K'nex CL-215

Been working on this one for some time. Not my favorite plane that I've built, but definitely has some notable characteristics, such as retractable landing gear and light yet sturdy struts. It's also very durable; my cats attack it and such but it stays in one piece. It's very rear-heavy, but there isn't much I could do about that.

This one requires a decent number of pieces. Nothing special though.

Rods:

• Green: 277
• White: 150
• Blue: 59
• Yellow: 16
• Red: 4
• Gray: 26

Connectors:

• Purple: 21
• Light Gray: 22
• Orange: 42
• Red: 59
• Green: 48
• Yellow: 63
• White: 32
• Blue Slider: 27
• Gray Slider: 87

Misc.

• Ball Joint: 5
• Ball Socket: 2
• Y-clip: 22
• Blue Spacer: 26
• Gray Spacer: 32
• Silver clip: 15
• Black Cap: 4
• small black wheel: 2
• Gray Wheel with Tire: 2

Some of these images may be disorienting or difficult to see, so I apologize. Follow closely along with the images and try to put things on exactly how they are shown. the two halves need to be mirrored, so everything you do in one step must be the opposite in the step to build the second half. Then all seven blue rods should be used to hold the two halves together. That means you will have to put one on the center yellow connectors.

Once the model is together, you can add the wheels.

To make the rear landing gear drop and retract, slide the blue rods with the red connectors out, and move the wheel down or up to the desired position. Once it is in that position, you can slide the blue rod into one of the holes to lock it. When the gear is up, you use the rod connected to the white connector to lock it, when they're down, you use the red one. It might be a little more difficult to get them to lock into the down position. Just fiddle with it until the rod slides into place.

This part can be a little tricky. But build the model as shown and add it to the body when needed. In the last image, you'll see that the yellow connectors and rod are gone. You keep those on, I just took them off to adjust them a little.

The yellow rod and red connector key are used to lock the front landing gear. It isn't super strong, but it hardly ever has too much pressure on it due to the tail weight. You can connect it to either side of the body, so long it goes in the upper forward slot of the gray connector on the bottom of the nose.

I started getting lazy with the pictures here. Just look closely at the tail to build it. It isn't too difficult.

Once the tail is build, you can add it to the top of the tail support.

I was very lazy here, and just desperate to finish the instructions. The wings and engines aren't too complicated. Just follow the template and mirror it to both sides. For the struts, add four white rods to each wing where they're shown and add the connectors to them. On the top, they need to both go toward the back of the wing so that you can connect them with a blue rod. On the bottom, they both go in different directions. they are both held together with the struts made from the orange connectors and yellow and blue rods. On the bottom on the back, they will have to curve a little to fit around the body.

Once the wings are added, you can build the little canoes by following the images. then add them to the outer wing as shown.