Here is my review of a Hobby King ARF "Aerobatic Trainer" - as they call it. I decided to buy their 48.9" Decathlon. Read below for the result of that purchase. Pictures can be seen at the posted link. If this is your 1st time or even a 2nd or 3rd I would seek the assistance of someone with experience or buy from a reputable dealer who will offer support if you have a problem. HobbyKing does not have ANY tech support at all and rellies on a community of users to support theri products. In addition if you need to return a product they often delay their repsonse more than the 7 days that you have to return an item. I took the risk of buying an inexpesnsive first plane from them and I am really glad I am not out more than the $50 it cost! To the MODERATOR - this is my first post and if the comments are in the wrong place please don't hesitate to move them.
HobbyKing Decathlon EP 48.9 inch ARF
DO NOT BUY
If you bought this plane from HK and were able to assemble it without problems than HK has a huge quality control issue. Based on the one I received I can only surmise they don’t have a QC department or the QC people failed on a massive scale. The plane is advertised as an “Aerobatic Trainer”. Based on the description this plane is meant for first time fliers/builders. If you have little or no previous building experience I very much doubt you could assemble this plane. I contacted HK after delivery asking them to explain why the plane had the list of problems I sent to them. It took a series of email exchanges for them to finally say sorry you can’t return it as you started to assemble the plane. The irony is that had I not started to assemble the plane none of the assembly issues would have revealed themselves and HL waited almost 2 weeks before letting me know this – refund denied. My intent in submitting this review is to prevent others from having the same/similar issues and to encourage them to buy a different plane, preferably from a company that has a serious quality control department. Based on HK’s responses between Sept 2nd and Sept 15th I am unsure they will leave these comments up on their web site. If that happens I will post all the details and pictures on RC Groups or RC Universe.
After receiving this plane I did an inventory and discovered the hardware shipped did not match the build requirements and the only ‘manual’ is a couple pages of pictures. The manual and required assembly methods will not match – having previous experience or asking someone with previous build knowledge to assist will help immensely. These comments were sent to HK. Here is a PARTIAL list of issues. To see supporting pictures (I wouldn’t expect anyone to believe this without supporting documentation) go to
http://solutions2000.ca/decathlon
1. The motor box side support pieces were not even glued on and were completely delaminated 2. The wheel pants are a cheap yellow see through plastic blow-mould material and do not match the white wheel pants from the web site 3. The yellow covering was applied so poorly that it was not stuck to the flat support pieces and had to be completely redone 4. The yellow covering is showing dark brown stains from the balsa below and this stain covers several areas of the body and control surfaces 5. The hardware kit is both incomplete and appears to be from the wrong plane 6. The bolts to hold the wheels won’t, are too long and there were not enough washers to hold the wheels 7. The bolts holding the landing gear to the airframe will not thread into the T-Nuts 8. There are no holes in any of the control surfaces to mount the servo control horns leaving the first time builder to figure out where the control horns go and how to mount them – manual is of no help 9. There were not enough servos control arms to mount to the control surfaces 10. There were not enough 3mm spring washers 11. The landing gear tail wheel is a type of spring steel and is not even bent to mount in the rudder 12. The rudder does not have a hole cut for the tail assembly wheel to fit into 13. The ailerons do not have locating holes to mount the servo horns 14. The wing support struts do not have any support blocking inserted into the wings in order to support the struts – you will need to cut the wing covering and insert support blocking in both wings if you wish to mount the struts to anything more than the leading edge balsa skin and the thin wing joiner 15. You cannot mount an out-runner motor as recommended since the mounting holes are equally spaced on the mounting plate. They should have 2 holes closer together and 2 a bit further apart. The back-plate must be re-drilled and the mounting holes elongated and countersunk to match an out runner motor (I was trying to use a Turnigy motor as recommended by HK) 16. The mounting hardware that comes with the Turnigy motor will not allow the motor to be mounted – you must buy extra long metric screws. 17. You will need a special prop/hub adapter as well – the Turnigy mounting hardware won’t work on this plane. 18. If you look at IMG 024 you can see where the lower right side supporting structural rib is not even glued into the slot nor is the rib immediately above it 19. During my attempt to attach the landing gear the T-Nuts twisted out of the plywood base and rotated freely. I had to cut the covering, remove all the T-Slots, re-thread each of them and re-insert and glue them into place before installing the landing gear 20. The right wing tab that fits into the body and is screwed into place is too short and the hole through the wing tab does not line up with the receiving hole made for it 21. The servo control arms that come in the kit will not fit the plane. They are at least 30mm too long and the few that do come will all need to be cut off and new Z bends made as the other end has threads.