furnaceman

My Feedback: (14)

When you say trashed it what do you mean? If you want to give up on it and give it to me I'll take it from you. No plane deserves to die unless it is from the sky to ground. Let me build it and see if it will fly or deserve a proper burial I only live a bit south from you and can be there to pick it up anytime

multicasting

Where did you set your CG on the corsair 50?

Bob

thevirginian

First of all: Nitroplanes is just a distributor like many others. CMP supplies to World Models, Chief Aircraft, Giant Scale Planes and many other companies. I have seen quite a few CMP models fly and have to say this: They fly as good as you put them together. The ones I saw in the air flew just great. Yes, they are cheap, but cheap does not mean they are crap in general. I am ready to purchase a CMP war bird in the near future, because nobody else has a 70" something wingspan warbird for that price. Maybe I have to ditch the hardware, so be it. If the wings are built straight I know I will have a good flying plane.

LDM

My Feedback: (15)

Maybe its just me but because i am at a time in my life that building has to take a second page , I love CMP planes . 1)so what , you trash the hardware , I would not use hardware in about 80% of the arfs on the market . 2)Most airlerons screws are short , simple fix , resess the horn in the airleron , reinforce the compartment with flitskin of fiberglass , works everytime .
3)most new CMP warbirds are lighter then many other ARfs , that is why many of the warbirds dont have flaps .
If you buy a CMP you should be buying with the following understanding ,
you are getting a canvas /starting point on a semi large warbird that will need tweeks , but to build or purchase a lasor kit of equal size with a fiberglass fuse wll run in the area of $600 or more . MOst CMPs average around $199 to $299.
So add good hardware , some ply , some glass and you added $50 bucks , no biggie .
Now if you dont want to do any of these things then buy a VQ warbird , there great warbirds , smaller in size , and need very little tweeking but you will pay $199 and up for a 60" warbird vs 70 to 73 "

Larry S

My Feedback: (6)

Bob,
I don't want to give you the wrong CG by trying to remember where I put the CG. I flew the plane all day yesterday and have it on the charger to fly again later today if I can get all my paper work done. At that time I'll put it on the stand and edit this message with the correct CG
Larry

OK, just put it on the Great Planes Balancing Machine and this is what I have. I had the pads separated 15" and that put them just on the inside of the gulls. Balance point is exactly 3". The directions, if you want to call them directions, show the CG at 80 - 85 mm which is roughly 3 1/8 to 3 3/8. As you can see the balance point is close and it will fly if set at what the "directions" show, but be ready for a hand full, especially when landing. I first flew mine at these settings and it did fly. Set the CG at 3" and you'll be fine.

LuftwaffeOberst

It's at the County Dump/Furnace... pushing Daisy's as a Mulch I hope. It was cheap, now it got a cheap death. I'm sorry I ever bought a CMP and there is many out there who would agree.

Goldberg, Great Planes and Hanger 9 and Full Kits for me for now on... no more Cheap Chinese Flying Chopsticks. The only thing I have good to say about the Chinese is that they are very nice people, and have great food and culture. I wish they'e stop trying to sell us junk like CMP. JMEO.




Peter Dowling aka Luftwaffe Oberst
AMA District II # 56404
Aero Modelers Club
Pulaski, NY

Sturtz

My Feedback: (20)

LOL,,,,, where do you think the planes come from that you just mentioned ?

Broken

LuftwaffeOberst- As you know I have the very same FW190 from CMP. I will only say three things about it.

1 - It is a superb flying machine
2 - It looks great in the air and on the ground- Even with the fragile paint and funky covering. (I get many compliments) - very proud of that!
3 - The instructions are light but common sense and this forum more than make up for them.

I see several posts all over this forum about these CHEAP models and how they are crap etc... etc.. What's the deal? Why do some people have a huge meltdown when the ARF is not in some state of perfection. Why can the rest of us get along just fine with them? The Made in China tag line is always thrown for good measure as-well but its without merit. -IMO

I would guess that at least 80% of our ARF's are made in PRC or East Asia. The mouse your driving on your computer with as well as your keyboard is most likely made in PRC. (JUST FYI) Yes it sucks that EVERYTHING is made in PRC. But its not the reason these models crash. Or in this case never gets off the ground. That is an issue with the builder / flier. If you made a mistake than so be it. If you were not up top the task then fine but accept it for pete's sake. Don't blame others.

