Hi y'all,

I'm not trying to hijack this thread here, so please sorry in advance. I'd like to add my experience in response to heavy metal thunder,. as I love heavy metal rock. I just have the experience of flying and assembling the ARF or RTF over 6 years + which is NOTHING, building experience is just 2 months now, how as I've found me a great Mentor who is teaching me how to make a plane from Kits and has over 30 years of experience building the plane under his belt with innovations and minimizing the chances of plane getting crashed but not crash proof. Very precise and thorough guy. Fortunately a great friend of our club gave me 2 Kits for free, Sig Kadet MK II and Ultra sport both are 40 size, which I'm gonna start building in few weeks coming ahead. That's my learning part and a whole new dimension.

Now as far as ARF are concerned my Mentor says ARF are piece of ........ That's his experience. I bought Phoenix model Strega 40 ARF for $120. I did not assemble it well, wings were not aligned but it had a lot of work to do, and I was happy it flew good, not perfect until it had a tip stall and crashed but wing was only snapped in 2 pieces, fuselage was not damaged only the wing joint bolts part was. I learned how to repair it and wing is repaired now, needs the cote on it now which I'm gonna do this Sunday as for the last more than 2 months I've been going every Sunday or Sat and Sunday to his house as he has every possible piece of equipment that needs building. As I got into the depth of it, I found out how cheaply these planes are built, many places sub standard material, many places glue is missing, pieces are moving, not strong ribs, many things, spar is not glued right. I'm just talking about the ARFs under the range of $200 as the manufacturer does not have time to keenly look into everything they gotta just push it out as soon as possible. ARF's really are convenient for us, but something which you build or assemble a Kit is different thing. I bought another ARF which is GP's Revolver, China made, that's my last project, as I gotta assemble it once I pass through the kits.

I wanted to share it and as I'm going deeper I'm learning a lot, as a lot of ARF's are made sub-standard as they are potential risk of getting crashed. Crash is inevitable but it can be minimized, that's what I'm learning.

Vendors/Sellers who ever they are, not taking care of the customers is basically losing revenue in the end and that's not right at all.

Mody