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A600: Kit Contents

Kit Contents

Mine arrived promptly from England, carefully packed with everything intact. Upon reading the instructions, you will find you need to buy a few additional items, but not many:

Everything else is in the kit. Let's start with the mast, "Ramin" is some sort of wood from Malaysia that we don't have here in the USA. Your options would seem to be a 5/16" x 36" (birch or oak) dowel or some synthetic material. I was concerned about a dowel not being the right diameter or breaking, but it would probably have been OK. Only the last inch or so HAS to be 8mm in diameter (so you could sand it down). But I knew of a source of carbon 8mm spars from a kite supply store, Hang'em High. I've dealt with them before and their service is lightning fast. I bought their #CT3150 8mm x 60" carbon tube (pultruded). They sell other spar materials as well, such as fiberglass and specialty carbon products. The cost was $9.12 plus shipping of $6.75. When you cut it to length, be sure to wrap some tape at the place you're going to cut and use a fine tooth saw. It can get frazzled at the end if you're not careful.

The next item is "two part buoyancy foam", which is apparently a common item on the UK hobby scene but you won't find it in the USA under that name. Look for NorthEast Hobbies' "Liquid Foam" (available at Tower Hobbies for $12). Apparently the more readily available expanding foam that comes out of a spray can is too dense or expands too forcefully.

Now back to the kit. There are many small bags and loose parts in the box, but unlike most model airplane manufacturers there is actually some logic to the bagging. Each bag has a sub-assmbly in it, each loose part has it's companion bits taped to it. You can map the parts list in the construction manual to the bags in the kit. In fact you'll have to in order to make sense of it all. Here's my labelled diagram which you may find helpful:

Two hatches must be cut from the piece labelled "hatch material". The winch arm is rectangular hunk of ABS plastic that you're to cut to size as per the instructions. It has 2 small screws to attach it to the servo arms. The servo tray will also require considerable construction, for which there are no dimensions or plans, but there is a good photo of it.

The "Alternate Mast Topper" is just a hunk of styrofoam you can carve into a larger flotation ball to put on top of the mast instead of the ping-pong ball.

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