My 190 went together with what came in the box and about $75 of extra / replacement hardware including retracts.


BTW Pics are in my gallery...

drone pilot

Hmmmmmm.... I have wondered too why when a plane dosen' fly exactly the way expected it is always the planes fault........... As far as quality build, a one off build is almost always (almost) better than a production run of at least hundreds. Myself, I do not have the inclination to build, so I fly ARF's. With few exceptions, I have had few if any problems with the quality or the flying of the planes. Broken, GOOD looking FW, could possibly be my next, as I had a Sportsman Aviation FW and reqally liked it, but was made an offer I couldn't refuse and sold it, ready to fly. The only thing I see that I would change...bigger wheels, even though the FW had small wheels.. Must be the smal feet syndrome.....and old Chinese tradition.... Cliff

Larry S

My Feedback: (6)

Broken, drone pilot,
you are so correct. How many times have we seen a guy crash his plane then blame the plane simply because he couldn't fly it? I know, see that all the time at our field. I do take exception when someone comes on here and says what a pile of junk a certain plane is and I know better because I have one and it flies great and others have them and have no problems. If a guy has a problem with one of these CMP arfs, it's because he didn't put it together correctly or balance it correct. Even my CMP Corsair flew with the CG at the point in the directions, it was just a bit harder to handle.
Larry

Broken

I know it is somewhat of a rant on my part but (This is one of my biggest pet peeves). We as builders make every single decision on our models. When I make the decision to fly one for the first time I guess I have to ask myself two questions.

1 - Have I done everything possible to ensure that the plane is ready to fly.
2 - Are the things I haven't done serious enough to warrant a schedule change.

Even the worst out of the box ARF can be a real keeper. You just have to look at the problems and solve them one at a time. The end result will always be worth it.

LuftwaffeOberst - I noticed that you had trouble with defects etc... But why trash it? Several of us would have purchased parts from you -shame.. You could have salvaged some of your investment. I would like to do a chop job on the canopy for instance..
Don't hold back what issues were you having with the 190...? What was outright defective?

thevirginian

I said it before, we don't realize how many ARFs are being produced and sold worldwide by CMP under all kinds of names and brands. If they were really crap, this company would have been belly up a long time ago. ARFs are made for RC modellers with a certain amount of experience under their belts. A total newbie can even screw up the best ARF there is, because the lack of knowledge and experience. If I pay only $200 for a 70" war bird my expectations are not the same as for an ARF, costing me $500.

LuftwaffeOberst

A good ARF has all the parts available.



Last I checked, Goldberg was a American Company and so is Great Planes. Sig is a American Company dealing with German Products, Graupner is all German. If CMP is so hot like some of you are mentioning, than why is it that people who build Goldberg, Hanger 9, Graupner and Sig ARF Plug-n-play can build there Planes twice as fast, and yet have it look better than most CMP's out there with less work?

I can use all the hardware on most of these company planes I just mentioned, however when I built the CMP Fw-190 I couldn't.

Like I said guys, your CMP was made possibly on a Monday, mine was made on a Friday. I could mention all the things that were screwed up with my CMP ARF and it would be a long post.

My biggest complaint was most of the measurements were off. The plane was begging to be stripped, recovered and painted.

If I wanted to do all that then I would have bought a Kit or bought Plans. When I buy a ARF, I like to just add my engine and equipment, get a fuel dot and batteries and possible retracts, buy a prop and balance it and the plane and go flying.

Not run around looking for screws, having my control horn plates strip, sanding down things because the measurements were off, thickness of the control surfaces were all different, the center mark for the Cowling was way off, the paint wore off the wings easily etc, etc, etc.

I could have continued with the plane if I wanted to, and it would have been completed the following year. I could hardly call that a good quality ARF.

The only thing I regret is I could have taken that money and bought a better plane. I guess we can't believe everything we read in these forums, and I make sure I spread hidden truth to newcomers.

Plus I noticed that there were no building reviews in the Review Section here at RCU. Hmmmm, that should have been a warning sign.

I agree to disagree with some of you here. I'm willing to let it go with that. You can keep your CMP Planes...not me, thank you.



