Oh Yeah.. that's what this thread was about. ARF Problems !

I have to say, I build most of my planes and those for others, but the the few ARFs I have put together have been quite good.


GP Venus - 9
GP Slow Poke - 10
GP Lancair - 9
GP U-Can-Do 46 - 5 (terrible covering job and weak tail)
GP U-Can-Do 60 - 9

H9 P-51 - 6 (weak firewall, lousy covering and crappy gear, but otherwise excellent flier)
Kankge Monocoupe - 10
Kankge Cap 120 - 10


The Kangke ARFs are truly as good as what I would build.
All others I built from kits.


On any ARF I do a complete structure check, and yes, I have found poor glue joints, weak firewalls, etc. Would any have effected flight if using the recommended engine / throws... probably not.

Beginners only need to look here on RCU for the weaknesses of their particular ARF before they put it together and especially if they plan on overpowering it. I am sure that would end at leat 50% of all early deaths. I know there are some who don't know about this site, but there are a lot who do. Nearly everyone at my field checks here first before they buy anything.

Any time I see a guy bringing a new plane out to fly , we'll all gather around it and do a good thorough preflight. That usually means looking at the radio install, linkages, etc. I have it done on all of my planes and in fact, will not fly until I have had a second opinion. Most people I know have it done on theirs as well. A second set of eyes is always a good thing to prevent tunnel vision, I don't care if you are a beginner or experienced builder like I am. Everyone makes mistakes even assembly line people doing the same thing over and over again in China.

The only time I did not do a good preflight I lost a plane. Invariably, there is always some little thing we miss when we go over stuff ourselves, especially when we are anxious to get a new bird in the air. I missed a servo horn screw on the aileron and rudder servos. Don't ask me how! It took off fine, but then a horn separated in flight. The plane banked hard right. No response. Before I could cut the engine, it pounded in at full speed. There is not one day I don't think about that loss when putting a new model in the air. Had I preflighted it, I am sure another set of eyes would have easily caught it. When I was bringing the bag of bones back to the ramada one guy noticed that there was no screw in one servo horn (horn was still attached) and one of the horns on another servo was totally missing but the spline was not damaged. Sure enough the aileron horn fell off. 3 months of work and $600 put in on the maiden flight. Even the engine was destroyed (hit the runway dead on) Lesson learned.

Stupidity and impatience is what causes accidents, its not all the fault of beginners and ARF-only fliers. Some of the most competent builders I know started on ARFs.

I have seen many more horribly built kits come apart in flight than ARFs. In fact, in the past 2 years I cannot say I have seen a single ARF fall apart under normal flight loads.

I saw one turbine plane come apart (uncontrolled dive and too much elevator) and one insanely overpowered 3D plane flutter itself to pieces at full throttle and high speed). Both the result of not using common sense.


DP