Bcolici

Tbm now has this as clearance. What the heck. Really!!

airborne2.4

I noticed the clearance sale too......looks like a great plane......what's the auw?

N83MC

This has been the price for a long time.

JoeMamma

Hi Guys.........count me in.

Mine arrived a couple of days ago. I got the black/red/white 69" version.

In my opinion, the supplied assembly manual (on a CD) was a waste of time to make. It's very vague with very little good info. I'm so used to the very good manuals from Hangar 9 or Great Planes. Because of the assembly manual, in my opinion, this plane was definitely not designed for a modeler new to the hobby.

After taking a close look, it's going to be needing a lot of improvement to make her airworthy as it appears it's designed for an experienced modeler.

The covering is very tight and the paint is almost flawless, but so far that's about all I see that's good about this model. Wow, talk about poor fit and finish on everything else !!

I especially disliked the 12 supplied ball links. They actually made me laugh out loud. The ball part of the link should fit snugly into its mating socket. The balls on all 12 of my links fit very sloppily and will be trashed as I would never trust them. On at least two of the ball links I was able to push the ball from its socket fairly easy. I'll get a set of snug fitting Dubro's as a replacement.

The two aluminum angles used as braces for the landing gear were both manufactured at about 87 degrees on mine. What ever happened to standard 90 degree angles on standard aluminum angles ?? Maybe in China 87 degrees is normal ? The six screws used to secure these aluminum angles to the sides of my fuselage are all loose. There is no way to tighten them up without additional unnecessary surgery. I temporarily placed the carbon fiber main landing gear to the plane and very slowly attempted to tighten up the gear to these poorly made aluminum angles........DAMM.......LOUD CRACK ! If these angle were properly manufactured at 90 degrees they would sit flat. Now I need to figure what cracked and repair it. These supplied angles will also be trashed and replaced with good ol' 90 degree replacements. Again, more unnecessary additional surgery. If you take a close look at one of the pictures at the TBM website, you can plainly see these angles were not made at 90 degrees, so I'm venturing to say they are probably all bad with all of the kits.

I'm beginning to think I should have purchased the Phoenix Sbach from Tower Hobbies instead.

This following (in blue) is a copy of the email I sent to Gene at TBM. I'm still waiting for a response.
The model came with a disc instead of an assembly manual. After I downloaded the disc, I noticed the manual was void of detail and also contained absolutely no specifications for weight, CG and control surface throws.

A very important consideration..........I always want to know if I’m within the designed weight spec. after finishing the model.

Can you help me out with:

1. The designed weight and the maximum weight ?

2. Designed CG specifications with +/- tolerances ? The designed CG is a very important spec. to me as I would hate to have my own CG calculation go wrong for the maiden flight.

3. Designed and recommended throws for ailerons, rudder and elevator ?

Thank You,

Joe M.

Oh well, It's building season here and I always enjoy a good challenge.

N83MC

Joe you have definitely hit some of the highlights. I used all different hardware including different flight control arms. I used double instead of single. Got them from Pilot. The wheels look nice but do not work very well. I added some structure and re glued every joint I could reach. I also had to reposition the wing tube center section because I couldn't get the right wing to fit. They recommend the DuBro isolated motor mount but that won't fit the bulkhead as is. For CG and flight control throws I used the numbers from Pilots 73 inch Sbach. Finger crossed. Also good luck trying to get info from TBM, I went back and forth will Bill who is dumb as a stump. He promised to send me some missing parts and still waiting. Terrible customer service in addition to complete lack of knowledge.

airborne2.4

Thanks for the info Joe!! I'm probably gonna go with the Skyline Sbach 342 from General Hobby or the Phoenix Model Sbach from Tower Hobbies.

Wish you guys all the best with TBM's 20cc Sbach....

