Hi all

I purchased a ARF mb339 from those guys in Canada. I had a professional builder do all the final assembly and set up. Last Thursday we took it to the flying field for its maiden flight. The first flight was un eventful except that the turbine flamed out. We landed the jet and made some minor ajustments and flew again for a second time. I have to say that the Mb339 flew incredable it has such a sweat glide path with no bad habits that we noticed. It truely is a trainer like jet that responds sweatly in the air.

Unfortunatly when the jet was making its last pass before landing a loud flutering noise was heard and than the port side stab ripped off causing the MB339 to crash into the runway. The jet is a complete loss.

The good news is no one was injured and it looks like they can repair the turbine. However when we inspected the port side stabalizer we noticed that the round solid spar did not penetrate into the leading edge of the stabalizer, it was shoved into the fuse. when they assembled it in china the improperly built the stab. The only thing holding the stab on was a dab of glue. Additionally they glued paint surface to paint surface. Another problem with the ARF is the landing gear formers are to weak and need to be renforced befor installing the gear.

When we measured the spar that is used in construction of the stab we noticed it was only long enough to penetrate about a 1/4 inch into the leading edge at best anyway.

I thought at first I was the only unlucky one to have this problem, but when I called Bob Wilcox to have my turbine repaired he told me I was the 3rd person who had called him with this same problem. So 2 other MB339s have crashed with the stab flying off in flight.

I am not knocking the kit I have ordered another one and will make all the necessary modifications on the next one. I just want to make people aware of this defect so they have an opportunity to repair this defect before they go flying.