I am getting ready to start assembling my Kyosho AT-6 ARF. After reading the " instructions "
Im not sure that I want to try to assemble this thing. If the plane isnt better than the instruction book it will never fly.
Has anyone had the pleasure of building this kit and if so are there any useful tips other than setting fire to it .

I don't know what the instruction says, but some of my friends built and
flew Kyosho AT-6 in the past.
I hear Kyosho AT-6 is very difficult to land since it tends to tip-stall in a
low speed. I speculate that the C.G should be in the correct position,
never be too aft the indicated C.G by the instruction. Otherwise it flew
nice, I heard from them.

Tsutomu Mabuchi

Hi, if that's the 40-size with a fiberglass fuse, then here's a story. A fellow flyer at our club had one maidened last week with an OS 46fx. I saw it spiral to its death on the second flight. The wing ended up how it was packed in the box (broke in 3 parts). On investigation, the owner said the servo tray came off in flight. Another "investigator" said the the elev servo stripped. Can't tell for sure if the derangements reported caused the crash or were caused by it. Anyway, the owner invited everyone for a barbeque with bonfire later that evening. Didn't go so I don't know what happened to that plane. Nice looking plane though.

Joseph

My brother had one. It came out very tail heavy. He ended up putting a 91 four stroke on it and it still needed 'several ounces' of additional nose weight to balance. One of our clubs best pilots flew it the first couple of times and commented how hard it was to take off and land. In the air it was a gentle flying plane. My brother flew it maybe 5 times. Stalled on takeoff and did a death spiral. Shredded the fiberglass fuselage around the wing mounts and around the firewall. Surprisingly he has bought another one. He has this 'thing' for warbirds.

Well, my story is a bit lengthy here which happened 2 years ago. I bought the Kyosho Texan. Reason behind it was it was (is) the most scale looking out of any arf on the marker. Very detailed and impressive. It was a good build

I put Hobbico mechanical retracts which worked very well. I also had a ST G90 up front for power. This is where the controversy started but i will get back to that later. The plane came out tail heavy which most warbirds do due to the short moment up front. Even with the G90 up front I still had to add 1lb of lead up on the firewall.

The first flight was a simple trimming flight. The take off roll was insane. It was all over the runway. finally after it was pointed away from everyone, I just laid on it and put it up in the air.
I kept the plane around half throttle. trimmed out good and flew it around for about 10 minutes, landed and all was fine.

That was the only flight that day on it. The next morning, I took it up again and all went fine just cruisng around at half throttle getting the feel of it all. My buddy showed up about 10am and wanted to see it fly. So up it went again on flight number three. Again at around half throttle just cruisng at a good clip. I was coming back toward the runway when my friend said "that flys real nice." No sooner than he got those words out of his mouth, the wing right wing just snapped off! The plane came spiraling down onto the asphalt and blew apart.

Witnessing all this were some of the most experienced pilots around to included 3 Hobby Store owners, one of which has a great reputation nation wide!!! So I went and scraped the mess off the ground and brought it back to the table. Everybody gathered around to check it out.

Its a three piece wing. the left side and mid section was still attached to the plane. On the right side of the mid section was still the cap attached. The wing had broken away from that light ply cap. Now it was a clean break which showed liitle to no signs of any adhiesives. Also the wing joiner slot was slid out completely and not signes of gluing. (remember this is an Arf).

MY LHS guy said to bring it by the store later on an he'll return it to Great Planes. About a week later I started to follow up on it. I ended up talking with Bill Baxter "Bax." He is also here on the RCU in the Engine Support Area. We had some heated conversations and he would not send me a new plane due to the fact that "I had to much weight up front with that G90." He also failed to grasp the fact Ihad to add another 16oz on the nose to bring it in CG with everything installed per the directions. We got no where. then he wanted to just send me another AT-6 Texan. Sorry but I am not goig to make the same mistake twice and wanted a different plane.

We got nowhere after a couple days of countless phone calls. I blew him off and wnet straight to the Great Planes people and told them the story. They asked me what I wanted and said send me a Shoestring. They sent one out the next day. Now I had never been impressed by the Shoestring up to that point and had no interest in buying one but needed a new plane. To this day i would recommend it to anyone, especially over that Texan.

