Hi all,

I am a fairly new pilot. I have a very experienced instructor. I am learning with a Hobbico Avistar 40. I have an OS 40la (will be OS 40FSR ABC soon) in the plane. I have a tower 4 channel radio.

I just want to get some input on the pros and cons of the Avistar. Any feedback is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Mike

AMA739510

Hey ziggy

I think the avistar is a good plane to learn on depending you learning curve. Most people are advised to start with a basic flat bottom wing design like most trainers because they have lots of lift and are slow to come in for landings.

The avistar on the other hand is like a intemediate trainer. It has a semi symetrical airfoil so it allows more agility in the air and probably comes in a little quicker than a basic trainer. If you find it too tough to fly with step down to a basic trainer like a easyfly 40 or a kadet Lt 40, but if you feel comfortable with it then that's even better.

After you master flying it ( landings whenever and wherever you want, crosswind takeoffs and landings) them move to the next step like a Sig 4 star , GP Super Sportster or even an extra300.

to sum it up ziggy it's a good plane to get you ready for the next step which would be low wings if that's what you want to do.

Hi rvd

I have actually only made about 10 flights so far and my instructor say I am ready to begin some approaches and landings.

I have an advantage in my training also. I have Real Flight G2 and I downloaded the Avistar for it. I have found the flight model in Real Flight is pretty close to the real thing. I have been sucessfully landing and taking off in alot of conditions on the sim... But unfortunately, a sim is just a sim. I am taking it very slow and following my instructors advise.

I am building my second plane now also. It is a Great Planes Super Sportster 40. It should be ready to fly be the middle of summer.

Thanks for the input.

Mike

Hi Ziggy,
I love the Avistar, its what I learned on and I liked it so much, I am on my 3rd one! lol. The Avistar is good because it can be real gentle, or mildly aerobatic. I like to mess around with it up high and do tip-stalls, etc. My first Avistar crashed because I was messing around flying inverted while pretty low, I forgot to reverse my thinking and gave it up elevator when it was inverted My second Avistar got destroyed when I forgot to put the screw in the aileron servo horn and lost aileron control shortly after take off. I fly my current Avistar with an OS .46FX and it is pretty fast. After learning on the Avistar, I went on to fly a H9 SuperStick 40 and an H9 Advance 40 and both planes were screamers. I felt totally comfortable stepping up to both planes after flying my Avistar. I am teaching my 7 year old son to fly with my Avistar. Good luck!

The Avistar is the perfect trainer in my opinion. It can be very responsive and aerobatic or very gentle depending on the control throws. After I was soloed in it I maxed all the control throws and it was pretty wild (for a high wing type). My favorite was doing stall turns about 15-20ft high right over the runway center. The maxed throws and an OS46SF with APC props were enough to a controlled hover at about 20-30ft high. Any lower and it would hit the ground before recovery if you fell out hard. It also had just about unlimited vertical. The APC props brought this plane to life compared to the MA junk props. I used the 11-5, 11-6, and 12.25-3.75 APCs. Of all these the 11-5 was my favorite as it gave great thurst for vertical and the engine liked it better than the 12.25 inch prop. I also set my CG way back the whole time so it needed almost no down elevator when inverted. This made learining landings more difficult but it was well worth it overall IMHO.


It's a great plane, you will love it no doubt!

I flew about 15 years ago and chose an Avistar to get back into the hobby with. I agree it is the perfect trainer. Back in the old days my first 40 size trainer had a symmetrical airfoil and I think it is a good place to start.

The Avistar is capable of all aerobatics short of 3d.

For others thinking about the Avistar I recommend the select package. It has the radio and engine installed! About one hour and an overnight charge and it is ready to go.

My daughter (then 7) learned to solo with an Avistar/ys 53 combo. Nice little airplane. We had to add a 1/16 wire brace to the main landing gear to keep the legs from spreading. Toe in on the mains improved take off tracking. Ours needed a two oz weight at the tail for balance. The covering on ours was the self stick stuff but it held up for several years, several young pilots, and hundreds of flights. With the cg toward the front it is very stable. Cg moved back inproved the rolls/point rools, ect. Several learned the Novice and Sportsman pattern with it. Good luck.

I learned to fly (completely and totally) with the G2, my wife got it for me for chirstmas, I flew it exclusively for 6 months. Had not flown a "real" model airplane, but could land the anyting from the ultimate to the p51 in the G2 at will and with 20knot winds.

