoat seems a bit messy. No matter, I was going to epoxy a strip of carbon here anyway.

And last, but not least, I measured the nose and was very pleased to find I can easily fit my AXI2820/10 with
Turbo Spinner in there.

I am not going to talk you through the entire build, as many of the things to do are basic ARF assembly. But anything out
of the ordinary I will write about.

The outer wing pannels connect to the center with a dihedral brace consisting of two pieces of ply and two pieces of aluminium, epoxied
together. Knowing my extraordinairy ability to spread a multitude of different glues anywhere around the house (it sticks
to my fingers; glue does, realy!) I strayed slightly from the manual. I glued the ply parts first together with alyphatic
glue (after trial fitting) and let that dry under pressure. Then I epoxied the aluminium parts to the ply. Each part seperately,
so I wouldn't have two sides of epoxy slathered ply to deal with. And all that with regular changing of latex gloves.

Then I made the spoiler blades.
Two pieces of 1.5mm balsa, 30cm long and 4 cm wide. These are for 2 sets (two birds, two sets. Duuh!). I'll cut them in half later.

So they follow the curve of the ribs they will cure on top of the d-box.

Carbon Fibre re-enforcement material.

CF cut to size. Each spoiler will have about 2cm cf at each end.

A closeup of the cf.

I "painted" thinned 30 minute epoxy on the balsa, laid some cf on, dabbed a bit of the same thinned epoxy on,
wiped with kitchen tissue to remove excess.

Greaseproof paper on and under the spoiler blade, buttered side down, in position on the D-box.

Curing for the night, thinking happy thoughts. There are some MAN magazines there as well...

Ready for cutting in half, and sanding down to size.

And cut in half, ready to be sanded to fit the spoiler bays I'm about to make...

Despite my serious efforts not to, it appears I have been too generous slopping epoxy about with the dehidral braces.
So after some energetic sanding with my PermaGrit sanding block (I am nothing without my PermaGrit. Best investment ever!)
and dissapearing in a cloud of wood and aluminium dust while holding my breath, lots & lots of trial fitting, I got the braces
to fit, and epoxied them in place. I also epoxied the anti-rotation pin in place.

Eli, this is your wing:

Back to the spoilers...
If you look carefully, you can see the lines I drew where the covering has to be cut away.

First peek inside.

The main spar. Or at least, this side of it. Looks like light ply. There's probably balsa and more ply on the other side.
But to see that I'd have to open up the D-box.

Here's a bit of a nasty surprise. In all the pictures I've seen from other BoT spoiler installations, there were big
holes in the wingribs, to lead the servo wiring through. Look here; tiny holes! That's not good...

I glued in two false spars to close the rear of the spoiler box. The rear one is at capstrip level, to attach the
covering back on. The front one is below capstrip level, for the spoiler to rest on.

Once again, taking advice from Tony Oliver. And as usual, it turned out great.
How to enlarge the teeny tiny holes in the wingribs? First, insert a pushrod (=pianowire=musicwire) through
the small holes from the tip rib to the center.
This was very easy to do. Obviously, the holes were totally in line. A testament to a straight build.

Sharpen the end of a piece of copper tubing (long enough to reach the wing panel's center).

Mark where the tube hits the center of the panel (I used duct tape), and insert a piece of dowel, so the tube can be
inserted in an electric drill.

Insert the tube over the pushrod, so you stay centered, and slowly let the sharpened end work it's way through the
balsa. Care must be taken not to push through, or the balsa ribs will break. I pulled the copper tube out a few times
to re-sharpen the end.

15 Minutes later both sides were done.

I made the servo trays for one wing from light ply and some balsa.

It's all in the trial fitting...

I also inserted a piece of spring through the holes in the ribs to the middle of the center panel. That was easier
than I thought. I inserted the copper tube again, made a hole in the bottom of the wing's center, and pushed a piece
of string from the tip, through the tube to the middle. I fished the string out of the hole with a pair of tweezers.

Side tracked to the nose...

As there's this big chunk of iron in the nose I had to measure on the outside where to make the "cut". And then make the mark 5mm towards the nose.

After measuring and re-measuring and the apropriate blessings that accompany the circumcission ceremony ("Oh Lord, please don't
let me get it wrong, oh please don't let me get it wrong...") I cut with the dremmel disk. Piece of cake.

After some choice hits with the hammer...

Trial fitting the motor mount.

Done very little these past few weeks. Stress of work and back problems...

I did the wing hold-down plate. It sticks out a few mm from the TE. Somewhere I read a review where the same was
noted and the reviewer cut down the rear of the plate to fit the TE. So I did the same.
WRONG! Too late I noticed that the plate fits neatly on the fuse's wingbed. No harm done realy, but I should've
trial fit all the pieces before making changes...

The front dowels are to large for the pre-drilled holes in the fuse. So if already, I decided on a small mod
I found usefull on my Filip.
I cut two pieces of 6mm outside/5mm inside copper tubing (the dowels are 5mm), and sanded the dowels so they
would fit in the fuse's holes. An added bonus is the break area, where the dowel goes from 5 to 4mm. Any
sideways pressure on the dowel (as in a hard landing and a wing gets caught in the grass) and the dowel will snap.

