hsukaria

How about the Sig Aerokote? Is that a re-badge of another brand? Anything special about it?

huck1199

I have good luck with the Chinese film. I like the price of the checkerboard colors; plus bigger rolls for less money.

tony0707

hi just a couple of tips after using monocoat -ultracoat and towercoat films for 20 yearsdo read the directions for the covering you are usinguse a temperature guage so you know the heat range your iron is at exactly-apply the heat with the iron making circles-it pushes the air under the covering away -instead of getting caught under the film sand your balsa down to 600 - 1000 grit-( very important )- on balsa i use 100 grit then go right to 600 use a tach cloth and vacuum the surface to be covered600 grit allows the glue behind the film to spread out more easily on the wood surface make a pin hole in every open bay to prevent the material from saging in the sunallows for expansion and contraction of the air there-make a pin hole in every air bubble and iron the air out of the coveringuse some glue in spots that start to come up after some flyinguse clear dope on seams and the edges of your decals to prevent fuel from getting under them-overlap seams a little more than 1/4 inchdo your major wrinkle removal with a heat gun after you have ironed you covering down to all the solid wood surfacesto hot an iron - will cause very fast shrinking seems to be one of the bigger problems to having the material work correctly so avoid thatyou can get every wrinkle out of ultra coat if you tryangle the heat gun and heat the covering until the wrinkle disappears-TONY

redbiscuits

My Feedback: (6)

I have a whole roll of red monokote that won't stick to anything. (teflon red) lol

fix-n-fly

My Feedback: (1)

I have tried and used Monokote years ago and then switched to Ultracote. The reason for the switch to Ultracote at the time was because Ultracote will stick to lite ply and Monocote never would, unless you pre-treat the lite ply with something like Balsarite. Balsarite smells about as bad as butrate dope smells, so giving up using Monokote was a "no-brainer" to me. Aerokote? Yes I have a Sig Senior Kadet ARF that is covered in Aerokote and the only part I hate about the plane. If you touch it too hard or look at it sideways, the transparent will tear. Both the transparent and solid colors on the plane constantly need to be re-shrunk and require a lot of maintenance. I like Sig planes a lot but I only buy their kits because the ARFs are covered in this mess they call Aerokote.

Iflyglow

My Feedback: (79)

According to Bax @ GP, Monokote Never changed its formula's.

Iflyglow

My Feedback: (79)

Check out this locked thread. If you read it, you will see where Bax claims the formula was never changed.

http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_64..._1/key_/tm.htm

tarvma02

My Feedback: (3)

Top-Flite/Tower Hobbies needs to do the following:

1) Make an announcement that "Monokote is defective and we have decided to pull it off the market until it is fixed"
2) Send their chemists to the lab and fix the product
3) Send out a new memo that Monokote is fixed and offer $5 rolls of white Monokote to prove it
4) Offer a money back guarantee on the product

I don't think they'll do it. Let's face it, no one is building kits anymore. The primary market for Monokote is now ARF repairs and those few kit builders left. I firmly believe that the Top-Flite ARFs use a totally different version of Monokote than we use. Maybe it has lead in it, maybe it has pixie-dust; who knows. There's absolutely no way some Chinese kid would but up with the crap that Tower sells us. A possible theory is that Top-Flite changed Monokote to better allow for mass production LIKE sending wrinkled-***** "rough" covered ARF airframes through some sort of cremation furnace for final shrinkage.

Let's face it, it's really time to forget about Top-Flite Monokote just as we have forgotten about Carl Goldberg, Midwest, ACE RC, Lanier (not too sad about that one), Enya in the USA, Pilot Models, Royal, Pica, and IkonNWest that have long since gone out of business. I think we've been talking about this Monokote issue for years and it's obvious that nothing is going to be done to fix it!

I challenge someone that has a "junker" sort of plane to purchase 1 roll of 21st Century, 1 roll of Toughlon, 1 roll of Ultracote and 1 roll of Monokote white to see how they all compare.

Mike

Daddyo57

My Feedback: (15)