Bought and built an avistar, joined a club, took it out one day alone, did about 15 touch and goes the first day. This plane was such a sweet trainer. I agree with previous posts that it might not be the most gently, but mine has been passed to two other beginners and is still alive and kicking. It lands as gently as a baby, but will do nice squares and basic aerobatics with authority and only an OS .46FX. Have recommended numerous to others, and have flown other beginners as well.

BTW, I was able to go from it to an Extra 300S, no problem.

In my opinion is the best trainer ever made. I have one a year ago, what an airplane. I modified the ruder and elevators to see
if I could get a little more of it. After that the airplane could do inverted flat spins. My friends where in shock. They could not believe a trainer doing that thing. Other thing is that you can change the cg back and is still docile. Have fun with it your going
to fly this one a lot before you whant another.
Happy landings!
Benny

I got one of these as my second plane after a Soarstar electric parkflyer (polyhedral wing pusher). I've got over 100 flights and one major crash (into a tree), and I can tell you that the construction of the ARF (Monokote version) is pretty bad. I had the firewall separate from one of the fuselage sides on a routine landing, I've now got major epoxy reinforcing all the edges of the firewall. Most of the screws will vibrate loose, I've lost engine mount and front landing gear mounting screws before I realized that threadlock needed to be employed on any metal to metal screws. The landing gear has major memory while will lead to lots of bending (I'm guessing that this is a problem for any plane with wire gear, dural is better). And the wing is consructed with hot glue, most of which isn't on the joints. The reason that I know is after crashing into a tree, I got to see the inside of the wing, and it's not what I'd call a quality part. And the wood is subpar, I've cracked the sheeting on the wing and fuselage just by carrying the model. It's also a relatively small trainer. Not tiny, but the wing is pretty short and has a shorter chord than most trainers. And it's color scheme sucks. I've gotten disoriented a couple of times when I had the plane flying not too far out (I've never gotten disoriented flying my cub yellow, true red and dark blue Dragon Lady).

That being said it's a great flyer, relatively light, and can float in on landings just like any flat bottom winged trainer. I had an instructor with me on my first time out with it and I soloed on only my second flight, so it can be pretty tame. It's also capable of carrying pilots into the realm of aerobatics due to it's semi-symmetrical airfoil and lack of dihedral (compared to other trainers).

Hobbico has never been praised in regards to their ARF construction. If I knew what I know now, it's likely that I woulda passed on the Avistar and gotten a Wordstar 40 from World Models. I've heard nothing put glowing reviews regarding their ARFs.

As far as what F2Racer said about the Avistar, when I was initially learning to fly, sometimes I too would get semi disorietated. I solved this by adding some strips of dayglo orange Monokote trim sheets to the bottome of the wing and fuselage. This way when the plane was in the air I could tell what side was the bottom and what side the top was. The only down side to this is that in certain lighting conditions, this isnt much of a help. As far as the construction of the plane, I havent had any complaints other than the covering on the fuse is a bit wrinkled. While I understand that you shouldn't have to do this, I used my heat gun and iron to smooth it out. The ads say it is professionally covered, if pros did it, I'd hate to see what an ameateur would do!!! All being said and done, it's a great plane and if I destroy the one that I have now, I will get another one. I am even thinking of getting another one to set up on floats to fly off the lake here. I would put floats on the one I have now, but I am teaching my son to fly it and he is 7. Have fun and keep 'em flying!!

One other thing, just my own opinion, I would replace the screws that hold the engine mount to the firewall with socket head screws. I forget what the thread size is. I am pretty sure it's metric though. This way you can torque down on the screws with an allen wrench and dont have to worry about stripping out a Phillips head screw. The Phillips head screws that come with the plane suck, and I feel safer with the socket head screws. I use these type of screws whenever I can. I use my local Ace Hardware. As for F2Racer's comment about screws vibrationg loose, you should always pre-flight the plane before flying. Look for loose screws and test the tightness. I destroyed an Avistar because I didnt do a pre-flight that day. I forgot to put a servo horn screw on the aileron servo and lost aileron control shortly after take off. If you get into the habit of preflighting the plane now while you are learning, it should stick with you as you progress to bigger and faster planes.

I had an avistar for 18 months (sold it to someone) and absolutely loved it. Learned to fly with it on an la 46, glassed the wing,no dihedral, used a pair of wing bolts in it, two aileron servos (flaperons)and glued everything I could reach during assembly. The only non-original monokote on it was small patches from overshooting the runway, and catching the bottom of the wing on some briar bushes. I moved up to a super tigre 45 and had unlimited vertical, enlarged the rudder by about 2 inches, and could do the flattest inverted flatspins I have ever seen a trainer do. Would to them with the LA too, but the motor would overheat a lil after repeated shots. I put a spreader bar on the gear, and that took away all of the bounce on landings. Over time it became a break in platform for every 40-63 sized motor we had, because of its rock steady handling and great glide path. Rigged up a mini-servo on the wing bolts to release a hand launch rc zagi wing (3-4 oz) and get about 3 mins of airtime gliding it to land.

