I purchased this Guillows kit in the hope of encouraging my son (age 9) to use this kit to improve his hand and knife blade skills. When I opened the box I found the balsa sheets for the fuselage formers were thin and very soft and the 1/16” square balsa sticks were fragile. I knew that this would cause issues in building the airframe. I told my son that due to the weak balsa we would try to build a different kit together to save him from some frustration and I would build the kit myself. During construction the fuselage formers broke a couple times, first when cutting them out of the sheets and later when building the fuselage. I had to reinforce the formers to keep them from crushing or warping when gluing the fuselage (fuselage formers have stiffeners glued to them per instructions). The 1/16” sticks broke with very little pressure applied to them. The biggest issue with this kit is the horizontal stabilator. The weak 1/16” sticks make up the bulk of this structure; the H-stab warped when gluing on the tissue. I rebuilt H-stab by gluing reinforcement sticks to keep it flat. Also I noticed the instructions are not marked where the center of gravity should be to balance the plane for flying. I contacted Guillows about the CG issue and got a fast response from them. The CG is located at the front spar which is the upper 1/16” stick on the wings. The Chipmunk Kit is recommended for ages 10 and up and could be built by a 10 year old with supervision. The kit is easy to build even with the issues I had and I recommend this kit to anyone 10 and older. Hopefully the balsa supplied in your kit will be of a better quality.

I'm an experienced model aircraft builder, and while the construction is mostly straight forward, the softness of the wood and the poor quality of the die cutting make for challenges. The construction of the horizontal stab is VERY weak, I will likely be replacing it at some point. My biggest peeve is that the CG is not marked or referenced Anywhere on the plans! Only the most critical dimension on a free flight model! Also I would strongly recommend installing the main landing gear Before covering, not after. A tiny pinhole to feed the tissue over the wire is much easier to deal with than the tears likely to result from trying to feed a bent wire over the main spar after covering.

Center of gravity needs to be marked on plan and Guillows needs to include vacuum formed spinner like with other kits in this series. Otherwise, a great design and nice looking aircraft.