ORIGINAL: Gandalv

Gandalv,

First off, it seems several people have had problems with the gear ripping out. This is because the wood is typical low grade light ply. Common to tons of ARF's so nothing out of the ordinary, but again we are trying to fly the plane beyond what it was intended for so some exrtra strength would be nice. Adding ply doublers to the existing ribs would really help. The wing tube does not extend all the way to the gear and would be nice if you could get a tube 6" longer so it would go to the next rib in each wing. Now, what my buddies and I really noticed was the flex of the wing outside of the wing tube. This is where the wing seemed weakest. Hold your wing by the boom area and try to flex the wing tip and you will see what I mean. I would try to get some carbon spars tied into the wing tube/gear area or at least add some shear webbing. I would also add some balsa or ply in the area between the wing skin and the phenolic tube.

Perhaps mine was an isolated incident and will never happen to anyone else, which hopefully is the case. Maybe I got one of the newest ones and they had a bad batch of wood or glue....who knows. I do know that if I was about to test fly a plane worth $3-$4,000 and saw this happen to someone who just bought the same plane I did, I would want to take extra precautions. These threads are not only about sharing the good, but also the bad, so things like this don't happen to others if they can be prevented.

Anyway, I am moving on, so good luck to all you guys. Hopefully I am the only one with this problem.

Tumbler




Tumbler, could you explain a little more on where you wood beef up the wood and carbon fiber etc ? I am about to start the build on my Falcon and are considering to do some "drastic" changes to the wing after reading this last pages in the tread.

That said, there must be several hundreds on hundreds flight with the Falcon without failing, but still, think I going to ripp the bottom of the wing.

Regards from Gandalv