Kelly

Kelly 1300 by Gebhart Specifications: 52 inch wingspan / 29 inch length / 295sq. inch wingarea / 14.5 ounce weight / 7.25 ounce wingloading.Gebhart

Controls: Rudder, elevator and motor speed.

Equipment: 1 Cirrus CS-20BB on the elevator and 1 Cirrus CS-20BB on rudder. Great Planes Electrifly C-10 ESC/wBEC. Hitec 555 receiver, 7.2v speed 280 motor, direct drive 4x3.5 Graupner folding propeller. Eight 650ma NMHI cells.

Construction materials: Fiberglass fuselage with balsa built up wing, rudder and elevator.

Comments: I waited nine weeks for my Kelly to arrive. But it was worth the wait. There is about 12 hours of construction time. I built mine in two days. The plane comes in a really small box. Plus what's neat is it still fits in this tiny box when your done. The kit has a nice full drawing with a well written instruction manual with lots of pictures. Everything fits very nicely and this really is a nice ARF you will be proud to own and show off. And how did it fly. Great! At half throttle it flew out of my hand. I balanced right on the main spar and it seemed a bit tail heavy but a little down trim took care of that. I didn't build in enough down thrust and my Kelly pitches nose up under full power. I didn't do any stall tests yet but control is very responsive both rudder and elevator. My kelly weighs 14.5 ounces but will fly at 1/4 throttle. You really could fly all day with this one. My watt meter showed 43 watts at 7.3 amps under full power.

Construction Notes:Wait to glue in the rudder until everything else is done. This way if you still need to add tail weight it is easy to fit into the vertical fin. So assemble everyting ready to fly and then check the balance. If you need tail weight you have a place to hide it. With the equipment arrangement I used I did not need any tail weight. See photos. Also as with many european kits the hardware is not english standard so I always change mine hardware. I put a 4-40 screw and nut on the elevator. I've broken the plastic bolts that come with these european kits and now I can't find anything to replace it with. The kit comes with 2 seperate wing alignment pins. I cut a much longer single peice of brass rod to replace these with. This way I could line up the wing and push the alignment pin in from the opposite side of the fuselage. Also I ended up with one wing a bit heavier than the other so check the wing balance.