ORIGINAL: Granpooba
Do not recall how many times I have posted this message, but what the heck, why not again ?
I had a brank new Aeroworks QB powered by a DLE-20 that crashed and totaled on its very first take off. Reason being is that the complete tail assembly being both vertical and horizontal stab separated from the fuselage. Why you ask ? Well in every ones opinion that viewed the wreckage, they all stated '' total structural failure ''.
Keep in mind that I have been assembling models since the age of 8 and now am 70. Had a stint in the USAF as a maintenance technician and a career as a Corporate Pilot. Thus, I think I know a little about aircraft structures. I attribute the failure to poor design and poor gluing practices at the factory.
In my mind a crash is a crash and if it happens, then their is nothing that you can do about it. But, I felt that Aeroworks should know of this failure, thus I sent them a number of emails telling them of the tail assembly failure. Keep in mind that I was NOT looking for any compensation, only to notify them of a possible problem with the model and assembly/gluing practices at their factories.
Know what I heard back from Aeroworks ? You guessed it, absolutely NOTHING !!!
Thus, my advise on purchasing an Aeroworks model is that you may just as well be flushing your money down the toilet, as they do not care about quality nor their customers.
Only my personal 2 cents, but now you have it ! [>:]
I wanted to chime in here as I remember reading this post some time back. I had an AW 260 that I flew all one summer. Overall was a very nice plane, yet it had a similar weakness in the structure as you had. I was tooling around flying and playing with slow landings from around 5-10 foot high and on one of the landings the whole back end of the plane fell off much like the problem you had.
I have always noticed that the plane was structurally weak in that area as are many planes. I think that AW is not worth the additional costs, but not so much because of the structural problem but just overall value verses competition. Take for instance a Great Planes of similar price and you find that GP is every bit as quality if not more in some cases for the same or less money.
I have often asked the question when looking at AW planes if I want to spend 20-40% more for them and the answer is always a resounding NO, so I spend my plane dollars elsewhere. The one thing that stands out with AW is the fantastic owners manual and I know they put a lot of time and effort into quality manuals. For those that need that it is a great value.
Someone stated that AW is better than EF and some other high end planes. I have an EF and have owned AW and in no way would I compare an AW to my EF. From my experience AW is much like GP. EF is in another league with Pilot and others. At least that is my experience with the models I own. Mileage may vary according to what AW plane you have