ORIGINAL: MANFRED
ORIGINAL: Luchnia
ORIGINAL: RV8ER1
Hey guys. I've been flying R/C for 40 years and always said I would never fly an ARF. They used to to be heavy lead sleds made of foam core wings plastic coated and the fuselages were some kind of blow molded plastic. However I've now been flying modern ARFs for 4 years, all electric powered. The last 2 years or so things have really improved and the performance of these new models is fantastic due to design improvements and their very light weight construction. However there is one major flaw in ALL the ARFs I've seen and that is the lack of proper glue joints. The laser cut parts fit incredibly well but the problem is they only use thin CA on all joints. Most of the important parts in the front of the fuselage are plywood and THIN CA is a poor choice of glue. If we were building these from kits we would use med. or thick CA on heavy load bearing areas like firewalls, landing gear blocks, wing/fuselage through tubes etc. I've seen ARFs have major structural failures and have had motor cages and firewalls of my own planes pull apart during high G loads.
What I do on all my new ARF builds is re-glue all these areas with med. CA . In the hard to get to areas I drip the CA (on target) into the joint and hold the plane to make the CA run down the length of the joint. Some areas I use 30 min. epoxy and use a thickener like Cabosil (to keep it from running) and use a chopstick (or dowel) and dot the epoxy along the joint and then smear it into a nice fillet. The stick allows one to reach down inside the structure. A fairly slow epoxy like 30 min. allows some to soak into the wood. This operation adds very little weight to the finished model.
I've found that an hour or so of glue reinforcement is well worth the time spent. I haven't cracked a firwall or motor cage in 2 years and I logged over 1350 flights in that time so it seems to be working. I hope this information is useful!
I realize we need to do this and I fully agree, but I have to wonder. Do we buy a new car and disassemble it and reinforce/glue/rebuild it before we drive it? Sometimes it just does not seem right that we are paying the quoted price for the RC planes and yet we have to re-do so much of them to get them to work as they are designed to work. What is wrong with this picture?
Really? You're going to compare the price of a 20K plus car to a $200 ARF, really? Besides how many cars that cost 20K plus fall apart after 4 yrs?
Absolutely! You mean I should use logic that somehow because it is cheap in price it is poor in quality? How does that work? So I would assume based on price that I must pay what range for a quality RC airplane? Where do we set the mark at via price to determine quality? 20k, 50k, 100k or 5, 10 ,15 dollars? Which would determine quality? You see this is exactly what is wrong with our country today...greed and cutting back on quality and quantity, yet charging the same. What is the saying, "Pass it on to the consumer."
When I was coming up quality meant it was designed by a good and reputable builder and sold for a decent price based on cost and reasonable investment by the manufacturer, etc., and yes, you definitely got a better product by paying a higher price, but not always.
I think cost is relative to what you buy. If GP can make the large Revolver for around 200 and it is built very well for the size plane verses some other models you pay more for (an AeroWorks 260 for example at 274$), then why would you want to pay 500 for the same plane. Now is the plane built poorly and not enough glue? That is the question at hand. Just how much does the extra glue cost and what sets the standards for what and how glue is used?
Think of it this way. A decent radio cost around 200-500 dollars. Do you have to pull them apart and rebuild them before you can get good service from a radio? They are foreign built too. If I apply the same process to my RC radio as I do my new RC planes then I need to pull my radio apart and fix it before I fly if I expect long term quality. Hmmmm....hard for me to think this way. An ARF is almost ready to fly, not almost ready to add more glue because it won't cut it in the long haul. No where in my ARF manuals do I see anything stating that I need to add or re-enforce glue joints...sort of costly removing the covering and recovering a new ARF wings so you can reglue all joints [X(]
I recently pulled an AeroWorks Edge 260 down and I was surprised at how poorly the wood in the plane was as well as the glue joints were very poor. The structural wood in the wings was very sub-par and of an extremely poor quality. This plane averages 75-100 dollars higher in price than a comparible GP plane. Most of the strength in the wings was in the covering. This simply amazed me. I was surpised after pulling the plane down that it had lasted as long as it had. It is a wonder the wings had not fallen apart in the sky during flight [X(]
I buy something my expectation is that I can use it and get good service out of it for the reasonable price I paid whether it be a 200 dollar Rev 70 or a 275 dollar AeroWorks 260.