RickR

Recently purchased the Stinson SR-9. The model was packaged well, no broken or missing parts. I was impressed with the quality of the manufactured components. It had the highest quality covering I have ever seen on an ARF; I didn't have to near it with an iron to tighten anything. However there were some serious flaws. It seems as if the design of the model had changed in some areas from the time the instructions were printed. The first problem came when I tried to bond the horizontal stabilizer on. The configuration of the model as received would require the stabilizer to be inserted into a slot in the fuselage lengthwise instead of coming in from the rear. This would have resulted in a poor bond joint. I decided to cut the rear spar of the vertical stabilizer and slide the horizontal stabilizer in from the rear. Looking at the printed instructions the picture that they showed was assembled exactly the same way. Either they changed the configuration of the vertical stabilizer by putting a contiguous rear spar in or they forgot to mention in the instructions that the rear spar needed to be cut. I spliced the rear spar back together with epoxy and popsicle sticks after and painted them red. I found that Model Master "Guard Red" #2718 to be a virtually perfect match for the covering so the painted areas are almost invisible. The next problem came with assembling the wheels, axles and wheel pants together. The hardware supplied was different than that showed in the instruction pictures and impossible to assemble. I had to fabricate new axles that were more similar to those shown in the pictures. Next were the wing and stabilizer struts. I thought that this would be a simple job. Wrong! For the wing struts, they attach to some nice aluminum fittings coming out of the fuselage. The only problem is that they exit the fuselage horizontally where they need to be bent upward and towards the rear. I was concerned about breaking the fuselage while bending them because there is not enough room to support the fitting while bending it but fortunately the aluminum is soft enough to easily bend. Just install the strut on the wing first so you can see the compound angle that needs to be bent. The rear struts seem to need to have wood screws going into the stabilizer and fuselage at an angle, which would have resulted in a really ugly installation. I fabricated some aluminum sheet metal fittings that I could put bent tabs which could be attached to the strut. Be careful gluing the hinges on the door. Once I glued the hinges the door will only open about a third of the way. Not sure if there is a fix for this. The hinge point needs to be on the outside of the door, not mid thickness. In either case its not a big deal. I was not pleased that the bent aluminum landing gear was made in two pieces. I prefer it to be one piece, contiguous across the middle; a much stronger configuration in case of a hard landing. My maiden flight resulted in a hard landing after I lost power about 15 feet up. I was able to lower the nose to keep it fro stalling but did not have enough airspeed to pull it out at the bottom so it "pancaked" in. This resulted in the two piece landing gear ripping out the plywood to which they are attached. It is easily repaired but I think the damage would have been much less if the landing gear was made in one piece. I will splice them together with another piece of aluminum during the repair process. This was not possible during the initial build because they slide in through slots on each side.

I haven't really found out why I lost power yet. It is electric with a Suppo motor, Gecko ESC and Lemon 7 channel receiver. I have had good results with both Suppo and Lemon but I am new to the Gecko ESC. Once back together I will have to de-bug to find the root cause. In any case it was not Phoenix's issue, its something in the power system I installed.

The bottom line is; would I buy another Phoenix ARF? The answer is yes based on the quality of the rest of the 85% of the model. Would I buy another Phoenix Stinson? Again the answer is yes because it is a beautiful airplane and mostly well executed. Just don't think that you put this together in an evening or two.