ORIGINAL: LDM
davo , Luff purchased one CMP , the FW , he actually threw the plane away based on a screw not being long enought for the control horn thru the wing surface .
How many time does that happen , even with goldberg quality parts .
Like I said , experience will cure many problems along with some patience and plenty of RC friends .
Its a shame that he did not reach out and simply ask how to recess a horn and reinforce the area , or where to get a longer screw lol
Well, I don't know anything about Luff, but I will briefly state my RC experience: approximately 10 years, I started in the late 1970's for about 5 years, left the hobby until 5 years ago. I've built lots of kits, now I just assemble ARFs. I fly only 3D, so I pay a lot of attention to how my planes fly.
I bought two CMP ARFs, a Katana 72" and a Giles 40 size. I completed and flew the Katana, I got about 10 or 15 flights on it before I crashed it trying to pull out of a knife edge spin. Sure, the Katana flew, and for someone who just flies circuits, they might find it to be okay. But for any sort of aerobatics (not 3D, just basic aerobatics) it was a piece of junk. It was way overweight, about 2 lbs heavier than it needed to be. It was constantly wanting to snap unless I babied it. Also, the initial Katana had a major design flaw - the wing wasn't strong enough. CMP came out with a reinforced designed, but the distributor that I bought it from demanded $20 to get the new wing. Not that it mattered much, the wing weighed almost 1 lb more, it was obvious that the designer didn't know how to reinforce a wing.
I had to replace a lot of the hardware on the Katana, it cost me at least $50 extra. And no, I didn't use my parts bin, I don't have one, I only assemble ARFs now. I must have missed the part on the box under requirements where it said "requires comprehensive parts bin". Apart from replacing some 2-56 pushrods on my U-can-do 60 with 4-40 parts, I have never replaced the hardware in other ARFs, and I really push my planes.
I never built the Giles. I looked nice, but many of the same plane were built by club members and they had a bad reputation - much to fragile. But I must admit that this plane was much better designed than the Katana.
Since my club is located very close to a major importer of CMP, they were initially very popular planes. Most days I used to see at least 2 or 3 CMP planes, now, I rarely see any. Even the warbirds have a poor reputation - they may look okay but they are far too heavy.
Malcolm