Awful Horizon T-28 Carbon Z Retracts, A Fix?????
 

I have been flying a Carbon Z T-28 from Horizon Hobbies for months now. Love the airframe, lots of fun to fly. But the crappy retracts are souring the entire experience!

To get the mains to come up, you have to reduce throttle to idle so the helical prop flow does not cause one of the mains to hang up. Then sometimes the nose only goes halfway up. This past weekend, I cycled the gear while gliding at idle and that brought the nose all the way up, but one main stuck 20% out!!!

Has anyone found a fix for this? I am desperate. I will try anything: higher voltage (a separate BEC?), replace with some other electric gear or even pneumatic? Something else??? This gear ruins the wonderful plane. I want to fix this!!!!

Is your model the first version, meaning how long have you had it?

The older ones had some least desired retracts with end switches that get dirty and hence you get what you are experiencing.

I would recommend to call HORIZON TECHNICAL and tell them exactly what you posted here and hopefully they will send you the newer retracts, assuming your model is one of the first batch produced.

I can go into what needs to be done but, I am not certain you level of modeling or skill level with retracts / electronics.

Also, please don't take off or land your model on wet or damp grass as the Nose Wheel retract will certainly short out!

I highly recommend to place regular office tape (clear) on the circuit board to avoid any short circuit issies.

Don't ask why I know! ;)

Yes, I owned one that I purchased used and the nose wheel retract was shorted out and made a large Black short circuit burn inside the FUSE and behind the damaged Nose Wheel Retract.

What did I do? I called Horizon and they shipped me a new Nose Wheel Retract ($40 US value).

Why does the Nose Wheel Retract Short Out on Wet or Damp Grass? Because if you carefully see the rotation of the Nose Wheel itself, it is in-line with the Retract Circuit Board. The Circuit Board has zero protection!

The Retracts on the Mains, circuit boards are somewhat protected because the Wheel rotation is 90 degrees from the Retract Housing that contains the circuit board for the Mains!

I have sold this model because of other issues with the retracts and was feed UP!

Best of Luck!

Mine is not the original version. I have flown off of wet gras many, many times, no additional issues. These retracts are crap. And they had two iterations to get it right.