Obviously, I had to enlarge the pre-drilled holes in the wing's LE

Ready for action! I just need to have a couple of spare dowels in my fieldbox, just in case.

I returned to the spoilers for a bit. I realy want to finish with the wings before continuing with the fuses.
I glued a Rare Earth magnet on the TE on the inside of each spoiler, and put a narrow strip of fiber tape over it,
for extra insurance. I then used white packing tape to cover the spoilerblades. The result isn't too
pleasing, so I may put either another layer of tape, or strip and recover with Oracover.

A closeup.

The servo arms are too short to open the spoilerblades far enough, so as a "poor men's solution" I attached
another servo arm with dental floss and CA.

It works!!!

And now for the High Tech part. You've seen me attaching a Rare Earth Magnet to the spoiler. Now something for
the magnet to stick to: a paperclip! Bend to fit the purpose.

Wing, assume the position...

A dab of epoxy.

Ready for action.

Back to one of the noses.
When wacking away at the iron blob, I may have been a bit over enthusiastic, or it's just a weak spot. I did notice
that some of the fiberglass cloth was not attached to the fuse's seam. Anyhow, a crack appeared on the fuse's bottom seam.
So out came my trusty Dremmel and I removed some of the gellcoat.

And a front view.

After removing a fair amount of gellcoat on either side of the crack, I also removed some of the fiberglass cloth
to flatten the nose's circumpherance. I then epoxied a piece of Carbon Fiber cloth in place.

Followed with a piece of fiberglass cloth.

Then it was just a case of sanding, applying polyfiller, sanding, applying more polyfiller, and then sanding with
increasingly fine sandpaper for a smooth finish.

As I've mentioned before, I didn't like the idea of a itsy bitsy tiny servo in the tail for that massive flying elevator.
I'm sure it'll do the job (as others are flying succesfully this way), but for my peace of mind I decided to move the servo
forward and have a decent sized GWS Park servo do the job. So a bellcrank was needed. I had one shop-bought from Dubro.
I just fit it on top of a piece of lite ply and a hardwood block. To make sure the wood wouldn't split or do any other
unwanted activities, I covered the wood with a 20/80% alcohol/epoxy mix.

And for the other BoT I fixed a homemade bellcrank. A 4 arm servo arm from an old, old servo with 2 arms cut off.
A wood screw and one of thos pesky little bushings. And a piece of liteply and hardwood ofcourse.

Assembled.

And epoxied inside the tail.

And now a minor rant...

How on earth can a well established, well known company, design a glider that is meant to be used for thermal hunting, and
produce it with an all WHITE wing bottom?
While aloft, it looks something like this:

and this pic was taken while relatively low! Imagine how all that white will dissapear against the sky when specked out!

end of rant...

So I dug up some blue Oracover (or was it ultracote?) and ironed on some blue stripes on the bottom of the center section,
and ofcourse my signature IAF rondels on the outer sections.
You know what the problem is with these 3 meter wings? They are so large that it is almost impossible to get a
nice picture of it! So I took several pictures and butchered them together with MSpaint.

Those little black dots just before the LE are wing protectors. I CA'd them in place there to protect the wing when
landing (hence the name. Duuh!), as the fuse will hit the ground first, followed by the lowest part of the wing,
which is where I put those plastic thing-a-ma-gings.

Turning into final now!
I've been shifting the various components around in the narrow fuse, while keeping in mind I must keep most
of the weight in front of the CG. But I think I got it sorted now.

I watersoaked a piece of 2mm balsa and the wrapped it around the fuse overnight. It fits nicely inside the fuse now,
so I can glue a piece of lit ply on top of it, as a forward battery tray.

Here you see the rudder servo and the Rx battery next to it. The Rx pack is stuck to the sidewall with heavy duty Velcro.

The ESC fits under the trays in front.

Here's a picture of the same, but with the 3S Lipo in place. The way the Lipo fits, it cannot move forward and hurt itself, or the motor.

And this the wingbed area. Here you see the elevator servo (with the pushrod using the tube initially meant for
the antenna), and the Rx just behind it.

As extra protection to the tail I epoxied a carbon fiber strip to the underside. This is where most "hits" will occur.

And a closeup. Notice the slight overhang? I decided not to cut it of, in the hope that it will flex slightly on impact.

As I will be using a seperate Rx battery, I wanted a switch for the Rx. I like this type of switch for three reasons.
One, you can charge the battery without taking the pack out of the plane. Two, to switch the Rx on you have to remove
the charging plug: there is no way you will launch with the Rx nor switched on because you can see the charging lead and
plug sticking out. Three, it looks cool...
I soldered the wiring on, and put some hot glue on to prevent "unfortunate" accidents.

"X" markes the spot. Yet another hole to be made in the fuse... (the vertical line is where, according to the manual, the CG is supposed to be)

Like this the Rx is switched on.

And now the Rx is switched off.

Turbo spinner and prop. I put some of my wife's nailpolish on the screws of the prop blades. Does the same job
as Locktite, is cheaper, and is easier to remove when/if necessary.

Some salon flying before CG balancing. I needed about 30grams of lead in the nose...

And three grains of lead on the right wing tip to balance laterally.

It's all in the details

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