LargeScale88

So I opened up a great planes kit today, and I went through all the die cut pieces, and the manual said it was lite ply, but it looks and feels NOTHING like the lite ply I get from BUSA or national balsa. Is this is cheap or fake lite ply great planes uses to get the price down or keep the price the same but a break on their part?

Jason

Live Wire

I was going to say scrap balsa left over from ARF's. Made into pulp ,rolled and laminated to make ply, That is why a lot of light ply has no grain. Well it sounds good , that is how a lot of the wood is made today
Larry K

Gray Beard

My Feedback: (-1)

The thought went through my mind too. I haven't seen a new GP kit in a long time. Last one I had was an Up-Roar or Dazzler and they still had light ply, like three laminates. Not a clue what GP is using today but it doesn't sound good.

wickedpissa

My Feedback: (1)

Lite ply is a generic term,

LesUyeda

"It can mean
1. ply-balsa-ply
2. Ply-poplar-ply"

But those are all wood combinations, and wood sandpapers quite well. I tried to do some sandpapering with my dremel sanding drum on a GP ARF, and all it did was load up the disk with "something" that formed a skin on drum. It was removeable with a steel brush is use for welding clean up, but what a pain.

Les

raptureboy

Some kind of composite made with some kind of glue which we will find out is very toxic and contains lead after we have all been exposed. What else would you expect from China. My buddys dog almost died from the high end dog food he was feeding him because they put melamine in the ingredients. This is why we can get cheap light airplanesthere no real wood in them

Gray Beard

My Feedback: (-1)

Les, I thought you said KIT?? I have found a product in several ARFs that is some kind of cardboard??? It was mentioned a few years back in a thread by someone but I thought it was only found in the cheaper ARFs like the CMPs? I haven't seen an ARF sold by GP in some time. Most of the ones I assemble for people are from Nitro or CMP, same thing. Even they don't use the cardboard these days, or I just haven't run into it lately. Just run some thin CA over it and it hardens it like real wood. You know, that product you thought you were buying when you bought a ARF from Tower!

acerc

Jo-Anns fabric has some lite-ply that has what appear's to be foam in the center of two thin ply sheet's.

NO, I don't use it.

Gray Beard

My Feedback: (-1)

But it's a good thing to know when building electrics and old timers. I just happen to have an old timer going on the board next that will be an electric.

acerc

Why is that GB? You gonna use it.

Live Wire

That is the recycled out house ply with the paper backing used for firewalls

RCPAUL

My Feedback: (1)

I never wondered what the lite ply was in GP kits. I wanted to know how you could tell the ply from the balsa since they both felt and weighed the same!

Paul

Campgems

They built a house close to me a couple years back and the walls were like your Jo-Ann lit ply. a 3 1/2 inch slab of styrofoam sandwitched with the exterior partical board. Not a 2x4 to be seen save the cap that they needed to nail rafters to. Icouldn't believe it.

Not susprised at what you might find in a kit now.

Don

LesUyeda

"Les, I thought you said KIT??"

I don't see that anywhere in MY post!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But you can call anything that comes in several pieces a "kit" if the have to be assembled. Seems like me and the kids assembled/built several "kit cars" (full size) in the dim distant past, and my son't Long EZ came in "Kit" form. Some of the more difficult stuff prefabbed, and the rest "do it yourself".

Thinking about it some more, a brother-in-law of mine assembled his house, from prefab pieces, delivered to the site on a flatbed (or two).

Les

SunDevilPilot

I have always thought of some of their wood as more like Luan.

SunDevilPilot

acerc

Yea but did it come with a warning, "Not for airplane use". Jo Ann's does.

Rubbernecker

My Feedback: (22)

LOL. I'm in the process of building a PT 20 to teach my daughter to fly and I don't know how a 20 is going to fly it. Weighs a ton and all the ribs did feel like ply. As a matter of fact, lite ply would have weighed less.

