I thought I would relay an experience with SIG that I had today. I rarely make comments about the company's I have dealt with in this hobby. I will, and have, voice an opinion about the products a company sells that I have had firsthand experience with.

I bought the Sig Sukhoi ARF when they were first available. Since then I have not worked on it much other than to glue the wing halves together and install the ailerons. I was not eager to complete the model because of the wing failures I was reading about on other sites and wasn't sure if I wanted to risk flying it.

I really want to get this plane in the air so I called Sig on Monday, talked to their tech dept. and found that there had indeed been problems with some, but not all, of the wings in the kits. I was told that if I did not feel comfortable with the wing I had that they would replace it at no charge. I called back today, Thursday, and told them I wanted to get a replacement. They fulfilled my request without question and were very curious in doing so. The only condition on my part was that I needed to return the wing I have to them and they will even credit the shipping charges. I can't ask anymore than that and I thought it was worthwhile to acknowledge.

It's too easy to bash a company, their products or their service. Once in a while it's good to talk about the good things companies can do.

Thanks for the post and I'm sure Sig thanks you as well. I haven't had to deal with their customer service but I know people who have. Everything I have heard is fist rate. It's good to see that companies still treat their customers this way.

I've heard alot a bad things on Sig's service so its good to hear of the good things. Daz...

I also have the Sig Sokhoi ARF, and am very pleased with it. I read, and noted all of the negative posts last fall, called Sig and spoke to their tech dept. about my concerns. I was told that most of the problems stemmed from over powering the plane, and simply not being familiar with ARF construction in general. He said, if it looks like it needs tri-stocking, then do it. Glassing? Then do it. I beefed up the tail section, tri-stocked and glassed the entire front end, added a G-45 to it, and am having a ball. AS with all ARF's I think the general rule should be; If it looks suspicious, fix it. As a side note. I did poke a hole in my wing, so out of curiosity, I stripped the bottom cream section off to see if it was shear webbed. It was.

I agree with your assesment of Sig service. I purchased my Sukhoi thru a local hobby shop and put a FPE 2.4 gasser on her. To say the least my first flight was thrilling and i had all i could do to get her back on the ground...it was quite a sight. Thought it was seriously tail heavy (and it was).....so added weight and results about the same.
One of the more experienced guys looked it over and discovered several serious airframe problems. To summarize, the tail section of the fuse was bent about 2 1/2 inches to the left and the left wing ail was bent for a left turn as well. Also the left stab had a 2 deg positive incidence and the right side was 0.

I called Sig and they asked me to cut it up and send it in....did not have the heart to do that. Instead i drove it to the plant and hand picked a new one....this was straight because i brought along tools to determine condition....they ere very helpful and surprised at the number of bends in my old one. When the weather breaks i'm ready to fly the new one.
For strength i added some pink (high density foam) to the tail area for more bonding surface of the stab....it's light and takes epoxy well. The plane weighs in at just under 15lbs.

Sorry, the stab was twisted the other way....biased for a left turn....they think this was one of the veryearly models.....looks like my new one will be quite nice!

Sig rep was way cool... I snaped the wing and then the fuse.... G62 is *too big* <actually a pilot better than I did the snaping>. 130 bucks to replace. Ditch the covering and go through it. This fuse is way too weak given the BIG leaver arm of the LG>

I agree, glass the saddles, sheet if you need to, run 5 ply down the doublers.... you will be glad you did.

I bought my Sukhoi from the local hobby shop. I had my eyes on it from the day they got it in. Then I was told they couldn't sell them as Sig had put a hold on the model due to defects. Sig replaced the Stabs and the kit was then allowed to be sold.

I usually don't build ARFs, but I was impressed with most of this kit. The firewall had aluminum angles holding it to the fuse. That was a first for me! The gear mounts were also alum angles bolted to 1/4 plywood running fore and aft and well braced. Also nice considering the long gear. When I set up the wing mounts and stabs, I did an incidence check. Everything was 0 -0. perfect. I couldn't have done it better myself.

I looked very hard at the wing saddle. It really did look very weak. Not much structure to carry the load into the rear fuselege. When I unpacked the model, the canopy had a tear in the rear, as when it was pulled, it became very thin on one corner. I called the hobby shop and they got me a new one at no charge. Nice.

I installed a Moki 180 for power. On the second flight, the green covering on the top of the leading edge of the right wing came off. This could be due to the fact I had to go over it with a heat gun to shrink the covering and it could have loosened the bond to the wood. I wrote Sig an email and described what happened. Guess what . They don't even stock the covering that is used on their ARFs. Oh well. All in all , at this time , I really like this model but find it somewhat difficult to get nice three point landings. It seems to like wheel landings much better.

As for the CG, with the Moki 180, I had to add about seven ounces in the nose and this with all servos in the fuselege. Don't even think of putting the servos in the tail unless you are using a very heavy engine.

The Moki 180 flys it nicely, but not too fast. I don't think it has the power to hover, but I can't do that anywhy, so it's not an issue.

Enjoy yours .......

Joe

You may have noticed the wing joiner was very small. I was concerned so I pulled the covering off my wing and was horified to see balsa that had mismatched grain an was warped. The main wing spar was made of two pieces of 1/4 square balsa. On my first plane the wing failed so I rebuilt the wing adding substantial amounts of ply and carben fiber sheets and Carbon fiber rods as additional wing spars. I pinned all the hinges and surface mounted the aileron servos and threw out all the hardware. On the fuseladge I went back in and reglued every joint The final major deviation was in the conection of the tail feathers. I built up the tail surface with ply with balsa shaped like the elevator surface. I then shaped the bottem of the rudder with balsa to add additional surface area at the connection point and then braced the elevator with hard wood on the sides. I am running a Moki 2-1 with a 20-8 prop and the plane weights in at 14.5 lbs.

Although SIG apears to have a deaf ear to critisism I think the wing is teribly under desighned and needs some serious help or you too will be a casualty.

Good luck.