I have been reading all the threads lately about Monokote being more difficult in general to work with, In general I have to agree... I just recently re covered an older Little Stik in orange Monokote and found it much more difficult to work with than I remember! but it can be done, I also just finished building an Uproar 40 with a fair amout of white Monokote and it was as difficult as the orange, but not impossible. I did find that the the purple Monokote was great to work with (maybe an older roll?) and the black looks great but I had to heat it to the point of almost melting to get it to do what I wanted, in fact I did burn one hole[sm=red_smile.gif] I feel that the Monokote still looks pretty good but does seem a bit thinner maybe, it could be they are using a thinner coating now who knows? to me it smells pretty much the same as it has for the last 30 years that I have been using it. I have 3 rolls of the new Olive Drab flat and the Dove Gray flat getting ready to go on a Goldberg Cub... anyone have input on the flat Monokote? in general it seems I need to keep my Iron on the hot side (more heat than I remember using) and really throw the heat to it when using the heat gun, it still seems to stretch around corners just fine but I swear the little wrinkles are more pronounced and harder to get rid of now. I have used Ultracoat and it is easier to use for sure but a bit more expensive and my LHS doesnt carry it. I intend to do my next couple of airplanes with TowerCoat to see how it performs. I wont say that I will never use Monokote again but for the first time in 30 years of building, I am seriously considering other coatings to try so my hobby will be as fun as it has always been.

Michel

Hi Guys

Please , bare with me while I explane my story .

I work at a ski hill , and the snowmakers only use Bombardia snow mobils . They were complaining that the machines were burning light bulbs , and a lot of them . I got tiered of giveing them light bulbs and had to find out why . The first thing I check to spec was the rectifier , it checked out OK , but decided to change it anyway . The batch of recifiers came in and the problem was solved . Bombardia , NEVER admitted , that there was a problem . If they did , they would of had to change all of them for all the machines sold . Extremly costly .

Do you really think that the makers of MonoKote will admit , there,s a problem , remember , we,er only modelers .

If you don,t like it , don,t use it . It,s through forums like this that we are able to comunicate and diliver a message to each other

Getting upset in this hobby is an absolut No No , and not worth it

My 2 cents ( and today thats not much )

Michel

hsukaria

I plan on trying the cheap stuff from Hobby City if the shipping cost is not too high. If all the brands are trash, I will use the cheapest of all the trash. No sense in paying extra for a brand that doesn't control it's quality. It is just like everything else that American companies have done, send the manufacturing to China, but not check or control the production process to save even more money by not hiring enough people to manage the offshore production properly. I can see the attraction to foamies with factory paint. If it crashes, dump it and buy another.

Maybe we should move on to discussing and teaching ourselves how to do silk, dope, and paint.

MinnSpin

My Feedback: (40)

I'm with Dave. Having spent considerable time fixing from flights that ended with spectacular crashes, I can say first hand - ULTRACOTE.

Monokote - in a breath - sucks! Especially when you apply heat.

Iscratch built this 80" WS Aeroworks E300L Profile and covered it using 3 rolls of Ultracote - not scrapping one piece.

On an earlier full build, I wasted a whole roll of Monokote just trying to cover wing bays.

Ultracote. (note the period)

horace315

My Feedback: (15)

Ultracoat is a more workable covering, but I have found that certain colors tend to be different to apply for some reason. Monocoat is a good thick covering and it will stretch thin and tight. Ultracoat I can do compounds and curves a lot easier but i have had trouble with it where it joins to itself stretching and leaving glue lines, it comes off with thinner. I think they both are a good quality and I choose each by the job I am going to do.

sensei

I have it on good authority, the reason that Monokote is different is that EPA forced Top Flight to pull the last amount of lead from the formulation.
Many years ago they were forced to pull a portion of lead out and some of you old timers remember when Monokote took it's first change of more difficult application, but we ajusted.
Now it is all out and yes it is even more difficult to use but I for one am working towards ajustment, in fact, I just purchased 5 each 25' rolls to cover my latest build project, so I am in too deep to just back out now. Time will tell though...

Bob

Tony Hallo

I started using Monokote in 1985, was difficult then, still is. I think our airframes are much lighter today, this addes to the adhesion issues, you just can't pull and push like you use to. Case and point, turtle decks, use to be a big foam block with balsa skin, now-a-days same skin, much less foam interior. More use of lite ply on the exterior of models, sides were balsa, now lite ply. Monokote sucks right into the grain. I continue to use Monokote because the roll to roll match better than Ultra kote, I find the seams are more durable, I can buy 25' rolls, once shrunk it seems to stay. The paint doesn't match very good, I switched back to Monokote before Ultrakote offered matching paint so I can't speak to how the Ultrakote matches, the Monokote just plain sucks.
The planes that I covered with Ultrakote I was forever shrinking, ironing down loose fabric, sometimes taping together where the seams let go, and there was no matching paint.

Jim_Purcha

My Feedback: (8)

I covered a plane two years ago in blue, orange, white and yellow monokote, the first time in many years (25+). The yellow was transparent and you could see the balsa grain through the covering material.The white was morebetter.The orange was fine. Working on the wing I didn't thinkthe monokote heat shrinks like it used too. I remember if you had theheat a single spot for too long and you were liable tomelt through the covering, but it was taut. I had my iron turned almost to max and the stuff would barely shrink.

