All of the accessories used in the review are available from Extreme Flight.
The recommended Torque
motor and Airboss ESC are
installed.
with an Airboss 80-amp ESC. The
recommended propeller is a 16 x 7, and
a Xoar 16 x 7 electric propeller was
provided. I used the suggested Hitec HS-
7245MH servos (six are required) with
Extreme Flight 1.25-inch aluminum
servo arms. Extreme Flight also carries
spinners and servo extensions.
I used my Futaba 14SG transmitter
with a Futaba R617FS receiver. The
Turbo Duster features full-range flaps,
which means that the flaps can travel all
the way up, as well as down. This opens
up a wide range of mixing possibilities,
which I’ll get into later. (You will need at
least a seven-channel radio and receiver
to have all of the control surfaces on
their own channels.)
Assembly begins with the control
horns for the control surfaces. The
control horns are fiberglass and need
to be glued into the control surfaces.
Luckily, the control surfaces are already
slotted for the control horns, so this is
quick work. I roughed up the area of
the control horn that sits in the control
surface slot with some sandpaper,
checked the fit, and then used
30-minute epoxy to glue the horns into
place.
I started with the wing halves and
waited for the epoxy to cure. When the
horns were in place, I dry-fitted the
ailerons and flaps to the wing halves
using the CA hinges. I found it helpful
to fold the CA hinges in half so that
I didn’t accidentally push the hinges
all the way into the wing. I spent a
good deal of time making sure that the
aileron and flaps on each wing half had
full range of motion without binding.
Although it is a tight fit, I was able to
accomplish my goal with a little care.
A few drops of CA on the hinges
secured the control surfaces, and I
carefully wiped away any excess glue
with a paper towel soaked in denatured
alcohol. I attached 12-inch and 6-inch
servo extensions to the aileron and flap
servos respectively—using heat-shrink
tubing over the connectors so that they
didn’t accidentally come undone—and
installed the servos in the wing halves.
At this point, I put the wing halves back
into the bag and set them aside.
The next thing I needed to do was
to get the fuselage on its gear. The
landing gear is a single-piece carbon-fiber assembly that bolts to the bottom
of the fuselage with three bolts. All of
the hardware is located in the labeled
bag and I made sure to use a little
threadlocker on each bolt.
The kit includes axles and lightweight
wheels, which I also installed. I glued the
rudder in place using the same method
that I used for the ailerons and flaps, and
installed the tail wheel. It needed a slight
tweak to get it to operate correctly, but
it is easy to bend the tail wheel’s tiller
arm to make it work. After the fuselage
was upright on its wheels, I glued in the
rudder control horn the same way that I
did with the other control surfaces.
The trickiest part of assembly was
the elevator and horizontal stabilizer.
The elevator needs to be flipped upside
down and face backward before sliding
it into the slot in the fuselage. It is a
tight fit, and I didn’t want to damage the
elevator by trying to jam it in. I took a
little time and tested the fit, and I used
sandpaper to smooth out the slot where
I met resistance.
I was eventually able to slide
everything into place without dinging
any of the surfaces. When the surfaces
Photos by the author
