KYOSHO 40-size a/c in the US
 

I was surfing the other day, looking for .46 sized semi-scale ARFs. I had bought a still-in-the-box KYOSHO CAP from a friend who'd bought it a year or so ago, and it dawned on me that maybe KYOSHO had some others like that sucker. That sucker looks excellent. It appears to be well built and light. So.... I did a GOOGLE and found KYOSHO's home site. Hey, and it's in JAPAN... who'da thunk it.

And KYOSHO has an awesome !!! line of .46 sized semi-scales. The Corsair is particularly attractive. And the Warhawk too. And both seem to come with retracts.... hoo hahhhh.... And they offer a bunch of others..... BUT NOT TO US IN THE U.S. !!!

It looks sorta like they did offer them a year or so ago, but not now??? Tower appears to have offered them a year ago, or at least a few of them. So I'm guessing that there might be some of them in LHSs here and there.

Have any of you guys seen a KYOSHO Corsair or P40 in your local hobby shop? Is it still there? Does that LHS do mail order? Help me out here guys.... the itch is getting too strong to scratch.... and I actually can't scratch it at all!

tia

RE: KYOSHO 40-size a/c in the US
 

Yes, Tower used to carry the full Kyosho line a year or two ago, but now no more. Kyosho ARF's are great flyers. No Kyosho warbirds came with retracts, but retracts can be easily installed.

RE: KYOSHO 40-size a/c in the US
 

Ooops. Don't know what happened there. RCU didn't scale the attached pictures down to thumbnail size.

RE: KYOSHO 40-size a/c in the US
 

There is a Kyosho P-40 for sale on http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/index.php

The guy hasn`t named a price as yet but last I knew he was taking offers.

RE: KYOSHO 40-size a/c in the US
 

I'll answer my own question....

Opened MODEL AIRPLANE NEWS at the mailbox today and about 10-20 pages in, there was a KYOSHO advertisement for their P40 and Spitfire models in .40 size. And the main theme of the ad was "The Warplanes are back".

Richard L. .... those look excellent. Really like the 109. What weights did they all scale?

RE: KYOSHO 40-size a/c in the US
 

Except for the Corsair, all of them are pretty light, say between 5.5 and 6.5 lbs.

RE: KYOSHO 40-size a/c in the US
 

I had a nice long conversation with Steve Pond, Director of Marketing, Kyosho America when I was at the iHobby show. He told me all the SQS warbirds either have been or are in the process of being redisigned and are being built in a new factory. Here are the new Spitfire and Mustang:

http://www.fototime.com/434527D8B9C0311/standard.jpg

http://www.fototime.com/5A8D610D7966C52/standard.jpg

http://www.fototime.com/DFA53DA5F71E0E5/standard.jpg

http://www.fototime.com/C7A55EA65DA508D/standard.jpg

RE: KYOSHO 40-size a/c in the US
 

Thanks for the pics. Hmm, looks like they switched over to using glossy film covering instead of shelf paper. It's a good move. However, I would have preferred painted flat Solartex covering.

RE: KYOSHO 40-size a/c in the US
 

I didn`t like the shelf paper either. It looked good out of the box. but once out in the sun, forget it. I pulled it off and re covered with monokote with flat spray.

RE: KYOSHO 40-size a/c in the US
 

Hi Richard

Happy New Year.

Great pictures of your ME-109.

Have just got one and would ask you if you have any tips before I begin to put it together.

I am realy looking forward to get it going, so if you could give me anything, that would be great.

Many thanks

Morten Vendelsoe
UK


Not sure if the upload worked but if we are lucky you should be able to see my Mentor T-34 from Hangar 9.

RE: KYOSHO 40-size a/c in the US
 

will the new P40 be green and gray or Tan and Green ???cant tell from the Ads ?