I would definately recommend this plane, above a superstar anyday, because of its versitility.

Steve

Hey, Ziggy99,

I found that the Avistar from the G2 swap page wasn't set up quite right. I tweaked the simulator setup some to make it accurately reproduce the Avistar. The most annoying thing I fixed was the engine down-thrust. It has way too much down-thrust. Let me know if you want my tweaks.

For the rest of you Avistar fans - yeppers - It's a GREAT plane. I soloed on it the first day after some G2 practice over the winter. I'll have to do some of the mods to the landing gear suggested here.

Last time I was at my field, I saw two tail-dragger Avistar conversions. Way cool! One of them had a hot .46 and it was pretty fast.

I also appreciate the recommendation on the Sig 4-star as a second plane. My GP Cub 60 is almost complete, but I think I'll finish the 4-star 60 and Sig SE kits and fly them some b4 I take the cub out. The cub is a lot more work to build. I'd hate to loose it to any tail-dragger training mishaps. Talk about kits that just fall together on their own - the Sig 4-star 60 and SE are fantastic.

hey BGI,

I would be interested in those tweaks, I have an Avistar but I could never figure out how to set it up right. Any help would be appreciated.

Dave

Here's my interpretation.
I can't remember what I may have changed besides getting rid of the the downthrust. I like a lot of aileron throw. I may have kicked up the rudder and elevator throw, too. This flys like mine.

Unzip to c:\program files\realflight\planes for the default install.

Get the skin from the G2 download page.

Good plane...hard to top as a trainer/I have taught a bunch of students on it and besdies the fp making more noise than a barrel full of monkeys the power is good enough to get the job done. The G-2 will really shorten your learning curve and by next month you will probably be looking at the 5000 different 3D planes on the market.
Have fun and remember there aint no better stick time than real stick time....so have fun and pass it on when you have mastered the training period....that's just the way we do it in R/C

I learned fo fly on the Avistar. Fly it until you can do anything that you van think of and capable of doing. ONce you are that good all other planes will be easier to learn. It is a great plane but don't let your engine die with you are learning to flat spin it. You can re-kit it in no time!

Thanks bgi but,

I can't get the file to work, maybe I am doing something wrong. I created a copy of the pt40 and tried sending the zipped file to that but it told me that the file was not a win32 application. I cannot send it just to the folder because it has no file to open it with. ????????????

thanks
Dave

You need winzip to open a zipped file. Do a search on the internet for winzip and follow the instructions


Mike

Do what Mike says. RCUniverse wouldn't let me send the file unzipped. go to www.winzip.com and download and install winzip.

Another place you can get the file from is www.download.com and then type winzip in the search path.

Try www.winzip.com

I took a standard select version and did the following to it.
1.made another landing gear block further forward to locate it for tail dragger. This is directly behind the fuel tank.
2. Put a Sullivan tail wheel in the back, had to install some metal type epoxy first for the bolts to anchor into.
3.Opened up the wings and installed needed wood and balsa to attach struts.
4. Used existing landing gear block and holes to put in tin nuts to attach the struts to plane.
5. Existing motor mount fits Saito 56/72 perfectly, just locate 2 holes for the rear engine mounting bolts. Use the existing front motor clamp bolt holes to mount front engine bolts. The 72 gives unlimited vertical. 56 doesn't but has enough to make it fun.
6.Left over front wheel steering rod assembly can be put on left side for the throttle or move the existing throttle rod. If using a saito 56 use the steering rod on the right side, throttle on right side works almost perfectly.
7. Installed one set of brace wires on tail feathers anchored to existing vertical stab bolt.
8. Made struts out of 1/4 " dowels and electrical wire ends.
Put it all together and it balanced exactly where it is suppose to with receiver and battery in stock location. We've had a lot of fun with it.
I have another with a MDS 58 in it. Now that thing goes!!! Crack the throttle and put the nose up immediately and go straight up fast. Take off in less than the length of a car. Much more vertical than the modified one but this one is still in standard design. Needs about 2 to 3 oz. in the back to balance it but I haven't put that on yet. Just wondering how long it will be before we tear it up.