Howdy Fella's: Well I Bit The Bullet Today, And Ordered Myself 2 ARF's From Nitro Models. I Have Never Had An ARF Before. I Always Built From Scratch, Or Kits. The 2 Planes I Ordered Are A (52" Red Bull Edge 540T & 63" Cessna 182). 2 Planes For $207.95, Not Bad At All. I Hope They Are Halfway Decent Planes. I Plan To Use A OS .46 In The Edge, & A Saito .60 Twin In The Cessna. If Anyone Has These Planes Let Me Know How You Like Them.

Keep The Faith: Johnny

If you have any problems with your planes, find the Nitromodels support forum for help - it's the best way to get service. The instructions will be very, very bad but your kit and scratch building experience should help you out. Besides that, Nitromodels has some really great values, and as long as you are aware of the service and directions you should be in good shape.

Good luck!

My best suggestion , as a arf owner is look at everything with the "What can I improve attitude." Don't except anything as right, if you can improve it within reason do it, I also reglue every single thing I can get at . Especially the firewall, Personally I like to use the expanding glues..gorilla/elmers ultimate. Check them over and have fun !!!

Don't judge all ARFs by what you get from Nitroplanes. Remember, when you buy from the low bidder, you get what you pay for.

Jim

To bad you started with Nitro. I'll never buy another one again.

I agree with PA BEN.
Those cheap arfs are
- looks great !
- good build quality
- very affordable
BUT their flight characteristic sucks.
In other words, they never do research and development of their airplane.

Some people may say they had a good experience with these kinda ARFs
but it's either they have low expectation or lucky.

If you want to do arf, go for Hangar9, Great Planes, World Models or other name brands.

I stopped buying cheap ARFs.

Again dont believe everything you read , the Nitro planes that are CMP China Model products that I can speak of as far as flying
1)73 " P40 , great quality , and excellant , yes excellant flying plane
2)Corsair 75" excellant flyer
3)Hellcat great flyer and great to bash to super scale .
May get the new BF109 , there quality gets better with every new release
Some of there planes are CMP copies , while cheaper in quality there still worth the money .
I cant speak for Nitro , cant tell who they are and if they are associated with the infamous Raidentec , egrand-buy ect , a west coast co that has horrific ebay ratings and changes there name more then people change socks , that I can not say for sure but its funny that the ads , the website , the emails ect all look the same .

I have 4 NP planes. One of my all time favorite planes is their Giant Tiger Moth. I am certain you will not regret you purchases, but do read the forums on any of their planes. I don't believe in reinventing the wheel, and have learned from others' experiences. Wouldn't you do that with any plane?

I have three planes form them. Giles 202 50 sized, Fascination, and the low wing trainer 60 sized. All fly great. The Giles is a great plane, looks great, flies like it is on rails, has a sort of hot landing, but it is a Giles and not a trainer.

The low wing trainer is a smooth flying easy to cruise around plane. I think the CofG is to far forward and when balanced on the spar it wants to rock on the mains. Easy fix, bend the mains back at about 30 degrees. The hardware that comes with the low wing trainer could be better, but for the price, I spent $10.00 to replace the hardware I thought should be replaced. The covering did wrinkle, but they make heat guns for a reason. I ordered 4 of them at one time. There was one for me, my brother and my (2) brother in laws. We had a R/C geek weekend where we built the planes and BBQed. They went together pretty easy. The directions are VERY limited. My brother could have built it with a little help from me. My brother in laws said they would not have been able to put it together with out seeing how it was built. I would build a section and then walk them through it. They used mine as a full 3D picture to see how the parts fit. I had no problem with wither of the planes. The low wing trainer does fly really well. Lands very slow and easy.

The Fascination flies like a pattern plane. I have not gotten a lot of time with it yet. I had a few issues with the Magnum .52. It would not draw fuel. I found that varnish had built up in the needle valve in the time I had it stored. The time I do have with it, I do like the way it flies. Ho real bad habits and it slows way down to land. It flies as good as my old Spectrum from GP and it has real covering instead of the printed press on covering.

Are there better ARF's out there, yeah. Have I ever had a perfect ARF, no. When a kit runs $150.00 and I get an ARF for $90.00 covered and with all the hardware, it is hard to compare to my kit building and scratch built planes. No ARF can compare to what I build.


Dru.

Nitro sells CMP, CMP makes a good ARF. The Nitro brand ARF sucks. Don't get them confused.

I have had two, both looked good. Both ended up heavy. If You are not happy with You purches, try a Sig arf before You give up on arf's.

Just a thought
john

There are always the 'bootlegged' airframe copies, too[X(]

"Nitro sells CMP, CMP makes a good ARF. The Nitro brand ARF sucks. Don't get them confused. "

Not always the case , again yes -nitro brand copies that are made in so many differant places like "Flymodels" and other factories are not always that bad . I have the hellcat copy purchased on Ebay two years ago for $86 plus $20 for shipping , well worth the work .
And the very very long Hellcat build by Luke Zolner on RCU is a Flymodel copy of the CMP hellcat . Again its all in your expectations , price paid and what you plan to do with the plane.
I have a copy of a CMP Fw190 that I have been bashing more then a year , its 100% better then the original CMP - THe plane has wood wings vs CMP foam , spilt flaps vs one solid non scale flap, circular ply internal cowl holder vs external non scale screws ect , again this was made in China by another CMP copy company purchased on ebay but was offered at one time by Nitro RC .

Puff:

Both of those are excellent choices.


The Cessna is probably once of the best values around. There is a long thread on the 50 sized Cessna here showing how people have installed lights, etc.

Save the Cessna until later and start with the 540T.

Make sure that the C.G. is slightly forward of the first tick mark, by approximately 1/4" or more.

Pa BEN:

LDM hit it right on the head. NP sells planes from different manufacturers.

The "Everygreen" and "Fly Models" planes can be hit and miss at times, particularly the latter.

The CMP planes, particularly the more recent vintages, tend to be very good.