I have some a few rolls of ultrakote, but I haven't tried these out yet.

I have a dynaflite skeeter to cover in the next two weeks. The wing frame work is pretty light. If the new product doesn't shrink that much, the potential to twist the wing might be minimal.

Jim

planebuilder66

My Feedback: (8)

Well, I guess we don't have to worry about monokote crushing airframes[sm=omg_smile.gif], just the installer from frustration. The simple fact is we are the modeler, they are the supplier, even if we all stop buying monokote, they are still going to make it, why? Because every arf they make has it on the surface, most people that buy an arf are not going to worry about how transparent, thin or impossible it is to apply, it's already done for them. The most you'll hear from them is it won't shrink. If it weren't for the arfs they make, it would be a different story, if sale declined because the product suxs, then they would do something about it, if it was cost effective, but knowing hobbico, they would rather discontinue it than actually spend any extra money to make it better. Money talks and bull walks, so far they say were full of bull, because how come they sell 1000's of arfs and people don't complain. I seriously know that towerkote is better, don't know why, I swear it's made by the same company for topflite, but it's actually workable. Ultracote has gotten pretty good ratings, 21st century, I tried it once, and I can't comment, it was way too long ago to remember the outcome. I do know that solartex and worldtex are way better to use than 21st century fabric from personal trials and tribulations. But that's fabric type covering.

John Wells

My Feedback: (10)

Thanks Mike. I knew it changed but I didn't know why. I loved it and now I hate it. I use Ultracote almost exclusively except for graphics because monokote works better with the windex / squeegee technique.

If you look real close, Ultracote in now dang near as glossy as monokote. It's a shame for us that they changed it. I can't get monokote to shrink very well and that's a huge thing when covering. Let Hobbico go on acting like the king with no clothes. We know there's something wrong but they won't address it.

JW

tony0707

hi we share many experiences and opinions here regarding many supjectsand it is this great exchange of imformation that is- REALLY THE TRUE GEM of these threadswe are well informed on product quality changes on a daily basisconstantly educating us on the best direction to go in to accomplish a given taskNOW THATS HARD TO BEET NO MATTER WHAT THE SUBJECT MIGHT BE one of the true gifts of the internet-ROCK ON-TONY

DeferredDefect

I ordered two rolls of "Missle Red" to re-cover my old Kadet Senior. Unfortunatly, the two rolls were completely different - One was considerably darker than the other! I never plan on using it again. Some shrinks well, while others just don't.

Tissue anyone?

KitBuilder

Anyone try towerkote? It is cheap but do you get what you pay for in this case as well?

SPLIT S

I'm in the middle of covering my Extra 300S using Monokote and Ultracote. Reason being color availability, have a sport Air Force One scheme going on. Here's what I have found so far:

I'm using the Ultracote for the white and the darker blue. White because of the horrible experience I had with white Monokote a while back, the dark blue because it comes closest to the color I need. The white is going on like a dream. Extremely easy to iron down, very little tendency to wrinkle anywhere. Stretch and follow with the iron around 230 and it just doesn't have any bad habits. The real pleasant suprise is hitting it with the gun to shrink over the open bays. Takes no time at all and very little heat to get the job done. Not even a hint of a pucker. The gloss isn't too bad but is a bit less than my Monokote. In the car world we call it DOI - distinction of image - here the Monokote bests the Ultracote. It's ok but has a hazy appearance in comparison. I am wondering if I may have some sagging issues being that the Ultracote took so little heat to shrink, that is sitting in the sun at the field. We'll see. I haven't got to the dark blue yet so the jury is still out on that.

The light blue Monokote is used on every other bay on the bottom of the wing and center section. I have either got lucky or maybe they are starting to turn things around a bit. It takes a little more finess but I've had no real issues using it. Yes it takes more heat to get it to do what you want but I wasn't swearing at it either. Ironing it down wasn't that much different than the Ultracote, I use as low a heat setting as I can when ironing, especially over sheeted surfaces. The noticeable difference was in shrinking it. You have to chase the wrinkles around the bay trying to get it all shrunk evenly. That is one side will shrink up nice but leave puckers on the other side. Move over there and the residual heat loosens up what you just shrank. You can deal with it alright, just a bit more labor intensive. I do have to say that once it is tight I have rarely had to reshrink after a day at the field. Just never has been an issue for me. The overall appearance of the Monokote is better in my opinion - meaning gloss.

So here is what I've found so far:

Ultracote

Pros:
It's easy to apply. Very easy. Seams, sheeted surfaces, open bays. Low heat is all that is needed to iron and shrink. Very nice looking job with a bare minimum of "oh crap" moments.