Peter Dowling aka Luftwaffe Oberst
AMA District II # 56404
Aero Modelers Club
Pulaski, NY

zeno

I bought their latest warbird earlier this year, the 50-sized Corsair. I admitt that I haven't had any hands on-experience with their older ARFs.
But by the look of things CMP is definetly improving their planes. I've read a lot of posts in this place where the first thing people starts to poke at is the flat tail surfaces. The new corsair doesn't have flat tail surfaces, but I bet the latest Hangar 9 has them...
Their models might require some reinforcements here and there, speaking of Hangar 9 and Corsairs...

Some say that they require some extra work compared to other ARF's, except for the reinforcements, I don't know. Too me ARF means "An already covered model" or perhaps "Ready to be put together". Didn't find it that complicated.
The extra work won't take you longer than rebuilding and saving your 60-sized warbird ARF from looking like a damn ShockFlyer with servos pooking out at the rear [&:]
The "manual" .. which was more like a blueprint left a lot to be asked of, that I agree on. But if you've put tother one or two ARFs before this one you'll figure it out. If not, then you're asking for it, its not a plane for beginners, probably not the best second plane either.

And another thing that I can agree on is the paint, it will chip. The solution is fuelproofer, I used Top Flites Lustrekote (flat), there are better ones around I think. But at least it won't shine like brand spanking new Toyota (nothing wrong with Toyota, good cars, and should shine when new!)

All and all I'm really happy with my 50-sized Corsair, I had to put a lot of lead in front of it to get it to balance, that scared me a bit. But once I got it flying it felt just great! Flies exactly like I want it to. Very scale-like, coming from a guy who have never seen a real corsair fly, but still

Oh oh oh and another thing, it doesn't have a 100% scale outline! *gasp!* its true... and, as far as I know, it doesn't even have the numbers and markings of a real documented Corsair! Aye, its true, the horror!
I checked CMP and NitroPlanes and can't find the text "Very scale outline, but sport plane flying characteristics" anywhere.
And if you want correct painting and markings of a documented Corsair. Go look for one. I garantee you that it will be sooo much more rewarding reading and searching for info about that specific plane and then painting it up just like it! That way you won't stand at the field together with five other guys with the same markings and all going: -"Yeah you know this plane flew... oh yeah you already knew that... and you know, oh yeah. Of course. Yeah I read that, knew that, yepp-yepp".
That way you can trade stories at the field.



So... I'm glad I bought a CMP model, and I will absolutely come back and buy another one!
Who knows I might even buy a Hangar 9 model one day, but I'll have to rebuild stuff, reinforce stuff, and give it a paintjob (and some fuelproofer! ), sure sounds like a lot of work for such an expensive model




PS. I know this was a generall thread about "nitro plane kits". I'm only familiar with the CMP brand models, can't speak for the other ones .DS.

AirTech

My Feedback: (18)

LuftwaffeOberst,
I am sorry to burst your bubble, but all the companies that you mentioned ( and a whole bunch others) don't manufacture their ARF kits in the USA. If it's not built in China, it comes from Thailand, Vietnam or some other SE Asia country. I feel embarrassed to say that there hardly any American ARF manufacturers anymore. They can be counted with the fingers of one hand.

Most companies in the US design their ARF and then have these models redesigned by the overseas manufacturers to suit their production techniques. In fact there are very few manufacturers in Asia that specialize in building RC models. That’s the reason why in many instances models from different US Distributors look so much alike to each other is that they are built by the same shops in Asia. Just take a look at a few of the current models available. For example the Hyperion E-power yaks and Extras are almost an exact copy of the Extreme Flight models. The no longer in stock Nitro Models 56" YAK 54 is almost the same as the Hyperion 54.6" Yak 54 for e-power.

I have been building ARF since the only ARF available were the very expensive Pilot (Japanese) kits or the extremely poor (but inexpensive) Lanier kits. ARF have come a long way from those days. Now one can feel confident these models would not come apart in flight for lack of proper adhesives. Still there are the occasional kit that slips through quality assurance. This past summer I have seen a 28% Wildhare loosen up the engine box due to excessive vibrations. And I just returned a Lanier YAK 54 because poor glue joints and extensive damage due to poor packaging at the factory. Most of the ARFs built in Asia come with somewhat poor and week hardware, in any case I always swap the metric hardware for heavy duty SEA hardware in my giant scale planes, just as a preventive measure. The fact is that in general I have not had any catastrophic problems with the flying of any of these ARFs. As long as you have enough experience and common sense when rigging any type of model one can achieve some measure of success flying these planes.

