ORIGINAL: Vincent
I bought a SM F-86 earlier this year and was told by Anton that it would fly nice on a P-60 even at a finished weight of 24.5lbs. Anyway it did not fly, just a swan dive into desert after getting into the air. I asked for some help in getting another kit and considering i followed all of SM instructions and used all of their equipment, was it my fault??. I bought the jet thru Adil Nasim and he went to Anton on my behalf, tolally ignored and never heard another word again about it. My friend Wayne Lane made the rapairs and the jet is up and flying great with a P-80 this time. Why does SM replace some kits for free and it was pilot / builder error and i can`t even get a discount on my disaster??
V..
Good question Vincent, however, in my experience, which probably isn't much, I don't care who told me what but I would not try to fly a 24.5 pound aircraft on an engine that puts out ~14 pounds of thrust, sorry but thats just me. This is part of the old saying if your friends jumped off the Golden Gate bridge would you too?? You are experienced enough to know that plane had a very slim chance of flying at that weight, so in that case I would say its not a manufacturers problem, more of you took some bad advice, regardless of where it was coming from (Anton?). He may have had a totally different weight that he flew his F-86 on a P-60 thus making it successful. I don't know what happened in Kevin's flight and neither does anyone else apparently, but I highly doubt it was a manufacturer's defect, in which case I think the company would be responsible for the jet. People who take advantage of companies for their own wrong doings are the ones who ultimately ruin it for the people who really deserve that type of attention. If Anton felt that their was a chance that something his factory did wrong caused this issue then I have no doubt he would rectify the situation appropriately. I think Skymaster USA takes care of their customers just the same as well.
The real issue here is why was the thread pulled and why wont Kevin divulge the nature of his accident? Wouldn't this information be helpful to saving other Skymaster F-18 customers planes if such a "defect" existed? I don't know, something just does not sound right to me. Especially since he requested the thread to be pulled.