ORIGINAL: jrf
So there you have it folks. Mike B. aside, RCU reviews may not be written on the kit that you can buy, but on something modified to meet RCUs idea of what it should be. The gear and firewall don't come out because the reviewer reinforced them before he ever flew it. You don't know what the performance would be with the recommended engines would be because RCU thinks the designer and manufacturer don't know enough about their product to recommend the right engines. (That big engine is probably the reason you need to reinforce the firewall and landing gear in the first place.)
Marc, what you are doing is certainly beneficial for some of your readers, but it is a feature article. It is not a review of the product you started with.
Jim
Jim,
Important part of that is "may" in your statement "RCU reviews may not be written on the kit that you can buy". We note clearly in every review if anything is substituted and why. Sometimes it is a change in power and other times it is just the writers call to make something easier or safer. Sometimes it is because something doesn't work right so we modify it completely so it does. I just did the GP Extra 1.60 review and when you have throws set to 3D your servo will stop because the tailwheel setup they have hits its maximum throw. I substituted a Sullivan Tailwheel which is TOTALLY different from their setup. I had to do it though in order to make it work. Another writer may have accepted that or solved it differently.
I do know that we get tons of email praising the quality, detail and honesty of our reviews here on RCU so while a few may have issues with it or cetain aspects of the reviews which they don't like, the majority seem to really appreciate them. I get 100 glowing emails with praise for every 1 email I get saying I missed something or was off the mark. That is a pretty good ratio. I know we won't make everyone happy but we are operating in the real world so we will review the models as close to stock as we can but make changes when prudent based on some of the factors I noted in my posts. None of these changes is beyond what a modeler could do or would likely do. If everybody built stock according to the instructions RCU wouldn't have 1 million plus posts and 4000 new posts every day. We would all be drones.