John Sohm

My Feedback: (9)

Two kits: #1 Dynaflite 40 size Fun Scale P-40. Trust me, there was nothing fun about it. In fact, it was such a PITA that it's been in various stages of construction for well over 15 years. I work on it, get aggravated and then leave it to collect dust until I forget the frustrations and then work to have a relapse. #2 was the Top Flite Red Box A6M Zero. Should have just sold it before I started it. I read the review in RC Reports (boy I miss that magazine) and couldn't believe it, but it was spot on. In fact, they mentioned the fact that no where in the instruction manual do they mention adding the fuel tank. So if you followed the instructions as directed, you would have a great hangar queen because it would have no fuel to use. Besides that, wood was super hard. Finally gave it to a friend who had built one previously and crashed it because it was weigh too heavy (intentionally misspelled). Thing weighed in at something like 14 pounds after the lead he needed to add to balance. Flew about as good as a brick.

foodstick

Live2fish I built that Tomcat for a guy ! I never saw a plane with so much sub assemblies and doublers in the fuse in my LIFE ! three side by side boxes to build the fuse.. each box was about 15 big pieces of wood. I will say one thing though. That thing turned out beautiful.. I wish I had it now..

What happened to it? I will tell you the guy I built it for test flew it with a 72 MHZ receiver he crashed in another plane the week before ! first flight, straight in it went ...

jimbrock2

Don't remember the make, but it was a rubber powered Catalina. Cardboard formers and keel. A real lawn dart. Of course, that was during WWII and balsa was nearly unobtainable. I did find a source...from recovered ship hatches that were balsa inside to make them float. Then you had to cut them to size with a saw. And a ration card to get gasoline for my Ohlsson 23. I could buy a gallon a month! LePages glue...I could go on and on. We really have it good nowadays.

Ron Stahl

My Feedback: (12)

I have built lots of planes over my 45 years as a modeler. I've had lots of great kits and lots of crap. The absolute worst was a Mick Reeves Hawker Hurricane kit. The worst and I mean the worst wood ever and terrible plans and plastic parts. It was one of only three planes I stopped building and gave it away to a person who wanted a hanger plane. The best kits I have ever had are the ones from BVM models, Bruce Tharpe, and Yellow Aircraft.

WhiteRook

My Feedback: (38)

i had the same problem with the dyna mustang i built , heavy and wouldnt balance , its well over 10 pounds and
i havent flown it. its not designed right .i built a top flight red box p-51B MUSTANG and it also was a lousy kit, i dont know
why some people want big bucks for these old red box kits.

Chad Veich

My Feedback: (60)

For the same reason they want big bucks for Royal/Marutaka kits, nostalgia. While the Royal kits may have been marginally better in quality I don't recall them being particularly well thought of when they were readily available. Most folks thought they were an over priced and over weight box of balsa blocks! Now that they are no longer in production they command three and four times their retail price or more!

GallopingGhostler

Seems best option for bad quality kits and plans with disconnects is to buy a retro laser cut kit from a reputable laser cutter. It may cost a touch more but spares the aggravations one used to go through with poor fit and poor wood. However, the saving grace of the kits of the 1960's and 1970's were the very low costs of purchase. A seasoned builder could then use any truly bad parts as templates for duplicates from good balsa. Rest of the wood was more or less usable.

I just noticed my 1960's Midwest 33" span profile CL P-40 Warhawk has a warped 3/8" fuselage. Warp is at least 3/8" of an inch. I could probably wet it and try unwarp it, but may re-warp over time. I'm better off making a whole new fuselage. Besides, the old was cut from several pieces so it could fit in the box. It would be more robust as a solid single piece.

C'est la vie.

radfordc

My Feedback: (14)

I owned three Kwik Built's...2 Mustangs, and the Super Chipmunk. All of mine flew very well...maybe a little heavy for the wing area, but nothing serious. The only problem with the design was keeping the plastic shells stuck to the tape on the fuselage. I glued the shells together along the seams with a thin strip of ABS as a doubler and it helped a lot.

I tried to buy a Mustang kit recently, but the guy wanted way too much for it. I had one of my most spectacular crashes with a KB Mustang. Full power dive and pull out low over the runway. Just as the plane reached "crowd center" the left aileron fluttered and ripped off the wing. The plane cartwheeled in the air and was blasted into a million pieces when it hit the ground.

jeffEE

My Feedback: (5)

My Bun Nosen giant trainer from A&A Industries. I sure am glad they don't make 'em like that any more.

joebahl

My Feedback: (2)

Yep and i sold off my stash of collecting those kits for 40 years for big bucks 2 years ago . lol Pays off to be to lazy or busy in my case to build them.lmao joe

52larry52

My Feedback: (1)

jeffEE, It's funny that you put the Nosen Giant Trainer on the your worst kit list. For some perverted reason that kit always intrigued me. I guess I have been "lucky" by not having had the winning bid for that kit on Ebay. I am aware of it being a "builder's kit", and its less than stellar flight success rate, but for some reason I wanted to give it a try, I just didn't see why, if well powered and balanced, it wouldn't be a good flyer. Too small an engine seem to be the downfall of most attempts with that plane. It looks enough like a stand off Cessna 172 that I was willing to give it my best building attempt but I guess I wasn't willing to pay enough money (low non winning bids) out knowing it was a crap shoot flying it. For the right price I would still be a sucker on one!

buzzard bait

This is a pretty useful thread. A lot of us, me included, pick up kits online or at swap meets. Some of them are good and no regrets, but sometimes the stuff we dreamed about as kids really wasn't what the advertising made it sound like! Some of those kits made beautiful models if you got them built, but often it might be less frustrating, and cheaper, to just get the plans and build from scratch. Jim

joebahl

My Feedback: (2)

Those kits back then were all desighned around strength and most were not paying attention to weight . As a builder back then you tried to loose weight and most all those kits and if you could do it without anything folding up you had a nicer plane .lol joe

Truckracer

My Feedback: (19)

While I understood the need for strength, many old kits neither added strength, saved weight or materials by using their "lets glue 10 small pieces together to make one piece" design philosophy.

