I think I can help here. I set up my NewAir AW-281E recently.

1. Plastic smell: Don’t rush it. First use Dawn dishwashing fluid to thoroughly clean it, then wipe it down with a mixture of baking soda and water. Let that dry overnight. It will take on a pasty white look. Wipe all of that out and let it dry. Then load it up with newspaper. Pack it in there. Let that go for a couple of days if you can. The carbon in the paper will absorb the smell. Do the baking soda thing again. I spent some time on this step since I wanted to be sure the smell was gone. Don’t put it in the sun to dry, that will warp the plastic – be patient.

2. The only hole you want to put in the unit is to widen the main drain hole in the back. This is a big step since it voids the warranty and you are doing some damage. It needs to be done, though, since you need to get some wires in there for active humidity if you are using that (Cigar Oasis) or for fans.

3. The drip pan is irrelevant. Since you should plug the hole in the back after you run the wires with tape or, as I recommend, with a glue gun, there is no way for water to drain anyway.

4. I used the wire trays with the unit until I was able to get my drawers built. They have wide spaces, so I took some string and closed up the spaces so my cigars wouldn’t fall through. Worked great and should work for an extended period until you can acquire the drawers.

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5. I personally think fans are required. The unit didn’t seem to hold even close to the same humidity from the bottom to the top until I installed mine. I took a piece of cedar and mounted two 80 mm computer fans to it. I need to dig out the specs on those, but I found them at my local computer store. The main worry I had about the fans was the power source. I bought the following power adapter and wired it in parallel to the two fans: “PowerLine 90367 PowerLine 1300 mAh Universal Power Adapter with USB”. I found it on Amazon. It works great. I used a timer to run it for 5 minutes every hour. The rH is very consistent now.

I hope this helps. I was new to all of this when I started too, but I was able to get some great advice from fellow BOTLs. Ask any other questions you might have. It was really a fun project for me.