Hi Jeremy,

After reading your fault list, I thought you somehow got a hold of my UCD!

Mine was missing all the blocks in the tail that you were suppose to cut out, and all the covering was just loose & severely wrinkled in this area. A Heat gun & Iron (turned almost all the way up) still wouldn't iron it down. I worked on ironing out the wrinkles & sags for hours, and finally gave up. I just decided that this was going to be my 'flying' plane, and not one of my 'beauty queens'. After reading your modeling background, I'm guessing that your experience here is the same as mine. We are just use to our covering be on flat, and everything being the way it is suppose to be. When reading peoples reviews of ARFS, you have to remember that they are describing them compared to other ARFS. At least I hope they are? Either that, or peoples building skills sure have degraded over the years. Because I've NEVER seen any ARF that lives up to the standards I like to build to. I've seen some pretty good airframes on some. But the covering jobs are ALWAYS a mess.

I didn't really inspect all the joints yet, but those that I did seem to only have a bead of hot melt glue in the corners, and much of what I've checked out isn't bonded that well to the wood (which has me worried about the engine mount, since I can't really get up in there to do anything. A few of the glue joints were lifting up, so I gave a little tug on them, and without any effort at all, they just peeled right off! These joints will be easy to re-glue, since there is NO glue on them anymore. But this has me wondering about the integrity of the other joints, and I don't know how I'll be able to add glue to a joint that already has hot melt glue on it?

I did cut a access hole thru my cockpit floor to gain access to the landing gear block, and hopefully see how good the motor mount was glued in. I've heard from several people that the landing gear block may rip out on a bad landing or two. This didn't seem to bad though, as they got it pinned in the front, and a small little angle block in the back. I'm also considering replacing the tail wheel assembly. There seems to be allot of people saying that this is a good idea, and I fly from a pretty rough grass field.

Anyway, as Steve mentioned, there is enough UCD's around to suggest that it is a very good flying plane, and one worthy of finishing up. I just hope mine holds to together long enough to make it worth the purchase price. I'm always scared buying ARF's. But I guess these are the risks you are taking when somebody builds your plane for a bowl of rice a day.

...Maybe Scratch & Kit builders were never meant to buy ARF's...but they do (in most cases) get you in the air quicker, if that is where you want to be!