Cons:
Cost. I guess you get what you pay for.
Short width roll. What's up with that? Maybe nit picky but I miss the few extra inches in width that Monokote supplies.
Gloss. Monokote beats it - hands down.
Color availabilty. They could rule the market if they would just offer more.
Chews through razor blades. Monokote cuts like butter, this stuff, well better have a box of blades cause you are going to need them.

Monokote

Pros:
Gloss. If you can get it to do what you want it's one spectacular looking covering job.
Stays where you put it. I have to say I have never had to go back and pull the iron out after a day, or months, or years at the field. Get it on right the first time and it stays put.
Colors. Enough said. Like I said if Ultracote comes out with a better selection Monokote is in biggggg trouble.
Scent. Sorry, I do like the smell of the stuff. Maybe weird but it takes me back to being a kid helping my brother cover his planes. Let me be young again. (work in a paint store, that may have something todo with it too....)

Cons:
Shrinking. Sorry, but it just isn't like it used to be. I don't claim to be a covering expert but I do nice work. Been doing it since the 70's. And it ain't what it used to be.
Inconsistency. Some works great. Old and new. But after spending what could be months building and sanding and sanding some more you shouldn't have to wonder if you are going to have to strip the covering off and sand some more.

I'll post some pictures after the job is finished. So far everything, Mono and Ultra, is going great. Don't mean to ramble on but sharing info is what RCU is all about. Maybe someone from TopFlite or the Ultracote people will take notice. We do notice these things. Pay attention manufacturers!!!! Get us what we want and the money will follow!!!!

Regards,
Dan

SeaJay

My Feedback: (6)

Hi, I just wanted to throw in my two cents worth..  I am just now really getting back into the hobby after a multi year absence, I had built two Planes back in the mid to late eighties, a Sig Kadet MKII, and an Airtronics Jetfire 40.  I had covered the kadet using Monokote, and had trouble with it laying down w/o wrinkles, but I chalked that up to inexperience with the Iron on coverings. However, about a year later, I built the Jetfire, and covered it with Coverites Black Baron Film, and after using that stuff, I had decided that was what I was going to use from then forward. It went around the rounded wingtips wrinkle free, stretched when needed, and Shrunk when needed..   I believe that I could lay it halfway around a baseball wrinkle free, if need be.  I will probably be finishing a model in the next few months, and I will try it again.. 

as far as strength..  I had a Rossi .40 mounted in the nose if that plane, and it went in straight down, at full throttle..  when I brought the "Remains" back, everyone at the field wanted to know what covering I used, because the wing had a very Pretty Plastic bag to carry all of the tiny parts home with.   It didn't shatter, held together, everything inside was destroyed, but the covering was nearly completely intact, and that did impress me a lot.

I don't know if it's as good today as it was then, But I will definitely try it again for its ease of use, and strength.

Craig.

Bax

My Feedback: (11)

Contrary to Mr. Motorman's comments, I never said MonoKote was unchanged. In the thread he linked to, I didn't see where I said that.

If anyone has difficulty with poor-performing MonoKote, they only need to send in the remains of the bad material for replacement or credit (if we can do that). We stand behind the product 100%.

When we read comments in Newsgroups such as this thread, we want to know specific color and date information. We would also appreciate a chance to make things right with consumers by getting bad material back so we can replace it with good material.

We offer 50 different colors. This means there are 50 different possible combinations and formulae being discussed. If one particular batch of one particular color has a problem, we desire to hear from customers on a direct basis so we can take care of them to the best of our ability.

As one of the Posts pointed out, Monokote is used every day on most of the ARF's that we sell. This means we have our own experience with many of the colors on a daily basis. On a number of occasions, we have had problems with a specific batch of covering. For example, we recall a batch where the clear film was inconsistent and did not shrink equally in both directions. It is supposed to shrink 10% both along the length of the roll and 10% across the roll.

We have recently had to reformulate some colors because of prior pigments no longer being available. In particular, this change involved the reformulation of several colors in an honest attempt to match colors, opacity, and all characteristics to old material. In the conversion process, we experienced some new issues.

Again, if anyone has problems, please return the material for exchange or credit. Do not throw material away and simply complain! If you do so, you have nobody to blame but yourself.

We apologize for any inconvenience to modelers and will stand behind our products, just as we always do. If anyone has a concern or is displeased with the covering on their model, they should contact Product Support- (217) 398-8970 - 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM Central Time M-F. You can also return to us any item you believe to be defective in parts and workmanship of the original manufacture. Here's how:

http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_1154095/tm.htm

Insanemoondoggie

Well Bax, thats good enough for me. It would be very interesting to see, how many do send it back . Question ? Who eats the postage ?