RE: 50cc Nitro Models Giant Scale Yak 54 3D ARF 81
I also got the red and white version, at first I was happy with the plane but after some very expensive radio gear and a good 50CC DL the plane wound up very tail heavy, as a rule I build all my planes from kits or scratch but no yak of this size was to be found so I went with this one. Boy did I screw up.I should have spent the extra money and got a better plane right off. The AUW was over 18 Lbs with it being very tail heavy with a 3.2 lb engine Not wanting to add dead weight I changed the engines to one of my G-62's set up for IGN at just a tad over 4 lbs, that did balance the plane. But at somewhere between 19-20 lbs dry, way to dang heavy for a 85 inch WS plane I flew it twice last weekend only to have the gear bend like bailing wire even on a hot landing and greasing the plane in the gear still bent, just soft junk, the hardware while it looks to be good, its very brittle and breaks very easy. As a rule I will give a product every chance there is, but i'm all done throwing money at this thing for now. The advertised weight of the plane is way off and considering it took almost a full lb of nose weight to make it balance out is just insane. That plus moving everything as far forward as possible, I even fudged a little on the 12 inch rule trying to get this plane to balance. I got some graphite gear for it and that didn't work out to hot either with it being split, and only saved 4oz's. So far with the graphite gear, graphite wing& tail tubes and other items I could have bought a better quality ARF with quality hardware for just a few dollars more. After I cool off some I may try to reconfigure the plane to get rid of some of the tail weight ,but for now its in the trailor and staying there for a while. Oh while i'm at it the tailwheel assy looks to be good nice and light weight but it is junk also bends like wire, soft wire that is. When the tailwheel assy bends up it puts slack in the rudder cables,fun huh ?
I have seen several of the smaller Nitro plane models and have been very impressed with there quality ,thats the only reason I got this 50cc YAK but somewhere along the way the quality fell off the wagon with this bird .a little hot glue is all that holds the gear plate in no tri stock and really nothing to hold it in there ,in fact the whole plane is held together with hot glue and not much of that