John

KitBuilder

Some sort of cross grained laminated bendy stuff...

jrlingrel

Put a 25 or a 32 on it. Itaught my kids to fly with a PT20 with a 32, you can always pull the throttle back. Good flying airplane

John

ululi1970

My first plane was a PT20 that I built from a GP kit. I learned to fly on it. I used a Norvel .25 with a 9'' prop. Takes a bit of runway to take off, especially if the grass has not been mowed in
a while, but in the air it is fine, and very economical. I used ~ 1oz of glow fuel every 6 minutes of flight. I suggest oversizing the wheels if you fly off grass, and do not put anything
smaller than a .25. I have been using it recently to improve my skills (I think it is always a good thing to go back to a trainer once in a while), and I think a .35 may be better
once you get your wings. But is it a tough plane, I think you can almost walk on the wing. Perfect for those rough first landings...
Alberto

WhiteRook

My Feedback: (38)

it could be anything , but balsa is actually stronger than lite ply , especially the hard grade of balsa.

CellTech

Just bought a GP Christian Eagle. Not sure what the so called lite Ply is made of but there is not much of it. No doublers on the front end what so ever. I am almost afraid of mounting an engine because I am certain that the torque will break the nose off. Now for the Rant. The Monokote covering or whatever it is is the worst pile of garbage I have seen in my life. This airplane is more wrinkled than a old dried out Prune. I have used Monokote for decades and never seen anything as horrid as this. My Iron on max heat will not take out half the wrinkles. The covering literally does not shrink. Anyway, after burning holes and unable to make the model any way presentable it has been thrown into the attic. I am done with The conglomeration of Tower/Great Planes. They have destroyed the industry and are now nothing more than a middleman importer of Chinese garbage

Gray Beard

My Feedback: (-1)

Maybe?? I go into stores with building planes on my mind and if I think I can use something I will buy it and give it a try. The Dollar store is a treasure trove of RC parts!!!
I have a sheet of thick open cell foam I bought at a fabric store a couple years ago and it's where I get my Tee Pins. The foam you found could have a use to me?. Next build is the Saytr and it is going to be an electric so weight savings will be a must. It was designed in 1942 during the war so there is very little of that very hard to find product back then, Balsa Wood. It's stick construction but does have a couple of formers.

LargeScale88

Thats exactly what I've been afraid of, the engine vibration and airframe stress just basically destroying this cheap crap GP uses.

Its amazing how kit prices go up and quality goes rock bottom down, but I guess its like anything else anymore.

Thanks everyone!

Jason

waross

Let me shed a bit of light on the the subject. (Pun intended). I have my bachelors degree in forestry majoring in wood technology. When I was first out of school back in the 80's I worked for Plywood and Door Corporation as a salesman. They were at the time the largest importer of Finnish Birch Plywood and also imported various other plywoods from around the world. Most of the model (which includes R/C) airplane manufacturers were our clients. That was the fun part of the job as I flew R/C back then too. But that is a different story.

Finnish Birch Plywood is the really thin veneered plywood which is very high quality and comes as thin as 1/64" and even goes as thick as 1 1/2". It is what was used in Howard Hughes "Spruce Goose" to sheet the plane and has always been graded as aircraft quality. It is the think heavy plywood that is used for bulkheads and various other parts of the model that need that kind of strength. Other uses for thicker grade is cabinetry. If you have high end cabinetry you probably have drawers made from this plywood. And if you are old enough to remember having desks back in grade school, you may remember how the tops of the desks were made of some "layered" wood. That was Finnish Birch Plywood. This product is all a product of the Baltic region of Europe with most coming from Finland; hence the name Finnish Birch.

"Light Ply" is a plywood generally of three sheets of a lighter hardwood. The premium light plywood which someone said in here has no grain was a product of Europe as well and was made using Italian Poplar. It is much higher in strength that any balsa as it has three plys and is laid out cross ways to engineer more strength as is any plywood. Other "light ply" products which are generally darker in color are made using woods from all over the world. Luan is a name which is used alot but encompasses several different species. These products come from all over the world and depending on who is importing them and their reputation the quality can be from horrible to outstanding. The R/C companies are always looking for the best deal and may purchase a less expensive batch of plywood to find out it was what they really wanted. Sometimes the wood makes it into production and sometimes it does not.

Also as a tad bit of information Balsa wood almost entirely comes from South America with Ecuador being one the major exporters of Balsa. No grade of Balsa sheet product will be stronger than a plywood of the same thickness. That is the whole purpose and design behind plywood.

So if you are complaining that all these kits and arfs are made of imported materials then stop, because we (US) don't grow and pretty much can't grow trees which produce these less dense woods. Even our White Pine is much denser and our Poplar doesn't compare to the Baltic varieties.

Flame away.....