I've built quite a few planes from old plans for the basic design while using more modern construction methods. I'm sure I improved strength while using less material.

joebahl

My Feedback: (2)

Your correct on all of that ! I tell every one to build a plane from this mans plans and learn how to build light. Check out the size ,weights and wingloadings . joe http://www.ivansplans.com/

GallopingGhostler

Actually more likely than not, a part of kit engineering was to figure out how to pack the plane in the tightest box possible. This is why one ended up splicing longerons, flat fuselage sides were made out of several pieces with splice braces added as needed, etc. Also, kit engineering included how to get the most pieces packed in a sheet of wood. Less waste reduced wood costs. Plans were printed with sufficient information to build the model, but didn't always show all details in scale. This was to reduce printing costs. Some 50 - 80 years ago, kits were so competitive and they sold by the thousands each year. Being able to eliminate a buck off a kit ensured another sale.

Balsa was cheap enough, that one always had stock on hand, useful for making up parts that were inferior due to wood blemishes. It was just one of the things one learned to do.

Since people overall are no longer into crafts, we don't see the volume and don't see kits in grocery, drug stores, department stores, and etc. Times have changed. What is excellent is cottage support overall.

vertical grimmace

My Feedback: (1)

It has been my experience that by todays standards almost all of the older kits were not really very good. My time period goes back to the late 70's early 80's. It would seem the advent of Carl Goldberg models was a game changer. Then later, at least with radio control (the serious CL guys were always concerned with weight), with the advent of IMAC competition, and the desire to 3D fly, the aircraft started to get lighter. These lighter structures require better machining and engineering. Something that we really enjoy today, that did not exist before.

Rubbernecker

My Feedback: (22)

Ace GLH with the balsa wing. Ribs were so badly die crunched, made a set with a laser. These are so much better.

John

GallopingGhostler

AFAIK, it was a known fact 40 or 50 years ago that kits were overall good sport planes, but if one wanted something that flew better replaced the kit wood with contest grade balsa and ply. Emphasis was affordability, and affordable they were. To an adolescent, this was important. Most modellers then as even now were sport fliers. Not all are or were into cutting edge competition, and thus these kits met a need. Those ultra competitive designed and built their own, or bought plans of known performers and scratch built their own.

One flier would have a picture perfect finished airplane. Another looked homely except to the builder, full of pride and joy to see something that might appear sorry to some, but in their own eyes could say, "I made it with my own hands."

Even radios weren't as refined as they are today, we have come a long way from a controlled free flight aircraft with heavy radios to ultra light, powerful and smooth operating radio systems with added features.

Some of that heaviness in aircraft were so they could take some rough field handling. Nearly all modellers knew how to repair their plane, because they built it. We didn't see people salvaging parts off an aircraft and trash canning the rest after a crash like the ARF's of today.

karasr

My Feedback: (1)

Any kit from today is SOOOOOOOOOO much better than those old Berkely kits. I remember building a Sterling kit. The instructions (on the plans) were
#1 build wing
#2 build fuse
#3 build tail
I'm not kidding!
Bob K

Tony Iannucelli

My Feedback: (193)

Great kits, all Airtronics, all Pilot, all Bridi, and all Jensen. Worst, for different reasons, Heritage, Sig, and the kits from the 70s and 80s that had glass fuselages and balsa covered foam wings.

GallopingGhostler

Berkeley? Tell me about it! Here's the 1970 Sterling Kit Price List.

yel914

I recently chose to build a Cub kit from my stash. The choice was between a Sig 1/6 Cub and a Carl Goldberg Anniversary Cub. One look at the Goldberg kit and I immediately sold it off. That was some of the worst die crunching I've ever seen. I just couldn't see myself remaking all of the parts. The Sig Cub is turning out nicely but it really needs an updated manual.
I have a Sig Kwik Built P-51 still in process. I've read good things about flight characteristics but bad things about the build. I used the plastic fuse shells as molds to make a fiber glass fuselage, which I'm hoping will ease the building problems on this bird.
Best kit I've run across is the BTE Venture. This Bruce Tharpe kit was so beautiful in parts form, it was almost a shame to build it. It has made all other kits look pretty second rate. Although a recently acquired Marutaka P-61 kit looks pretty darn good! Building it may be a different story though.
Rick

JeffH

My Feedback: (43)

Worst was a Midwest Stearman. NOTHING fit on that kit. The stringers looked like a snake after you put them in place since the notches were all off. A week of trimming and shimming had them fixed. The cabanes didn't fit. Had to bend new ones to get rid of the 4 degrees of positive incidence in the top wing.Best kit....Bruce Tharpe Super Flying King. Without a doubt the best wood kit you can buy. precision cut and sanded plywood, fantastic balsa!!

LarsL

I'd love to build a Bruce Tharpe Venture but right now it is not available. I guess he is waiting until there is some demand before he makes some kits as he has a "notify me by e-mail when kits are available" on his website. I put myself on the list. How about more of you contact him so that we get enough for him to make some kits. That will make us happy building and flying them and it will make him some money so he will be happy too.

Lars