I am sure everyone knows the old saying, "you get what you pay for"

My self I kind of like to make sure that what I am purchasing is of good decent quality. I have never purchased any of the VMAR product nor have I ever seen any of their planes, but form the stories I have read and from what 30+ veteran pilots at my club have told me I am going to stay away from them.

The thing is that I have heard more bad then good so bad out weighs good for me.


Randy

V-Mar I was? getting ready to order one of their Beavers does any one have anything good to say about this company or kits.

Thanks
Dennis1943
AMA 7030
RCO Moderator

Dennis,

I am just finishing the VMAR 90 Beaver with plug in wings.
So far it looks great, and everything fits and aligns properly.

I just weighed it, and was surprised to find it is only 9.5 lbs
(with engine) rather than the 11-13 lbs in the specs. This
is very unusual, but maybe they made any error in converting
from metric. If it is only 9.5 lbs, I think a 90 or 1.08 2 stroke will
be plenty of power. RichmondRC says it flies fine with a GMS 75.

The 90 size has a semi symmetrical wing which I prefer.
The 10 ft version comes with a flat bottom wing. The
optional semi symmetrical wing was not available
when I placed my order.

Click the search button below to see my other
comments on VMAR.

By George

i agree with propnut. i purchased their a6t j-pats pkg, plane plus gms47 engine. good looking, good flying, good price. what more could you ask for? kennyb

thanks propnut i am thinking of the 10ft beaver i have never seen on of their kits so i am anxious to try it out i really like the big airplanes i have a 155inch giant telemaster AND I AM REAL PLEASED WITH IT if you find any bugs please let me know as they are out now and will not have any till the end of the month,


dennis1943

Dennis, first of all a ten foot beaver would probably kill you! Propnut, how can you comment that you have more experience then the modelers who complain about VMAR quality? You have absolutely no idea what others experience levels are! As a matter of fact, just that moronic comment alone AND the fact that you think these ill concieved and shabbily put together arfs are GREAT makes me doubt that you have much REAL experience at all. Anyone interested in these ARFS, do yourself a favor and examine one first hand before ordering.

Manfred,

I stand by my postings. It appears that I read the other
postings, regarding how many VMARs they have built,
much more carefully than you have read my postings.

By George

I bought the harvard 2 ARF .90.
Super nice detailed , easy to build and excellent flier and customer service has been great.
I read the posts here and almost didnt buy it but followed my instincts and bought it any way.
Im happy I didnt listen to the bad posts.

One of the best looking arfs and best fliers

Whoa! This is just a place for discussion and opinions...
My experience with VMar's 45-60 Spit is as follows:
Cowl is heavy with lots of cracks and chips in the paint.
Engine thrust line had to be altered.
Hardware scrapped.
Nice guide tubes for pushrods.
Nice pushrod exit fairings on tail.
Though pinned-questionable hinges.
Slightly less than average wing fit.
Badly warped primary firewall-scrapped.
Wood is... obeechee? Not what most are used to seeing-seems punky.
Excellently detailed covering which straightens right out with low heat.
Canopy, pilot, and cockpit very nice.

Having an engineering and problem solving background with five or six years modeling experience, I made some changes. I used Sullivan golden rods in place of the tail pushrods with 2-56 golden clevises. They fit perfectly in the pre-installed guide tubes. Made a new primary firewall and altered the height of the thrust line-had to. Epoxied all stress points from the back of the wing saddle forward-a common practice for ARFers.
I am also in the process of installing retracts which will operate as the full size Spit. I made a radio mast to be mounted behind the canopy on the turtle-deck. I am also in the process of making an in-cowl pitts style muffler for the TT Pro .61 hanging at the seven-o-clock position.

The first one I ordered had a lot of shipping damage and was lost by the shipping co. during the return voyage. Second one had very minor shipping damage and was kept. In my opinion the contents are not packaged very well for shipping.

Overall I rate the following on a scale of one to ten-ten being excellent:
Overall fit and function of everything......7.5
Construction and materials used............6.5
Scale appearance and dimensions.........9
Chances of me buying another..............4

Given what I paid, what I got isn't all that bad. (Even though I berated VMar in the past.)

