ORIGINAL: Jack211
I received my Can Do .46 yesterday--and it is the second worst put-together ARF I've ever had (Lanier's Dart takes first in that regard, pitiful): 1) I spent an hour trying to get all the wrinkles out of the UCD's monokote, no good, left those tell-tale, however narrow, wrinkles. Virtually every surface, especially the LE of the wing, cCAN'T be tightened, smoothed--and I know how to do that, built many a plane; 2) the two-bolt saddle, receiver, for the wing is OBVIOUSLY out of kilter with the fuse (that was a return-no return issue for me--if the wing was out of kilter, too. It wasn't!?); 3) the ribs for the top of the fuse do NOT fit into their three-sided holes on the former. There has to be 3/32" of space there, so the ribs are only contacted on two sides. Bummer; 4) the fuel tank wouldn't fit into the fuse until I took about 3/32nds off the upper cross support--which weakens the whole foreward end; 5) the forward pivot, dowel, for the wing wouldn't fit the fuse until I sanded the dowel down--quite a bit.
Did you guys find these production problems for the UCD .46? For $!50, that's a really poorly produced ARF. All my Hangar 9 Twists ($99), even Tower's Uproars ($89) have been near perfect. What gives with Great Planes?
I called Great Planes to complain. Naturally, they said they would replace the bird IF I returned it. I have to FLY it Saturday. And it will be a bird I shall not be proud of.
GP recommends 50 oz/in torque servos. Futaba S3004's are 44 oz/in. I'll use those, because I have them. Need I worry? They also recommend a servo reverser, expensive, for the elevator servos, but if you just turn one servo around, they work in the same direction. I did that with my UCD .60 and had no trouble. Is GP just trying to get our money, or is there very good reason for all the expensive hardware?
Very pissed,
Jack
Sorry to hear about the defects in your UCD.46. I would probably return it for exchange. Why is flying it on Saturday so important?
I have a fairly new UCD.46 and other than the below average Monokote job, it seems to be straight and well built. I also tried ironing out the wrinkles in the Monokote and had limited success.
As to your standard servos, I'm using the standard Airtronics 94102Z servos (50 oz/in torque) and they seem to work just fine. I imagine your 44 oz/in S3004's would be about the same. Not sure what you mean by "turning the servo around" to eliminate the servo reverser gadget, unless you mean installing the pushrod on the opposite control horn. I thought about doing that too, but that resulted in a less-than-ideal pushrod alignment. After looking at it, I went ahead and installed the servo reverser as recommended. I suppose moving the pushrod to the opposite horn would work, inspite of the misalignment, but my guess is that both elevators will not move exactly the same amount. This could possibly induce a little adverse roll with large elevator inputs. Just a guess, anyway.
Good luck!
-Kaos