RE: KYOSHO 40-size a/c in the US
 

Kmot,
Did Steve Pond indicate that they would be releasing the complete line of SQS arf again in the U.S.? If so that would be great and I hope they will bring out the PT-17 Stearman again. I procrastinated to long and missed getting one before Tower and Kyosho split.
Thanks, r/cdawg

RE: KYOSHO 40-size a/c in the US
 

r/cdawg: From my talk with him, I understood that to mean that yes, the entire line was being re-engineered to be competitive price-wise and also to be able to be produced at the new factory, or at least new to them production facility, for the ARF's. Who knows how long it will take to accomplish that though. The only revised ARF's at the show were the 'Stang and the 'Spit.

RE: KYOSHO 40-size a/c in the US
 

It would be awesome if they could take their Zero and 109 and blow them up to .60 size. That was the best flying Zero ever.

RE: KYOSHO 40-size a/c in the US
 

Kmot,
What was your impression of the Spitfire and Mustang? Was the quality up to Kyosho's normal high standards? My dad has been flying a Super Stearman the last for years and it is still his favorite arf, although looking a bit ragged. He has been hoping to be able to rplace it with another someday.

RE: KYOSHO 40-size a/c in the US
 

I agree with you Richard. I had the old Spit and it was a nice flying airplane. Just wish it was a bit bigger.


matt

RE: KYOSHO 40-size a/c in the US
 

Here's a photo of my new Kyosho 109. Not quite as a nice on the fuse but overall, OK. If I had had an oz of motivation I would have recovered it and done it an authentic color scheme. I can't motivate myself to spend time adding scale detail to an ARF. Maybe if it survives a season of lfying, I'll redo it.

RE: KYOSHO 40-size a/c in the US
 

BTW, the price for the 109 here in Japan is 17,600 yen which is about $150. Retracts not included. I had thought about buying Tettra's 40-size Me109 kit but that was almost $120 without a tank, spinner, covering, or wheels.

Here's another shot of me and my Me109 (in Zentsuji, Japan).

RE: KYOSHO 40-size a/c in the US
 

The photographs in a Feb 2006 review article in one of the leading Japanese RC magazines (RC Air World), the P40 is done in a light tan and army green camo pattern. Since this pattern (like on my Me109) is achieved with iron on patches of a monocoat like covering it's probably best to seal at least the seams on the wing and fuse with a light spray with a sealant. I used a spray-on urethane available here. This does a nice job of sealing the decals too.

It's selling for 17,800 yen (about $155) as is the Me109 and P-51D. For some reason (national pride?) the Zero is selling for 24,800 (about $213).

RE: KYOSHO 40-size a/c in the US
 

One more note on the retracts for the Me109 and the Spitfire. Be sure to buy retracts that allow you to reverse the action since on both of the aircraft the gear goes up towards the wingtip.

I used a set of 40-sized mechanical retracts from OK models but to use them I needed to disassemble them and reverse the direction of the arm that connects with the servo. This was not entirely straight forward as reversing the arm messed up the action so I ended up having to both add a sliver of wood to prevent the arm being pushed too far (and getting locked in that position) and filing down the face of the plunger on the arm to regain the smooth action. I saw this being talked about in another Japanese RC magazine.

It does seem just a bit wobbly on the 40-size retracts so I think I'll have to be gentle on the landings.

RE: KYOSHO 40-size a/c in the US
 

Anyone familiar with the AK models 40-50 size warbirds. The Zero looks nice (and the price is impressive):

http://ak-models.com/cmp_zero_50.htm

RE: KYOSHO 40-size a/c in the US
 

I've been looking at that Zero for awhile now. I really want a 46 size one bad! But I really don't care to have a "scale" one as much as I'd like to have a flyer that just looks scale. I want something pretty much like the KYOSHO P40 turned out to be. It's got all the dimensions right but they didn't bother with any small detail and they did make it light.

That AKM Zero looks very good. It looks to be very scale. But it's weight is a bit toward "scale" and away from "flyer". And it's got a fiberglass fuselage. For this last year, every fiberglass airplane I've seen come out of China was like china.... dishware that is. Every model I've seen with a glass fuselage is now gone..... completely. If the crash was bad, not a bit of the fiberglass lived through it. A B25 that was all glass hit moderately hard and even the parts that should have come through were trash. A couple of off field landings that were just that, landings, tore up cowlings that only hit glancing blows. So every incident I've seen that involved fiberglass wound up with the fiberglass part breaking some or completely.