As far as the other VMar products I cannot comment except for the rave reviews the GMS .47 and other GMS engines have received.

Jeff

BTW, if it flies well the chances of me buying another may increase.

Dennis1943

My scale was way off, the actual weight of my 90 size
Beaver is 11 1/2 lbs. I installed a Magnum 1.08 2 stroke
and flew it with a 13x6 prop. The Beaver flew well but
lacked adequate thrust because of the small prop. I now have
14 in and 15 in props and expect better results next time.

The wing struts did not fit properly, so I flew without
them. RichmondRC advises against this, so next time I
will make new screw locations on the wings, so the struts
will fit, and provide some wing support. It is good to
know that the 2 tube wing mounting system is strong enough
to support the wings.

I have yet to find any serious flaws with the Beaver. It
sure draws a lot of attention at the flying field.

By George

thanks a lot i was really getting discouraged no one wanted to say any thing good about this kit i think that i will order me one and put a g38 on it i plan to use it for a candy drop for the kids with a slidding door in the belly, you have been a big help, godspeed,,
dennis1943

I am pretty new to the ARF planes and I just received the RV4 Racer from Richmond RC. I have read alot of negative posts about VMAR, but they seem to finally have their company on the right track. The planes covering is almost flawless. The contruction under it from what I can see seems to be very neatly done. I've often heard that the balsa is of poor quality. Again, I've never scratch built a plane before, so my knowledge there is very limited. The decals being made into the covering is a great idea, they will never lift off. The plane is just beautiful. The only thing was..........boy did the box it came in have a terrible smell to it ???
For the $$$$ , it comes with a pilot with a fabric coat ect, Dashboard decal ect. I am VERY HAPPY with this ARF and for the $49. that I spent for the GMS pro 47 engine, it was a great deal. The engine came with a Tower Hobbies type Bullet Muffler and also the Pitts Muffler. A Really overall great combo deal. !!!!!!!!!!!!

the ailerons were way too small, my wheel pants looked like they had been in a furnace, the cowling was a different color red than the fuselage and did not fit right, the line drawn on which the center of your engine is supposed to be was an inch and a half off, my landing gear cracked after 6 landings (fairly smooth) the wheels were crap, you can't put much deflection on the already too small ailerons, all the colors were way off on the recovering kit, the clevises were impossible to thread, there were what looked like tire marks on the side of the plane, but were actually smeared ink, the cradle tape you supply eats the covering on the wing and leaves pieces stuck to it. in short, i would have chucked it and got another but time and money did not permit. also, a lot of the things wrong with it did not show up until i was already building.

is there any way i can contact the facroty to see if they could make a wing with larger ailerons extending further INTO THE WING? I get only 1 roll in 3 seconds on high rate.

Please avoid the mistake I made buying the VMAR 10' span Beaver. The fist engine installed was a ST2300 and this proved unreliable and was replaced with a Saito 180. The wing panel has a massive warp and I measured a 4 degree difference in wing tip angles. Assemble took 50 hours and I had to re-engineer many structural and flight control arangements. Most of the wood is not balsa and appears to be some sort of crate wood. The finished weight is 20.5 pounds and I used 9 standard servos.

My VMar Challenger in my opinion is a great plane, but my World Models P-51 .46 is better.

I never really had anything to complain about my Challenger, but when I oppened my WM kit the other day, I was really amazed.

VMar does however have better instruction manuals.

elim

I have only heard bad things from people owning Vmar kits.......Firewood

It is very hard for a company to come back after so many bad comments. Even if there quality change or has change it will take years to win back bitten modelers.

I wouldn't be surprised if Vmar disappear of change name. They are in a very difficult situation...... sales down so a company normal reduces quality to compensate.......If you improve quality it cost more and you end up losing more money in the short term.

Good option would to close down Vmar start a new company with improved quality.

Wow!.What horror stories..Before I bought my VMAR Edge I read all the stories and tried to find something possitive in all this...Being on fixed income (hate those words) I decided to give it a try and form my own opinion. I talked with Kelsey at Richmond and ask some questions about all the negatives and he said don't pay a lot of attention to post and the internet that it's mostly negative and man is he rite...Anyway,I ordered one anyway and too this day I have no gripes and that was six months ago.

