ORIGINAL: jrf
tIANci:
He's talking about the 1.20 size Pheonix Suchoi.
ukrconsul:
The Pheonix Suchoi 1.20 is reasonably well built, but very poorly designed. The hardware is dangerously inadequate, the airplane comes out grossly tailheavy and 2 1/2 pounds overweight with a 1.20, the cowl does not fit the airplane if you mount the engine as recommended, and flight performance is really nasty.
As an example of the latter point: I used half the recommended elevator throw and then set my low rate at 50% of that. Even so, pulling full up from level flight in low rates causes the airplane to stall. It will loop at less that full travel (25% of the recommended) but if you pull full up it just continues in level flight with a porpoising of the tail. (The good news is it won't tip stall.)
I know, I have one. Two flights, two crashes.
The Goldberg Suchoi is a great kit and a great flyer. It may not be worth $580 USD, but the Pheonix is worth less than $0 because it will probably break your engine and radio when it goes in.
Jim
I had the Phoenix .40 size Giles 202 and it too was way tail heavy. It tracked nicely but inverted filght seemed to take an extreme amount of down elevator to get it to fly level. The plane was very nice looking but seemed to be way overbuilt and simply too heavy. I would seriously compare the weight of the two planes (the Pheonix I had turned out way over the rating on the box) and consider the other comments with this plane. My impression from my Giles is Phoenix makes some nice looking "sport" planes but not what I would consider good aerobatic ones. Just too heavy in my experience.