Why do some of the Avistars have the steel rod and some don't? I do not understand that?

Some Avistars come as RTF (Ready to Fly) and ARF (Almost Ready to Fly) The RTF version has most of the building done for you and has the steel rod to join the main wing together, along with plastic straps to help hold them together, along with a strip of clear tape to cover the upper joint. I have heard that just putting the wing together like that is okay for doing training, but if you start getting into anything advanced (loops, rolls, stall turns) and you are doing them with more than 1/2 throttle, you run the risk of the wing folding in half. Read some of the threads on here about the Avistar, you'll be glad you did.

The ARF requires you to do a little more building, which requires Epoxy and CA glues. This one will give you a little more experience in building and seeing how your plane goes together, so that way when and if you crash, you'll have a better understanding of how to do the repairs yourself. That's what happened to me, my first crash shredded the right half of the fuselage, but the wing cracked on the outer edge of the joint (inside the wing) because the epoxy had done that good a job keeping the original joint together. After that, I glassed the joint so now all I worry about is leading edge damage, which I have had and is pretty simple to fix.

For gluing the wing together.........if you have an RTF, then it's your decision...the nice thing about that is you are able to put the wing into a car trunk w/o too much damage because you can dissasemble it easier at the field, but an ARF, you have to glue the wing together or it just won't work.

good luck!

I think that you can stop worrying about bending the steel rod & snapping the wing -- it is unlikely to happen with a stock wing, & definately won't happen if you simply glue the center ribs together. I've done many full throttle snaps & full elevator pull-ups from power dives with .46 powered Avistars & have never seen an Avistar wing fail in flight.

If you have the Hobbico Avistar ARF, which requires you to glue the dihedral braces into the pockets, you MUST do that step. Unless the spar caps are glued to the plywood brace, and the center ribs glued to each other with no gaps, and the leading and trailing edges glued to each other, the wing just isn't strong enough across the center. Glued, all the elements support each other.

We've seen wings with broken ply dihedral braces becaue the facing ribs weren't glued much at all. This allowed the two wing halves to twist a bit in relation to each other, and this twisting eventually breaks the plywood dihedral brace. Properly-glued, the wing is strong enough to take whatever the modeler can dish out in the air.

The Avistar Select RTF comes with the steel rod for the center brace, and anti-rotation pins at the trailing edge. This wing has also proven to be strong enough for the normal in-air forces the model will encounter.

The designs of these models are not lightly thought-out, but developed with a very large number of hours of testing by very experienced R/C builders and fliers.

okie dokie, thanks for the info. I cannot wait to get my ATF Avistar in the mail on Thursday and start putting it together. I am going to follow the instructions good!

I had an avistar that has recently been destroyed. I had the ARF version. I used 30 min epoxy to join the wing halfs together. I also fiberglassed the wing joint. I crashed the plane a couple of times but it is easy to repair. My last crash killed the plane. It was a windy day and I dove the plane at full throttle. I should not have done that because when I pulled up the right half of the wing came completely off. The plane hit the ground hard and all that was left of the fuse were splinters. Man I loved that plane.

So u are saying when u were in mid flight, the right side of the wing just flew off? how did that happen?
aaaaaaahhhhhhh
Did u have an instructer teach u to fly, or did u teach yourself?
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Flyn' High, Real High

I started to get to brave. I had flying doing rolls, loops, and figure 8's inverted. After a few of the hard crashes I thought man this plane can take anything. Well my friend who has been flying for 25 years flew it once that day and just whent crazy with it. I wanted to fly like him. After he left I whent for one last flight. The fiberglass tore right down the seam and the spar snaped. After the plane crashed I watched my wing just spin and float in the air for about 30 sec after the crash.

Any way I think you will love that plane. It is so easy to control. At first my friends would do my tak offs and landings for me. After my third day of flying I just landed it with out them expecting it. It will come it kind of fast. If you are landing into the wind the plane will just float in. I will be ordering a new one soon.

Cool I am getting an instructer because I really want to learn to fly it good.
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Flyn' High, real High

hi all the avistars that ive seen come with a metal engine mount buy a great planes plastic one it should bolt up with same holes and be much lighter compensating for the 46 ball bearing engines extra weight making it easyer to balance.

I've had a couple of 46FX equiped Avistars for the past three years, which I keep for demo flights and float flying. I've actually flown the wings off of it once, though I'm not sure if it was the rubber bands or dowels that gave way. Additionally, I've stripped the gears on my aileron servo twice in the air (no it is not an gap nor play problem). My personal opinion is if you want the Avistar as a trainer, use an LA40 to keep the weight down, it will fly more slowly, be easier to land, increases the range in which flare can be applied, etc. The extra weight of a 46 just magnifies the infamous Avistar bounce, the extra power easily can take it beyond the evelope of its design.

Having flown many trainers, my current recommendations for a totally new flyer is a flat bottom wing trainer and LA40. The slowness will give one more time to think, and the LA40 is cheap should it be damaged for one reason or another. Hobbico advertises the Avistar as an advanced trainer, so usually I'll recommend it if having solo'd on a basic trainer, pilot isn't comfortable or not skilled enough to move more quickly.

BTW One way to minimize the bounce on landing is to land on one main wheel first, but it feels like cheating

I have an avistar ARF with a TT .46 and it didn't need any balancing at all. Just wanted to throw that out there for ya....