bw5493

My Feedback: (36)

Hey everyone with a Kadet Sr ARF. Check your glue joints on the wings!! This last Saturday my son and I were on the second flight, after the maiden and trimming out the buddy box, when on the third lap around the oval course at half throttle, the right wing shattered and folded!! The left wing then ripped of, and the fuselage and our new Super Tigre .45 came screaming in from 300' up. There had been no aerbatics, or high speed pull up etc. Just simple teaching pattern basics to my son like the simulator.
Upon examination, the spar area that builds the wing joiner box was almost devoid of glue. I have called Sig, and sent in photo's, so hopefully it will be replaced. Talking to bob Nelson at Sig, he stated that they have had a few cases of this. My advice is to strip the covering and re-glue your joints, or rough up the joiner, and make it a one piece wing with epoxy. Poor ol Super Tigre didn't fair well, and a couple stripped servos later, take it from me, and fix your plane.

jzrf6c

The same thing happened to a friend of mine recently. He was on his second flight no areobatics, etc. Then as he turned 90 degrees on a downwind leg the wing folded hit the tail and ripped off the rudder and elevator. The rest you can imagine. Yep, just tooth picks !

airbusdrvr

Go to this thread, http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_89...tm.htm#8903153 and look at the pictures I posted recently of my SIG Four Star 120. If you read what I wrote there you will see that I had to strip and recover the wing because it was so flexible. Turns out 20% of the joints had no glue and the remaining joints had a glue that would not hold. The only thing keeping the wing together was the covering. Fortunately, I reglued and recovered before it failed. I think SIG should not be selling ARFs that it most likely knows are defectively glued.

J-3

My Sig Kadet Sr ARF was totaled on the first flight when the wing folded flying straight and level just after a normal takeoff.
Sig needs to step up and start fixing these problems. Mine folded about two years ago, and they are still failing!!
Brian

sawdust

My Feedback: (7)

I have a friend that is ready to maiden his Senior ARF. He has gone to a lot of work converting it to a tail dragger. I am telling him he needs to open up the bottom of the wind and make the mod that I just put into my Senior. The Senior is one of my favorite planes. Mine has been converted to a tail dragger, has an OS 70 FS, and a glow driver.

My Senior ARF is in it's 5th season. I noticed that the front of the wing was starting to come apart at the joint where the wing rib attaches to the outside rib that joins the wing to the fuselage. I was lucky in that I was given a chance to repair mine.

This is what I did:

I opened up the front third of the wing from the bottom and reinforced the joint. Glue was forced into the area that was coming unglued. I clamped the repair and let the epoxy setup overnight.

The the last rib at the wing root is actually 2 plywood ribs glued together. And that rib has a large oval cut out in it. I presumed to save on weight. But it sacrificed a lot of glue surface to the wood that attaches this rib to the plane body. So I cut and shaped a piece of hard plywood and epoxied it into the oval hole. I had to add and sand a thin piece of bass wood to this plywood to level the surface with the rib. I epoxied and clamped this piece to the outside rib and let it cure overnight. This added a large new properly glued surface.

Then using another piece of hard 3/16 plywood I cut out another rib that fit from the leading edge back to the main strut. It took a lot of time shaping this piece of wood. Once this was done I epoxied this rib to the existing rib and the piece that I glued in previously. Clamped it and allowed it to cure overnight. Then I repaired the blasa planking and covered this area with Monocote.

I used the parts carved on the first wing half as a pattern for the repair parts for the second wing half. So the second half was repaired much quicker.

This repair took me a long time to do. But I do not think the wing will be an issue any longer.

The wing appears rock solid. But I only have 7 flights on it.

As time permits I may go ahead and open up the section of the wing just behind the main strut and see if there are any cut outs in that section of the rib. If so I'll do the same type of reinforcement.

SIG had better get this wing failure issue resolved or no one is going to continue buying this ARF.

If SIG gives you a new Senior I recommend doing this mod. It is time consuming but adds a lot of strength to a known weak area of the wing.

And I am sorry that you lost your Senior.

Todd

Tarrantelderlaw

Wow. The exact thing happened to my Kadet. The wind folded coming over the top from inverted. I know this is not lollygagging around but I had recently flown a kit built model of a friends and did even more severe moves without issue.

I sent the pictures and the story and they said they would replace it. Those folks over there are really very nice people.

Problem is that they cannot now get replacements. They are apparently having difficulty with the factory.

After building the Sig, I was totally gassed by the quality of the kit and really dug the few flights mine had before the duck tuck.

Well, just today I got word that they will not have ARFs of the Kadet until at least next year. They offered a substitute of a Sundancer. Now this is a biplane model that costs MORE than the Kadet. I am very much looking forward to flying her.

I will dispute anyone who complains of Sig customer service. Ihave found the folks over there to be of the highest caliber.

Just like the old saying that every man during his life will need a truck, I think that every RC pilot during his life should own a Sig. And I personally attest that they will be dealing with one of the best model airplane companies in the world.

Kevin Tarrant

gboulton

My Feedback: (15)

FTFY