I recommend that in the future you look up for some more experienced help before trashing a perfectly viable model. There is no reason in the world for giving up on any model as long as there is a chance of reengineering.

drone pilot

I got flights number 8 & 9 on my trashy Chinese built P-51 ( a Hangar 9 ripoff) today, with no problems. It is a dream machine. I used all the out of box hardware except the wheels and gear pushrods, I wanted bigger wheels, and had to put in heavyer wire pushrods for them. Another flyer at the feild has a Hangar 9 Mustang, He paid big bucks to put in after market retracts, 'cause the gear wouldn't hold up under his hard landings. I'm a cheap smack, and my plane cost over a hundred $100.00 dollars less than his to start with. I have a Hangar 9 corsair that I've crashed and rebuilt twice, and I think the Nitroplanes P-51 is every bit as good as it. To each his own, and every one is entitled to their opinion..........even if they are wrong....

Sturtz

My Feedback: (20)

They fly fine.

LuftwaffeOberst

I feel the same way. Now if these ARF's I mentioned are not American, to which I can be wrong... all I know is Goldberg, Great Planes 15 years ago used to be American. I guess they are all guilty of Out Sourcing like so many are these days. That's not the issue with me, It's the quality control that CMP lacks overall. And they could do better with the Scale Outlines and Details and Hardware as well.

You people don't have to agree with me. I'm just happy to agree to disagree. I'm not the only person who has a negative opinion on CMP planes, and I won't be the last. Believe me when I say, I'm happy that some of you had great results with you CMP ARF's. I wasn't so lucky this time.

I just learned the hard way like so many others not to buy CMP planes when there are so many that is so much better out there, and could use our support.

Cheaper isn't better, we buy cheap... we get cheap, but I guess that's not always the case. If we look hard enough we can find positive and negative write ups on all these kits. I worked in factories before, and I know that many companies look for speed rather than quality. I feel that we need to let these companies know to slow down a little and really test these products before putting them out for sale to the public. Enough on this matter... I think we all have better things to do than to go back and forth on this issue. I have better planes to build and fly... not to mention I'm building a few models for Aerofly Professional Deluxe.

Good luck with your Warbirds, and keep em flying!



Peter Dowling aka Luftwaffe Oberst
AMA District II # 56404
Aero Modelers Club
Pulaski, NY

LDM

My Feedback: (15)

The cmp planes and there copies are one of the best deals going in RC . A 73"p40 from Pica was a classic box of good wood .New in Box when it was at retail was $299 .
Now just for comparison , you can get the CMP p40 for $199 and copies are now on ebay on bid , last week one went for $149 with shipping included !!!

I am not a scale expert nor a warbird expert but I know that the shell of these planes are fantastic , fiberglass fuse , nice solid wings , thick tail airfoils ect .
So trash trasg the hardware if you need to and you will still have a great RC plane

LuftwaffeOberst

If CMP is such a wonderful ARF, you wouldn't need to trash the Hardware.


Peter Dowling aka Luftwaffe Oberst
AMA District II # 56404
Aero Modelers Club
Pulaski, NY

Larry S

My Feedback: (6)

It may be possible that LuftwaffeOberst got a lemon. It happens. My first arf I purchased was a VMAR Corsair. I had just crashed one many Corsairs I had built and wanted something to replace my crashed one right away so I bought this arf. When I opened the box, I said "oh my God", did I waste money on this arf. The covering was falling off before I took it out of the box. When I got it assembled, it just didn't look like a Corsair because of the shape of the wings. The marking and panel lines looked nice until I put heat on the covering to get it to lay down, and off came the marking on my iron. I will say it did fly nice but the directions didn't say anything about not being able to do snap rolls. lol That's how I lost most of my other Corsairs, doing crap they're not design to do. My fault, not the planes. After that plane, I swore off any arfs until I won a Cermark Graduate at one of our fun flys. I didn't even open the box for several weeks just knowing I had another "junk arf" but when I finally did, what a surprise, it was very nice. The reason I decided to check it out was I wanted something to put snow skis on so I changed the tri gear to a tail dragger and it flew great. Then I decided to try floats on it and that was a disaster. Not enough power and it went into the trees breaking the fuselage. I built another plane to use with floats and this Cermark just sat until I decided to get back together and have it ready for this winter. I fly it today with wheels and it's a blast to fly. So first arf, junk. Second arf nice. After I crashed my VMAR I built another kit Corsair and guess what happened?? Another snap roll and it just kept snapping to the ground. So I decided to try again with a arf Corsair and I bought the "cheap, cheesie chinese" Nitroplanes 50 Corsair. When I opened the box, again, I was very surprised, it looked nice with that matt finish, not like the shinny finish on the Hanger 9 and some other Corsairs I've seen. All parts on my plane fit very good, I did change hardware only because I don't like metric, I made my own push rods, etc until I felt I had a good plane to fly and fly it did, but it needed the CG changed to make it fly better. I had a few bangs with it and finally decided to rebuild and paint it and make a few more changes. Today, it's the best warbird I have to fly. Only thing I noticed lately is the covering came loose in places when out in the sun but when I get it back in my shop, it looks good. I'll just leave it until I build one of several Corsair kits I have on hand. I hate covering on a warbird, rather have sheeting. I was going to build another Corsair but decided to build a SkyShark Me109 if it ever gets here, hopefully today. I come to the conclusion that arfs are a great, cheap starting point to getting a nice flying and looking plane, you just have to use your head when assembling them and make changes where needed.
Larry

