panther_v

hi jason, i have a few of purple hasegawa airliners too. i do recall both engine types are included. joe

i dealt with minicraft twice in the past. 1st time was a missing cockpit window on a fw-190. after the phone call, they promptly sent me a replacement free of charge. this happened around the time when the current operator took over from the torrance based owner. 2nd time was a deformed/broken cockpit window on a md-80. the lady over the phone told me they had been having problem with the factory in china and requested that i send in the damaged part. after receiving the replacement, i spent a first class postage stamp to send back the bad part. i'm sorry to hear about your experience.

hi, what i've done in the past is to test whether it needs weight or not. i use masking tape to tape up the major parts together - body, wings, horizontal stablizer, etc etc. then i put a pen/pencil on the table and sit the plane on top of the pencil. make sure the pencil is at where the main gears are. you should be able to tell whether head is up or down. if it is very close to balance, i'd add some weight just to be on the safer side. you might also want to consider other parts, like interior and cockpit tub... but for commercial planes, you probably only have engines and gears left