The plane arrived very nice and flies really well with a 70FS.
I'm glad I went for it and for the price I have no complaints.
Yep,I'd buy another...Walt

I guess that some of their models are better than others. My cap 232 flies well, is incredibly capable, and can't be too far off in it's dimentions from the real cap, because it does snap roll to the right when you pull back to hard. The only real complaints i have are that my wing was in need of major surgery after 6 months use, (kelsey called it maintainance) the ailerons were too small, so i changed them out when i performed surgery, and that the thrust line was an inch and a half off. It seems to hold it's own when i pull really high g's though. I dunno. Maybe it is because The cap is more complicated than my other models. The cap has a rounded top, Has a cowl, has efficient wings instead of the cheaper plank wing, but i never had any of those listed problems with my easy sport or my pt-40

Upon further inspection of my model, i realized that the hinges on my tailfeathers had so much plan i could move them up and down about an 8th of an inch each way. also, the elevatorsz are warped.

this is the sharpest airplane ive got, but looks arent everything the plane is a little heavy it weighs 7 pounds and isnt good at slow speed 3D flying but what it is good at is Hallin but , this plane is the fastest plane me and my freinds have seen yet.

What engine are you using if it's fast. I was going to put a 61 2S in it but had to do too much butchering of the cowling so went with the OS 70 4S. I certainly wouldn't call it fast.It moves pretty good but not fast fast.What's your secret.I had a Champion 45L with a TT 46 Pro.Now that one was fast!!!

Also,when you opened the box there was two pieces of black plastic.Looked like a plastic gasket that went between the wing root and the fuse.It's the shape of the wing root.I didn't know if this was somthing that was to be used or a protection during shipping.I didn't see them at all in the instruction manual.Did you have these two peices?? I have noticed that the wings aren't as tite as they were when I first got it even tho the wing screws are still tite.I keep checking the screws and flying although one of these days a wing may fly off from the fuse....

Have a good one.
Walt

Q-ball, Im useing a K&B .61 with a 13x6 prop, and yes it was a lot of trouble to get it in the plane the way i like it. I always try to center the muffler or tuned pipe between the landing gear it looks better and keeps the oil spray on the bottom of the plane. i had to cut a half circle out of the bottom of both firewalls and use balsa sticks to build an inclosure along the bottom of the plane where the tuned pipe ran this was done to the belly panel to. the two black plastic wing things are used to take up space where the wings but up against the fuse, without them on my plane i could see a lot of gaps between the wing and the fuse i also didnt use most of the hardware that came with the kit like the aluminum moter mount it looked heavy and cheep so i used a nillon moter mount instead. The K&B .61 is a well broken in moter that has been one of my most reliable engines. to date it has never even dead sticked even when it was new and breaking in im shure its all about High RPMs as to why it makes this plane fast this engine makes every plane ive put it fast , so long as the planes weight stays in the 5- 7 lbs range. but when i put it on the Edge the shape of the edges wing made it fly faster than enything that ive flown before that might not be saying much tho. the bad part of this story is that i didnt want a fast pilon racer i wanted a 3D plane and this plane is to heavy for this. The elivator and rudder throws are to limmited in their travel do to. The angles where not cut near the hinges to allow larg throws. i know i can cut o n the covering and redo the hinges myself but this would ruin the looks of the covering and the plane would no langer have this great looks it has now. so im keeping this plane the way it is and ill fly it when is want to fly fast but when if want to fly 3D ill fly my new Funtana 40 that just came in yesterday.

hat's what i did. My cap 232 was like that. Small ailerons and almost no throw allowed. The aileron stocks they use are hollow and are really flimsy, Which means that therre is more deflection twards the wing root than twards the tip, because it bends. I took it out and replaced them The stock they use is 1 inch stock, i put in 1.5 and used a much higher grade of balsa. so it is really strong now and i get around 2 rolls per second. Take a look at this picture. The white line represents the amount of aileron added. I added 24 sz.in of aileron surface total, 12 sq. in on each side. Together with more throw than was allowed before, and larger ailerons, It is more responsive at low speeds, and i can roll twice as fast.

Here's the whole plane