I'm watching a few planes on Ebay and was wondering if anyone has any experience with them. I'm thinking about giving the Four-Star copy a try with a Super Tigre .90. I realize you have to accept the planes for what they are but if they fly decent enough and I go over them with a fine tooth comb, would they be a good purchase? Most of these go for $50-70 plus $25-30 shipping.

This is called a .60-91 RC Four-Star Bird Sports Trainer Plane ARF Kit. Nice looking plane. The guy says the covering is Chinacote.



This one is called a 60-75 Stylus RC Aerobatic Plane Sports Airplane ARF Kit.



40-55 Stylus RC Aerobatic Plane Sports Airplane ARF Kit.



.40-55 Super-Sports RC Sport Plane ARF Kit.

Disclaimer: I have never seen one these planes in person.

You can't tell what's in the book by its cover(ing). They are obvious knockoffs. Gotta assume that they use hot glue for all joints. Like many other Chinese-built ARFs that use hot glue, adding reinforcing glue and additional support structure is a prereq. Add tri-stock to reinforce firewall & landing gear plates.

What we really need is a guinea pig to buy one, fly it, crash it and then do a thread with plenty of digital post-mortem pics of the fuse, wings and tail components.

Sorry, didn't answer your question - but we need more info.

Most the ARFs I buy are around $500, you can't build that well. I've had a few cheapo ARFs, they where straighter and lighter than anything you can build, I'm assuming you not Dave Platt if you're doing ARFs. I've never seen one with hot glue, they use a industrial epoxy which looks like hot glue but is not. I try to re-glue any joints I can get to, but I've found that if they glued it it usually stays together, the problems comes when they use very little lite ply or forget to glue the parts. I had a set of landing gear rip out on take off, turns out the only thing holding them in the plane was the covering.

The really cheap knock offs save money usually around the engine bay, no fairing in, just an open engine bay. They are worth the money, when I was learning to fly you had to learn to build too, so you where always trying to learn on a crooked plane that was weak and heavy, count your blessings.

Gid day all this debate on Chinese stuff never seems to end !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!I still scratch build but have flown many many of these planes and can find nothing untowards wrong with them most supplies (shops)(LHS)buy from them be it build under contract or what ever its like most things now a days ie I,ve got a Pioneer stereo made in Malaysia I,ve got a cell phone made in Korea /india
all things worth there weight are made under license in a foreign country ,, Went to a fire a few years back now ( I,m an x fire fighter )and low and behold they are making these snack machines here in N Z branded made in Hong kong ,,guy said under license mate we just tender for job so you just dont know and I,ll bettya most of Tower hobbies and Horizon stuff is made of shore under license so all that glistens isn.t gold we all fly made in China /Tiawan /Vietnam/Philapines stuff ,so if it gets you in the air quicker and more cost effective don,t knock it just go out and enjoy yourself ,, U R only here for a short time and we DONT NEED NEED a world of knockers

The white glue used in many ARFs may more correctly be in the epoxy family however the strength is nowhere near the strength of the 2 part epoxies I have used. Virtually no absorption into the wood - creates an interference fit at the joint typically used along with dado joints. It takes very little effort to disrupt these joints resulting in that wonderful "crack" sound. My only experiences with ARFs include SIG's Kadet Senior ($210) and a World Model Company Skyraider ($70). The Kadet Senior was fine and flew well. The skyraider had pieces rattling around under the covering in the wings and fuse requiring a total strip down of covering, fabbing new parts, fixing just a bunch of issues. Afterward it flew much better than my skills. RIP.

Grimmy - Appreciate the background. Not being a knocker. The only way to evaluate whether a product is worth buying is to have a reply from someone with 1st person experience with that product. For example SIG openly states that they over specify the wood content for the assembly of their ARFs as the assembly methods and materials (glue) are often inferior and they cannot provide any quality control over the product (this is a "near" quote from SIG's technicians).

Thanks for the replies.

Yea..... I'm trying to avoid paying $500 for an ARF. I think a Wild Hare 50cc plane goes for less than that!

I was in this hobby for several years in the early 80s and have recently returned. Back then you had to build it if you wanted to fly it so I have some building experience and have built two of the three planes I'm flying now but time constraints (as well as money constraints) just don't make it practical for me to build'em. These "look" like decent planes so I may give one a shot. I have a SuperTigre .90 that needs a home.

Thanks!

Welcome back!