Putting that thing up in the air is a crap shoot just like the Rare Bear. Good luck, the choice is yours.


This picture of the plane was taken a couple minutes before that last flight

I have a Kyosho AT-6 still in its box. The nose of the AT-6 is very short (after all, it's almost scale) so care has to be taken to minimize the amount of nose weight needed.
I have seen a Saito 56 powered Kyosho AT-6 fly. In order to minimize the weight the owner had moved all radio equipment as far forward as possible in the fuselage. Also, he had put the Rx battery on a shelf that was attached to the firewall inside the cowl. Apparently these modification did the trick as very little extra nose weight was needed and the aircraft flew in a very realistic manner. I plan to assemble my AT-6 in the same way.

/Red B.

I have one of these with a magnum 61 4 stroke and it flys fine. It takes some getting used to. I have retracts on it also. You need to get some speed up before taking off. Also you need to add in some rudder mix with the ailerons. Come in with a little power and you shouldnt have any problems. I had to add some weight also to the nose to balance it.

i have a texan,great looking plane i wouldnt worry about the instructions, i only used mine to show me where everything is goin to go and ofcourse i did some modifications as i was building the plane if your a good builder you should know this,
i powered my texan with an Os 50.... lotts of power and combined with a 3 bladed 11/7 prop i have no prob getting off the ground.
one thing i suggest is keep that speed up specially if you have to make a turn for an approach.. this plane is very unforgiving when it comes to a stall,i found out the hard way,
it was the planes second flight and as i did a pass over the field the engine quit as i realized this i lowered the gear,as the gear came down the plane stalled it happened so fast my hart skipped a beat,then the right wing just dropped and nosed over,i kept the nose down so i could pick up speed levelled her up and landed her down wind with no damage to the plane,just added a couple of gray hairs on my head after that incident,and this only took 15 seconds
now every time i fly her i keep that speed up
good luck with yours

hello i have the kyosho texan and it flyes great but landings and take off are some what hair raising so i took it opon myself to add flaps to it and now this plane comes in so slow and under control,i tryed to make it tip stall with the main flap down and the only thing that the plane did was to loose alltitude,no wing tipping and no nose dive,just a gradual decent,i also changed the muffler so it comes out the side and forgot to re tune the engine,and sure enough the plane whent dead stick on me,i just lowered the flap and regaind control and landed on runway

Im from Melb and I too have destroyed this beautiful looking plane! I never thought i needed intructions but when you want to know something and cant find it coz there is only three pages and most in Japanese, it gets annoying. The plane comes out ridiculously heavy. Some simple maths shows mine needed about a kilo in the nose! I was determined not to waste this model so before flying her i contacted kyosho about the CoG and they told me where it should be. So, on the MAIDEN flight, she took off, needed full down trim, still wanted to climb, i knew she had to come down. In the one circuit and quick roll i did she flew gracefully. In landing, being nervous, i bounced her, decided to go round, full power but could not stop it from pitching up and eventualy rolling over. My mate hapily calculated that it was $200 per minute flight. Get a DIFFERENT PLANE!

if you still want an at-6 with a good CG which flies beautifully, ARF and rather cheap, get the H9.
Here is mine, electrified with axi 4130/16 and 6S lipo, flies like a dream. I use flaperons to even slow her, but does not need it really.

Some Kyosho AT-6 video:

http://gugge.zapto.org/video/at-6.wmv

Hello Riffraff,

I'd by very interested in finding out exactly how you balanced this aircraft. I've had the Kyosho AT-6 for years and have just now finally gotten around to assembling it. I put in an OS 61 FX with a Higgly Heavy Hub and it still needs weight... that is, depending on where you measure the CG from!

(The Manual indicates 90 mm)

It balances out perfectly if I use a point that extends from the leading edge of the center section to the fuselage. However, if I measure the "shoulders" of the center section, right behind the cowling, this changes everything and I'd have to put almost 540g of lead up front to balance it. This is impossible.

Please give me some advice on how you balanced this plane, particularly from where you measured the CG!

Thanks in advance.

Zipperneck