June 17, 2015

Mibo 5.5 A-10 arrives in the shop

I just took delivery of the latest Mibo A-10 Generation 5.5 kit and wanted to share my buzz as I get it situated in the shop. My Gen. 4 is still going strong and is still one of my favorite "go to" jets for reliability and fun factor. The Gen. 4 was a pleasure to assemble years ago and I still consider it to be one of the best engineered kits ever produced.

This time around I decided to order the "extra work package", and man is it impressive to see the quality of pre-assembly that Mibo does at the factory.

The 5.5 has true fowler flaps. When I unwrapped the wings, the flaps literally slid down their track/slots via gravity with no binding whatsoever.

The opening canopy came pre-assembled, and all that's required is to install the servo with supplied rod and clevises. I couldn't resist and immediately hooked up the linkage to my servo just so I could observe the scale articulated motion up and down. This can be done in a matter of minutes.

The cinematic has been improved from Gen 4 and is true to scale.

The canopy fastens on the fuselage with two plywood tabs at the back and two countersink head sheet metal screws at the front.

Here is the elevator opening where one can see the beautiful full kevlar/ carbon sandwich construction. Two Allen head screws fasten it in position. The blind nuts are already in and holes are matching perfectly on the elevator.

The gun fairing came pre-installed and is a thing of beauty!

Control surfaces are pre-hinged and the only requirement is to slide the kevlar rod into place and enjoy the no-slop movement. The control horns are pre-mounted. Just open up the packaged metal hardware of ball links/ rods and hook things up. Again, I couldn't resist a little assembly, and installed my aileron servos.

The flap servo with its bracket and hardware.

The flap and aileron servos took a few minutes to fit.

Same thing with the elevators; push in the hinge kevlar rods, drop the servos in and hook up the hardware. This took me a few minutes.

The fins require some more work as the servos slide half into the narrow opening. The bracket gluing process is a bit more involving. The Ultimate Jets assembly manual covers that process properly.

The servo arm protrudes from the tiny slot below and is covered by the rudder fairing.

5.5 comes with pre-installed electric landing gear and brakes. Not one air tank required in the whole jet. I'm thrilled with the concept. All gear doors are scale hinged at the factory. Having done this myself with the previous generation kit, I can truly appreciate the factory work install of the doors.

Another great feature and thrill of unpacking was to see the "extra factory work" done on the engine pods. The assembly completely done right out of the box and ready to mount the turbines. This too I can appreciate from having done it myself with Gen. 4.

All the vents are pre-installed along with the two opening doors on the fuse. They did leave a little work for me in the scale details package of antennae, grills and probes. I will details these in due time. Generally speaking, the pieces are very well done.

The top hatch is also re-done at the factory; just pull back the hatch latch on you're in.

I'll have some more accessories delivered later and will be sure to share more of those details when they arrive.

Another great feature is the detail on the gear struts. No install required because it's already done for me; just paint them.

I can already see that this will be as much fun as when the Gen. 4 arrived years ago. Now to figure out which paint scheme I want to do. In the meantime I'll post pictures and comment as this gets screwed together.