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Assembly of the Hangar 9 Cap

      I will attempt to give an accurate chronology of my cap 232, from assembling the airframe, to engine and radio selection, all the way through its first flights. I will try to give my true and unbiased impressions, as well as address any problems I encounter along the way. This should be fun!
October 10, 2001
     Received my brand new Hangar 9 1/4 scale CAP 232 in the mail today. BIG BOX! I ordered the all white one. That means more fun as I try to figure out how to customize it. I am leaning towards a color scheme much like theTower voyager pictured above, with metallic plum where the red is, and neon green where the blue is. That would really stand out! But I digress. The plane came packaged well and everything looks good. I will read over the manual the rest of this week and, wife permitting, begin construction this weekend.
November 11, 2001
     Wow, time flies when you're NOT having fun. Fininshing the basement has left me with no time to do fun stuff. A month has flown by and I have not even started my new plane. But I have had time to consider engine selection and a color scheme. I am 90% sure I will be hanging a ZDZ 40 gas engine on the front of this baby. That should really scream. The other 10% of me is leaning towards a large glow motor like a ST2300 or Moki 1.35. That part of me is losing ground to the gassy side quickly. As my wife will tell you, my gassy side wins out most of the time. I have also decided on a simpler trim scheme. This is an arf, and the whole point of an arf is to avoid lengthy building processes. I am working on a re-kitting of my trainer into a low wing, and will try the trim scheme out on it first to see if I like it, but alas, that is another project.

April 28, 2002
     I have done nothing to the cap. But I have changed my mind about the engine again. As soon as I get my tax refund, I'm gonna get an OS 1.60 FX for this baby. I have decided to keep this thing as light as possible, at the expense of high fuel costs. The reason I've been such a slacker with the cap is that I, well, I'm a slacker. No, really, I decided to build my first kit built airplane over the winter. I got a Goldberg Tiger 2 kit, and just completed it a few days ago. Maiden voyage was yesterday. She flies SWEET!!! I tried the trim scheme out on it, looks good. Click here to read about the Tiger 2.

September 12, 2002
     Now I really have been a slacker!! I received a brand new already built Tower "Extra Special" profile fun fly plane in a trade. It turned out to be a royal piece of shit. The plane was a great flyer, it just happened to be built by a drunken monkey with two left hands, no thumbs, and one eye. I had to re-cover the entire airframe, and the vertical stab fell off in my hands when I tore the old (poorly done) covering off. The horizontal stabs didn't look much better, but there was not much I could do for them (Hint: fore shadowing). I put an OS 46 fx with an APC 11x5 prop on the front. The first two flights went really well. These little profiles are a real blast to flip around in the sky. By the third flight I was beginning to expand the envelope a little. I switched to ludicrous high rates, and was doing some rolling circles in the middle of the field. It looked like I hit a white pigeon, but it turns out the white flash I saw leaving the rear of the plane was the right half of the hor. stab. It did some really cool but yet unnamed aerobatic manuevers, then headed right for terra firma. I was able to pull back on the throttle, and then watched as I drilled a 46 size hole in the ground.

September 18, 2002

     I have finally done something!!!! I had to go with the wallet, and not the heart on engine selection. I bought a used Super Tigre 2300 from a club member for 100 bucks. That's significantly cheaper that $500 for a ZDZ or even $250 for an OS 1.60 FX. I know, I know, that Super Toilet will eventually drink those savings all gone, but the point is, I can finally get this baby in the air!!!! I have a fellow flier who is using all standard servos in his cap, and it has a gasser on the front, so I think my Hitec HS 605s will be fine for this girl. I have a futaba S9201 coreless for the rudder, so I think I am finally set!!!! This is truly turning out to be a budget project. Maybe I can even get a 1/4 scale aerobat in the air for under $500?! Let me see...

$199 Hangar 9 cap232 1/4 scale
$100 ST2300 engine blue light special
$25 What I paid for the S9201 coreless
$25 Each for 3 Hitec HS605s, 2 for ail, 1 for ele
$100 receiver, battery, switch covering etc...
If my math is correct, that comes to $500. OK, so the 605s are 29.00 each, so I missed it by that much....

November 30, 2002
    I have accomplished quite a bit, considering the small amount of "spare time" I have been able to devote to it.  But I am getting ahead of myself.  The Cap232 project suffered a little bit of a setback, in the form of a balsa and ultracote hungry canine.  Yes, my beloved buttmonkey dog Jade got in the garage and chewed up the elevators and the vert stab/rudder.  So a great deal of my ARF assembling time went into rebuilding and buiding new parts for my already assembled plane.  Jade came real close to getting a new address that day!  As you can see, I have gone a little hogwild with the trim scheme too.  I had to re-cover the trutle deck (thanks Jade), so I did it in metallic plum monokote instead of white, and I decided to do the wing in a more elaborate scheme too, since I already had the iron out....  Joining the wing was pretty uneventful.  Even though the manual says it is unneccessary, I decided to glass the wing anyway.  One real pain in the ass was trying to fish the aileron extensions through the wing.  Hey Hangar 9, put a little piece of string in there when you build it!!!  When it came time to join the wing to the fuse, I passed on the little 1/8" ply plates that the dowels go into, and built my own, much beefier 1/4" laminated ply plate (one big one instead of two little ones).  I believe this brings us up to date on the plane for now.