----- Original Message -----
From: Sales
To: Robert Mclarty
Sent: Thursday, April 24, 2003 7:14 PM
Subject: Re: Attention Dave


Dear Mr. Mclarty,

Sorry for the delay in our response to your email. David is no longer with us, and unfortunately your email was forwarded to his account which was removed today. In regards to your comments, unfortunately I do not have any record of the conversations that you had with David, but I can assure you that we have been selling these planes for almost two years now. I have monitored RCU and have seen some of the complaints about the CG and the need for additional weight in the nose, I am also aware of many more people that are having very good success with their models, that are very happy, and do not have any complaints. I have personally flown every one of our models. I have been flying for twenty years + now and have competed in IMAC, etc. I am a giant scale flyer, Carden's, etc. I am telling you this not to brag about my knowledge, but to tell you that I do know what I am talking about, and that you are not speaking with someone that is "faking" it. In regards to the Extra specifically, we fly our plane with the CG at just a hair over 5" from the leading edge at the root. This is an acceptable CG and the plane can be flown at 5.5" back in the hands of an experienced pilot that is use the planes with an aft CG. We have flown our planes with everything from Webra 1.2's to OS 1.60, OS 1.20, YS 120 & 140, Saito 1.20 - 1.80's and 3W 24's. I can honest tell you 100% truthfully that we have not added any extra weight to any of our airplanes to make them fly. I can tell you that a lot of thought went into the setup of every one of these planes. We assembled the planes entirely,installed the engine, muffler, spinner, and propeller and saved the radio gear for last. WE have the elevator servos in the tail on the Katana, Extra, Staudacher, and the new Giles. We moved the servos up in the fuse for the Sukhoi, and the Edge. We mounted the batteries in the appropriate position in order to achieve an acceptable CG. On some planes this meant mounting the battery to the engine box, on others it was on the CG. We did nothing special to these planes. Every one of our planes weigh anywhere from 10 3/4 to 12lbs in the glow engine size frame, 12.5 with the gas engine. All of these planes have been flown many times, by many people. They do fly really well, and they do 3D very well. Are they the same as a 40% Carden? No. But they also do not cost anywhere near a Carden either. These planes were introduced as a "disposable" plane concept to a certain degree so that you could comfortably perform maneuvers that you may not elect to try with your $1,000 - 5,000 plane. I can not tell you exactly how many, but we have many people that have bought 2 and in some extreme cases as many 5 of the same plane form us. I have seen the quotes on RCU about the 500+ sold, but honest we have sold closer to 600. We know that there will always be people out there that may not be happy with the product. This is fair and everyone is entitled to their opinion. Some people like chocolate, and some people like vanilla. The end result is that it is not always the product that is to blame, it is the taste of the consumer. Specifically to address your issues, we would like to do everything to make you happy, but I am not sure exactly what your discussions with Dave were. We do strive to make everyone happy, the best that we can, but our company policy is that we do not send out any components to any planes without having the questionable part(s) sent back for us to evaluate. We like to see if there was something specifically wrong with your plane, and if there was, we do what is right and then we send the defective parts back to China for them to evaluate and possibly make design changes in the future. I can tell you that there has not been one problem with anyone of these planes that have lead into a re-design or a recall. I will give you a specific example, I had a guy last week call me from New York that wanted to return a new Sukhoi that he had just built because he had to add over 3 lbs of nose weight to his plane to make it balance. This brought the all up weight up to 14 lbs. Truly this should have not been the case. We discussed the installation over the phone and he offered to drive down here to show me the next day. He did just that. Sure enough he had 3.2 lbs of nose weight in the plane according to my digital scale, and the plane weighed 14.2 pounds. After careful inspection of the plane, we found that he had installed the servos in the tail except for the rudder servo which was in the fuse set up as pull-pull. One of the first problems was that he was not balancing the plane with the proper CG measurement. Secondly, he had his battery pack under the tray that he had made for the rudder servo. After moving his battery pack up to the engine box area, changing the higley hub to a truturn spinner, adding an apc prop instead of the zinger wood prop and re-calculating the proper CG the 3.2 lbs of lead weight was removed and the plane balanced at just under 5" back from the leading edge at the root. This was acceptable. Now his plane weighs 11.2 lbs with an OS 1.60 in it, and he flew it over the weekend. He got four flights on it, called me from the field, and was very thankful that I took the time to straighten out his plane and he said it flew "awesome" until he caught a clump of grass and broke the landing gear. We sent him off a new gear today and he will be ready to fly again this weekend. Now obviously I can not do this for everyone, the distance is a problem, but as you can see, it is not always our fault, or a design failure, but the way the installation was completed. I am not saying that this is what exactly has happened in your case, but something just does not add up. As I stated before, I monitor RCU, and I saw one of your posts saying that you are flying your plane again, so what parts do you need? I will try to work this out with you the best I can. Sorry for the lengthy email, but I wanted to address all of the issues that you commented on below to insure closure to this issue. If I can be of further assistance, please do not hesitate to contact me via email. This is the best way, I can get back to you much faster. You can contact me at this same email, just address the mail to Steve.


Sincerely,

Steve
Creek Hobbies

----- Original Message -----