Kit Report
ModelTech Dragon Lady 40 ARC
By Bob McDougall--From Aug. '98 Leading Edge Newletter

Our building subject this month is the ModelTech Dragon Lady 40 ARC. Now, you may ask: why bother to do a builder’s report on an ARC? Simply because they’re popular, and although not as much work, they still require certain building techniques and should be subject to the same quality criteria as a full kit.

The Dragon Lady 40 is a low-wing, taildragger, sport model that’s vaguely reminiscent of the 1930’s era, particularly the Ryan ST and similar planes. It’s a scaled-down version of the original Dragon lady, which requires at least a .60 to get off the ground and is a bit older.

The Dragon Lady 40 kit consists of pre-built foam core wings, already sheeted with balsa and with the wingtip structures already in place. The fuselage is conventional and is about 80% complete out of the box. Tail surfaces are sheet balsa, also nearly complete. The workmanship in these components was really quite good... no gaps or poorly joined parts, and the wing and fuselage were true and straight. The wood selection for each component was also very good... straight, light grain wood. The turtledeck is a shaped foam block with balsa stringers glued to the surface.

Most of the work involved in completing this model is straightforward, but I still would not recommend it for the novice builder.. simply because of the poor quality instructions and photos, and the discrepancies between the manual and the actual hardware supplied. The hardware is also of marginal quality, typical of most of the ARCs I’ve built. The kit, however, does include a rather well-made fiberglass cowling.

The most glaring problem deals with the landing gear and the supplied plastic wheel pants. The instructions indicate that the wheel pants will be held in place by simply placing a (supplied) wheel collar against the inside of the pant, up against the base of the aluminum landing gear. However, the axles supplied with the kit are poorly made and there is no flat surface for the pant to press up against. Next problem: the wheels are poor quality; out of round, heavy, and with poorly fitted plastic bushings and off-center hubs. Aha.. simply replace the wheels, right? WRONG! All the landing gear hardware is metric, so the existing wheels won’t fit standard axles, and neither will the supplied wheel collars(which, by the way, use phillips head screws instead of setscrews). The only true solution is to replace wheels, axles, collars, and then provide a more secure means of keeping the wheel pants from pivoting on the axles. OH, and by the way: the kit indicates that the aluminum landing gear should be bolted to the fuselage with sheet metal screws, but the parts package provided machine screws and nuts... if you use them, you’ll have to remove the fuel tank to remove or reinstall the landing gear. I threw ‘em away and tapped the fuse bottom plate for 1/4-20 nylon bolts instead.

The supplied fuel tank is somewhat crude, and the rods and clevises are also metric. The hinges supplied appear to be plastic with fixed hinge pins.

The kit includes no 3-views or drawings whatsoever, and this fact, along with some fuzzy photos, never-referred-to parts and a ‘things you’ll need" list that doesn’t match the kit, require that you’ve had enough building experience to know what to do when the instructions and photos are wrong.

For example, the instructions indicate that the throttle cable is provided, but it was not. Also, 6 rods and clevises are required(and supposedly provided), but only 4 are included in the parts package.

Although I didn’t build this plane for myself, I have previously seen one fly, and it’s really a well-performing sport ship. It’s really too bad that the high-quality woodwork and great design are negated by the lousy hardware and marginal instructions. If you’re an experienced builder, though, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend the Dragon Lady 40, provided you’re willing to cough up a bit extra for replacement hardware.

PS to all members: Every time I build a plane for somebody else in the club, I expect the buildee to follow up with a Newsletter report on how it flies!