It looks to me that all the different damages show the same symptoms. All the fiberglass work looked like the gelcoat was hardly attached to the glass cloth underneath. And the cloth looked completely dry at that interface. It is very obvious that the "factory" workers aren't very adept making sturdy glass parts. But those parts do look excellent. They're beautiful. But those workers are pushing for volume. They're waiting too long to lay up the part after the gelcoat. And they're not getting good wetting on the first glass into the molds nor attachment of the glass to the exterior coat.

I wouldn't buy a fiberglass fuselage ARF today, and I don't crash often. I don't usually even land hard. I landed an EFlite Mini Edge on tall grass the other day. I'd taken the gear off because the sucker was so lousy on the taxiway. The landing was perfect and the plane just slid. And it was such a decent landing that I wasn't sure exactly where the touchdown point was and the slide was way longer than I'd anticipated. When I went over and picked the sucker up, the bloody fiberglass cowl looked like junk on the underside. The BLOODY GRASS had been enough to crack it just about everywhere. And every bit of the cloth was dry as could be on the gelcoat side.

I don't know a thing about how good or bad the fiberglass work is in that AKM Zero. But I'm going to wait and see. I've tried to talk a buddy into buying one..... chuckle..... 'cause I really would like to have a Zero.... ;)

RE: KYOSHO 40-size a/c in the US
 

I know what you mean about ARF survivability. Some of the prettier semi-scale ARF's use tricks like printed coverings and such that are virtually unreparable. I guess they figure no one actually repairs ARF's -- just runs to the hobby shop to get the next one!

I'll admit though that I'm on the opposite end of the Scale -- Flyable continuum. I'm willing to give up some flyability for a bit of scale looks. But then WWII warbirds aren't really my thing and so it's really just a novelty.

RE: KYOSHO 40-size a/c in the US
 

I the older Me109 and love it. Running a Vmax 46 with a pitts muffler. Its fast, and flys great. With that said I was looking at the new 109 and was wanting to know. Did they redo the location of the mains?

RE: KYOSHO 40-size a/c in the US
 

Just as a follow-up, after being involved in a bunch of other RC projects, I finally got my Kyosho Me-109 up in the air today. Here's the flight report -- such as it is. First I'll start with the end of the flight. After kicking around the sky a bit I went vertical then as I inverted the model the engine stopped. This is where I really needed to think quickly about how to set up for a deadstick in the few seconds when I still had some airspeed. As it was, I thought slowly and just turned it around towards the field and was too high to make a landing and was clearly going to go long on a field you can't really go long on (trees at the end) so I tried to pull it around and it just dropped out of the sky from about 15-20 feet up.

Result: everything forward of the wing LE was torn out (it landed right on its nose). The rest of the model was completely intact. Engine and radio are fine. But I'll need to rebuild the nose.

Anyway, let's forget about that part and get back to the take-off and flying. Thanks to some warning from folks here I was prepared for the model to want to nose over on take-off and indeed it starts to tip forward almost as soon as you start your run. So it's necessary to feed in a little up elevator as you speed up. BTW, I found the PT-19 on RealFlight (2.0) to be very nice practice for this as the virtual model also wants to nose over.

It model tracked well but took off very quickly (in about 15 feel) so you have to be ready for that. The good news is that it flew very easily -- in fact not much differently than the low-wing version of the Kyosho Calmato. But you could feel that it's a bit heavier. In about 5 minutes of tooling around the sky, I found that that I didn't have to make any trim adjustments and that it seemed to be a stable flyer.

And it was at this point that I decided to try some more advanced moves -- at which point the the engine died. This model doesn't glide particularly well so with the power gone it started coming down fast. Not like a rock or anything but it was clear that there wasn't going to be a lot of time. Had I only turned outbound rather than inbound the moment it went deadstick I probably would have been able to set up for a proper landing.

Oh well. It was fun to fly it for the few minutes I did. Not sure what I'll do about it now. I absolutely hate spending any building time repairing ARFs so I'm awfully tempted just to by another swap out parts.