Bcolici

Interesting,mine is the orange one. My aluminum angle for the landing gear are at 90 deg. And the gear installed with no problems. Now that you mention it my ball links have slop in them too and i will be replacing them as well. Thanks for bringing that up.
Wing tube and wings are fitted fine, i just needed to slightly sand the tube as it was a very tight fit.
Anti rotation pins on horizontal stabilizers needed some tweaking too.
This is definitely not for someone with no building experience.
I'm a newb to gas and this size plane though.
There's also the hv stuff that comes into play with power demand and amp draw that i will be using.
I kwew what i went into as far as tbm customer service which is why they only got my order for the plane.
I too sent them an email a while ago and still havent heard from anyone.
I liked the specs of the plane, so it is what it will be.
Hopefully it's worth it.

Bcolici

This should help out ,looks real similar.

rekit500

I've been following this thread, I bought one and have the same issues with the tight wing joiner, crappy wheels and hardware, 87 degree angle (which I shimmed before tightening the LG-thanks China), and no reply to my CG inquiry. But, I like the plane itself and got my wife to get another for me for Xmas-you know, just in case<G>. I'm getting close to doing the first flight, but would like to see someone else take the first hit, erh flight. I'm thinking tail-heavy, so I'm building heavy at the nose with some reinforcing and equipment placement. What have you guys run into CG-wise?

JoeMamma

First of all.........thank you TBM for the great service and all of the help with the specs. ???

I did some net searching and found 4 different CG specs. for 4 different SBACH 342's. They are all fairly close to our 342.

1. Phoenix SBACH 342, wingspan 65.5", CG 115mm (4.5").
2. Hangar 9 SBACH 342, wingspan 60", CG 121-133mm (4 3/4"- 5 1/4 ")
3. Aero Plus SBACH 342, wingspan 73", CG 121.7mm (4 3/4 ")
4. Pilot SBACH 342, wingspan 73", CG 145mm (5.7")

I'm still putzing with mine and won't have it done for a while, but I will be shooting for an initial CG of 4.5". I won't know for sure if this will be correct until I fly it and do a CG test.

Joe M.

rekit500

I havent done this yet but here a calculator. Might be some simpler ones.
http://adamone.rchomepage.com/cg_calc.htm

rekit500

I havent done this yet but here a calculator. Might be some simpler ones.
http://adamone.rchomepage.com/cg_calc.htm or
http://www.friendlyflyers.org/cg-calc.html

Bcolici

JoeMammi
You forgot the aeroplus i listed above 20 cc 68 inch ws.cg at 4 inches.Changed my mind,
Im going to use the factory hinges and ball links to see how they do.
Ball llinks have some play up and down but not the way the ball link is going to be working. Hinges once installed seem to be holding well.
I need to get the engine, Ibec,battery and prop to have her done.

JoeMamma

Thanks for the links.

Before I started flying ARF's, I used to build from wood kits, but the designed CG was always on the plans with a kit. With every ARF I have purchased the CG was always in the assembly manual. Again, thank you TBM ???

I have never done any scratch-building so I have never needed to figure out designed CG.

Joe M.

JoeMamma

Thanks, sorry I didn't add that one.

Joe M.

Bcolici

Check this out.
http://home.mindspring.com/~the-plum...%20Machine.htm

JoeMamma

Landing Gear:

As I had mentioned in an earlier post, the aluminum landing gear supports were in pretty poor shape; 87 degree (87 degree ??) extruded aluminum, crooked,
mis-drilled, loose screws and cockeyed.

To gain access to the heads of the 6 horizontally mounted landing gear support screws, I needed to cut out and remove small sections of the covering on both sides of the fuse (see picture). After removing both of the aluminum landing gear supports, I noticed big wads of glue on the backsides of both aluminum supports. This is telling me whoever assembled this plane was totally aware of the cockeyed 87 degree aluminum supports. They figured.........hey 87 degrees is close enough, so lets just use big wads of glue to fill in the gaps. Zero quality control in my opinion.

