Giant Scale Planes
As a follow up to my previous post, I have found some of my old reviews on these planes and have listed them below. I don't know if they revised the planes since this spring but these are some of the problems I experienced with their planes:
.40 P-47:
1. The instructions were terrible - a few drawings and that is it. They were of no use at all.
2. The fiberglass parts were thin and cracked very easily - also there was a big ugly seam in the cowl.
3. The paint on the fiberglass body and cowl was not very good. The silver was blotchy and the green had chips on the edges.
4. The hardware was cheap - all the screws stripped out and the pushrods were softer than lead. Not to mention they were all metric - so standard clevises didn't fit anyway.
5. The aileron servo covers/holder were made from abs plastic - I replaced them with wood. They also did not provide any solid material to screw them into - just thin balsa sheeting. I cut away under the sheeting and added plywood pieces.
6. The retract area was not large enough for Dave Brown retracts. I had to cut all the wood out and redo the retract area in order for them to fit. Also, the wheel covers provided were white abs plastic. I reinforced them with fiberglass and painted them silver to match the plane.
7. Mounting the wing required you to drill a hole in the wing for the dowel - which was very difficult because it came to a point in the center. The wing is foam so there is not much support for the dowel. I enlarged the hole to 2x the size and filled it in with epoxy.
8. There is a wood brace in the middle of the fuse - where the control rods are supposed to go - I had to cut away most of it so the rudder and elevator could operate properly.
9. They give you a wood piece to glue into the vertical stab so you can mount the rudder (they left out the hinges btw) but they didn't give you any covering to seal the wood which didn't fit anyway. Luckily I had some silver monokote laying around. I also had to cut the hinge slots for the rudder.
10. The covering on the wings and tail had to be re-ironed down - it was not sticking at all.
11. The canopy is made from some cheap semi-transparent material - it looks cloudy.
12. Glueing the horizontal stab was quite a job - I had to sand about 1/8" off one side to get the stab straight - which left a huge gap on the top. I used epoxy to seal it all and it was a mess.
13. The wing doesn't fit in the saddle at all - I used foam tape to attempt a seal but there is still a gap. The fuse is fiberglass so I don't know what to do at this point.
14. The tailwheel is cheap, I replaced it with a bolt on type which was easy to do because the tail was open in the back.
15. And finally, the stickers are computer generated - it looks like they used a 50 dpi ink jet to print them - they are horrible!
Extra 300 .60:
1. The servo tray covers on the wings do not look or fit very good - they are covered in white and the rest of the wing is multi-colored.
2. The covering does not stick very well at all from the factory. I had to re-iron the entire plane.
3. A lot of sawdust inside the wing - I took an air compressor and blew most of it out.
4. The wing does not fit the saddle at all - there is about 1/4" gap all over. I cut the fuse away and got a tight fit on the wing, recovered the area and added foam tape.
5. Firewall, wing bolt plate and other wood did not appear to be glued very well.
6. No pull-pull rudder setup
7. Kit did not include wheels, quality pushrods, spinner, or fuel tank.
8. Instructions consisted of a booklet with only vague pictures and arrows.
9. Cowl and wheel pants are painted one color while the rest of the plane is 3 colors.
10. Stupid tail mounting - hard to position and glue correctly.
After a few flights, I noticed the elevator was flexing and causing the plane to snap because it was held together with a cheap piece of wire and the servo was only connected to one side.
I have about 10 flights on both planes and the trim covering has peeled up and will not stick back down. The fiberglass parts have hairline cracks.
Perhaps my expectations are higher for arfs, but these are not even in the same ballpark with Yellow Aircraft, World Models or the Great Planes arfs that I have assembled.