Radical Departure
Posts: 455
Score: 104
Joined: 7/19/2003
Last Login: 5/22/2013
From: Fayetteville,
AR, USA
Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: sl5406
.....Are there ARF flyers who are satisfied with the sturdyness, longevity, and confidence in the ARF products they buy? It would be interesting to see how many flyers are content with their purchase, quality of airframe, and flight performance of ARFs. Perhaps it is just a few importers who sell inferior ARFs.
I've built a lot of balsa/ply ARF's, (pick a vendor, I've likely built one of their planes), and if there's one thing I've learned, is that sturdiness, longevity and confidence are directly proprtional to the amount of time and work needed to get it flight ready. Simpler ones I might have done in an evening if the product is well built. (i.e. a 3DH 47" Extra), with larger ones it can take me as long as 3-4 months, depending on how many things have to be fixed or brought up to my standard of assembly. Deal is, some ARF's may look super cool, but once you have it on the bench and see the internals, may not be as 'cool' as you thought, or as easy to get-together as would have liked. In my experience close to 80% of the one's I've assembled needed a bit of reworking in one area or another. And some planes are just plain crap, and no amount of working will get them to assemble or fly worth a dang.
Foam can be fun. Easy to work with, easy to repair, just need to make sure that glues and paints will properly mate with the type of foam thats being used.
And neither is a high price necessarily an indicator of quality! Pretty much all ARF vendors cut a corner or two somewhere. The glue and covering may be great, but the includes are a load of crap. To the discerning ARF assembler, its rare to find a plane where cost = expected quality and everything is exactly like it should be. Lots of good ARF's out there, no particular vendor has a corner on the market of 'the best'.. Sometimes a good vendor gets a few lemons out the door, and some sell nothing but. Have also seen more than my share of planes that looked like crap and flew like crap because the owner tossed in some gear, shook and up, and called it ready. Especially with 1/4 scale and up, if it was assembled in an evening, it'll typically look like it was assembled in an evening. Mismatched gear, old gear, wrong gear, poor layout, modifications that compromise design, holes through firewall or such that look like they were hacked out with a small chainsaw, so much CA on an area thats its crusted white, on and on. Some assemblers are their own worst enemy. To end.. just about any ARF thats well assembled, properly stored and taken care of, should give at least a couple hundred flights before you need to 'annual' it and give a look over the joints and so forth to make sure all is staying solid.
I'm also a new builder, and while I'll still dabble in an ARF or two.. I see building as my primary means of adding to the hanger.
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Radical Departure..
..from controlled flight
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All Forums >> RC Airplanes >> Crash & Rebuild >> RE: No more ARF's for me 
RE: No more ARF's for me - 
In any case, SIG took care of me. In fact, to my surprise it is on the truck for delivery, TODAY! It shipped last night. Like you said, if it fails in flight, and I built it, my bad. When I wrecked my Kadet on a landing when the wind caught the wing and flipped it because I came in too slow, my bad. When a wing comes off 200' in the air because of lack of glue on a plane I didn't build, well, not my bad, and that irked me. I lost trust in these that someone else built. I do have an extra 52 four stroke laying around, and I just might grab a 4*40 arf, but I will strip the covering off and make damned sure everything that should be glued has glue. 