Broken

This is true- Some of the hardware needs to be tossed upon arrival. But I used 60% of the included hardware with mine.. In any case I wish I would have known you were running into issues with this plane- I would have bent over backwards to help....!!!!

Good luck with the replacement...

Sturtz

My Feedback: (20)

I bought and used those Sullivan or Du-Bro fiber type pushrods for mine. I also used all DuBro clevises. But I did use the supplied horns and aileron/rudder/elev rods. Mine are all just fine. No slop. Saito 150 in the FW190 and a Brillelli 25GT gasser in my Spitfire MkII. Two heavily vibration prone engines.
You gotta remember something guys. These are not 35/40 % giant scale aircraft here. If you get one of these going over 100mph then your way out of the scale realm anyway. I forgot how to calculate the scale size/speed theory but it's often shocking.
Let's say your 40 sized P-51 will move 130mph clocked. Calculate that same speed into the full scale sized Stang and the speed ends up being 700 or 800 mph. Wish I remembered that math now. Maybe someone remembers ?

No disrespect intended here,,,, but....... I think I speak for the majority here when I say that this is a case of (Oops,,, made a few mistakes because of lack of building skills. Or I got served a lemon and couldn't fix the mismatched parts.) Read back on the FW190 thread. You'll see Broken and I both had major mis-matched control surfaces , etc. But did we trash the plane ? Hell no.
Dude,,, did you know you can't find spare parts for these planes ? I would have loved to have your wing for a spare.
What were you thinking ? Or truthfully ,,,, PLEASE be honest for once. You still have the plane don't you ?

I'm done with this subject now. Sorry if I seem to have problems with some of your postings Pete.

LuftwaffeOberst

No I don't have anything left over, besides I wouldn't give those parts to my worst enemy. I have been building ARF Electric Warbirds for about a year, I built quite a few balsa kits as a kid. I built a few RTF planes 1 1/2 years ago. Won 3rd in the National Fine Scale Modeler Championship Buffalo, NY in 1996 for plastic German Warbirds. My skill was never in question Sturtz. If everything goes together then, I'll keep the plane. If it don't it goes in the trash where it belongs.


Anytime I had a shiny skin, I just sprayed the whole plane down with Flat Fuel Proof. I'll guarantee your shiny Hanger 9 won't be shiny anymore.



With good ARF planes you don't have to worry about finding any parts.




Peter Dowling aka Luftwaffe Oberst
AMA District II # 56404
Aero Modelers Club
Pulaski, NY

AirTech

My Feedback: (18)

On to another subject. Does anyone out there have purchased a Nitro Planes 50 size Yak 54 (or what they call a Yak 52)?

I received mine last week and it looks very nice out of the box. The covering looks first class and without a single wrinkle. I have yet to start on the assembly but I am planning on doing so as soon as I get some of the hardware replaced with standard sizing (I don't like the metric hardware).

I am planning on installing an OS 70 Surpass 4 stroke engine, and I am concerned on the firewall size being somewhat on the thin side. I was wondering if anyone has put one of these together, and how the firewall holds to a four stroke power plant. Seems like an easy fix to reinforce the firewall since there is plenty of access when the canopy/turtle deck is removed. I rather keep the reinforcing as simple as possible since this model seems to possibly weight less than 6 to 6 ½ Lbs. all up weight at the most.