Went to Lowe’s and picked up a 3 foot section of 1/16” x 1” 90 degree (yes.......actual 90 degree) extruded aluminum angle to be used for the sides. To add some support between the sides, I also picked up a 3 foot section of 1/16” x 1 1/2” flat aluminum stock. This was used to tie the side supports together to make the gear mount stronger (see picture).

After cutting all of the aluminum, everything was checked for a good fit and then assembled using Allen-head bolts. The gear now fits very good with NO loose screws.

After doing these repairs, new black covering was applied to cover up my holes.

Speaking of covering, as I had mentioned in an earlier post, the original covering on mine was very good and tight. After it sat in my shop for a while the covering started to loosen up......normal for most ARF’s, so I grabbed my iron and heat gun. Have done this same ironing operation probably hundreds of times. Wow ! What cheap covering. Mine was melting at very low temp settings. Be extra careful if you are going to attempt to tighten up the covering. Keep the temps. low ! TBM could not tell me what brand of covering was used, so again thanks TBM.

Joe M.

Bcolici

Nice work!
I like the idea of the extra flat piece of aluminum you used to tie it up.
I hit the seams with the iron and didn't notice any melting on mine. Thanks for the heads up.

rekit500

I am using the hardware but changed out the canopy and cowl bolts to 6-32. Much easier to find a spare at the field. I got the motor mounted but had to file the hardwood blocks on top and bottom a little to fit. I'm dreading rigging choke linkage. On my Funtana I used a bell crank and came out the bottom but it took some valuable space up. Hope to come up with something better. On the angle iron bolts I accessed mine with some needle nose pliers and tightened them without removing film. My canopy was broken in the front when I got it and I reinforced that. Also the two dowels fell out as well as the canopy blind nut wood posts were loose. Oh well, at least I didn't have to monocote it. I'd rather take a beating than fool with that on a compound curve tail section.

Bcolici

Rekit
I was able to get to the bolts with my fingers for the alum. Angle if i had to tighten them up. I tried it after hearing about the issue.
I am going to be using a bellcrank for the choke rod too after seeing it done.
Im thinking of making it function and concealing it with a fuel dot somehow or i could use a free channel for a choke servo . Not sure if i want to go the latter route.

JoeMamma

Actually there is a second piece of 1 1/2 " flat aluminum located directly under top piece. You just can't see it in the picture. I needed to install it as a gap filler piece between my top aluminum piece and the wood frame.

Joe M.

Bcolici

This is going to be my first with a pull pull setup on rudder. I'm thinking of using spyder wyre fishing line instead of the cable supplied, although I'm not sure what lb. Test to use or if it's actually necessary.
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

Bcolici

Thanks Joe

JoeMamma

On mine the two dowels also pulled out very easily. Both of those canopy blind nut posts on mine were also very fragile. A slight pull was all it took to pull them from the canopy. Wow......what great quality ! Good thing these loose parts were caught as I probably would have lost the canopy on the first flight.
Seems like every time I work on this model I find even more poor quality issues.

I've built and flown a lot of RC aircraft in the past 40 years. About 15 years ago I purchased an 80" T6-A Texan from VQ Models. I have always looked at and remembered the quality on that particular plane as being absolutely the worst I had ever seen. In my opinion it was the benchmark for "absolutely zero quality control". This particular TBM model is getting close to being the same !

All ARF's have some quality issues, but c'mon, almost everything I have touched on this particular plane needs rebuilding or repairing.

Last night I was looking at the engine box and noted the pieces of triangle stock used for support. One of these pieces had a fairly large air gap so I grabbed a small screwdriver and gave it a pry. One slight tug and off came the triangle stock. Great glue quality ! I'll be reinforcing all of the engine box joints.

Joe M.

rekit500

I haven't used a drop of CA yet just epoxy, fiberglass and some 1/32 ply I had laying around. I put the ply on the inside above the alum. running front to back. The FG at the front edge of the canopy. I'm going to box in all the open area where the prop blast is gonna inflate the poor thing. I guess it would look cool tho with all the covering blowing off mid flite...