What ever you decide to do - ENJOY it! Give that ST 90 a home.

Geez - all this time I thought that it was cheaper to build a kit than buy an ARF of that kit. Well, things ya learn. Just kiddin' ...

Welcome back.

My WH Suhkio was $479 + about $50 shipping, my WH Ultimate was $479 + $50 for shipping, so I'd call them $500 Arfs. But the tough part to get used to is putting $500 of servos, then $500 of motor, and another $100 for odds and ends, and that's not high end stuff.

you forgot to mention the fun that you,ve had I bet theyre real blast especially that ulitimate wish we could get them down here its the postage that kills it here still thats the joice for living in Gods own now that will stir it up ( Godsown I mean)

Practically all of the 'name brand' ARFs are made in China:
Great Planes (and the other brands they distribute)
Sig
Hangar 9 (and the other brands they distribute)
Global (and the other brands they distribute)
World Models

The apparent "copies" of these planes that you see on ebay and other sites may or may not be made in the same factory as the 'name brand' item. And, if they are, that does not mean they're identical. Factories often build things to a price point so the ones they sell cheaper may have lower quality materials, poor packaging, etc.

The full color boxes used by the 'big guys' cost more than a plain box with a black and white label. How many LT-40s could the LHS sell, in plain boxes, to truly new pilots if they were on the shelf beside the Alpha 40 and Avistar in their fancy color boxes? I'm guessing they wouldn't sell many.

Another common complaint about low price ARFs is bad instructions. The manuals that come with GP, H9, and Sig ARFs do not write, photograph, and print themselves.

I've flown the one called the "Four Star Bird". It is actually a knock of the Great Planes Rapture .40 which is only available in kit form. They copied it all the way down to the covering scheme used on the kit box photo. It actually flew pretty well, very similar in fact to the actual Rapture kit that I'd built a few years previous. Quality was so-so. The landing gear wire was soft as butter and the guy had to replace a lot of hardware and do a little re-engineering to get it all to fit together well. The covering was also lousy and peeled off in fairly short order. I always thought "Chinakote" was a derogatory term used to describe bad covering.

Anyhow, the plane had some flaws but you have to remember that it was dirt cheap. It is a matter of what you are willing to accept and fix in order to save a few dollars. I'm also certain that there would be zero service after the sale if the plane were somehow defective. One advantage of buying form a reputable company is that good service.

My biggest issue is that they are copies. I don't buy this "they are made in the same factory" stuff. It is very easy to copy something these days. Unscrupulous manufacturers in China and other places do it all the time. They even do it to the reputable Chinese companies. Unfortunately these copy-cats do not have any of the R&D costs or anything else associated with having an original product. It is wrong in my opinion to do this.

I'm not knocking Chinese-made ARF's. Pretty much all of them come from there and that's fine; they'd be too expensive otherwise. With the reputable companies designing and importing planes though, you get good instructions, good hardware, better covering, support after the sale and hopefully some sort of morals that prevent them from blatantly stealing designs owned by others. There are good Chinese companies too such as World Models too; it's not just the American, Japanese and European companies that are reputable. My concern is with the bad ones, wherever they happen to be from.

I agree that stealing a design is wrong. Unfortunately it happens a lot in many industries. The company I work for has an army of patent attorneys who constantly monitor the rest of the industry to see if our technology is being used without licensing. They are chasing multi-billion dollar royalties. I suspect the RC hobby industry overall may be too small to make it worthwhile to chase the design thieves.

The comment I made about "made in the same factory" was not meant to be an approval of stealing a design.
Take the model that looks like a SIG Four Star. Even if it is made in the same factory (by the same workers) as the SIG, it may or may not be the same quality. I'm not sure a cheap box and no printed manual could account for a 150 dollar price difference. Cheaper materials are likely used to generate the 70 dollar price point compared to 220 for a real 4*60. And, SIG does not get paid for the creation of the original design.

http://www.yiyinet.com/sport40-1.jpg i have tha one with a 51 in it...it's decently built i used all the hardware it came with....the trim covering is absolute crap.... The base cover white has held up....it's the trim that dosnt stay put...And yes i did go over it befor i assembled it with a iron...............Definitely worth the 80 dollars i payed for it incl. shipping

I have built this plane for someone else. It is built fairly well. Most all planes are laser cut and CAD designed now, so they are strait and pretty light. No 'cheap' ARF, or even some of the more expensive ones, is without it's shortcomings like gluing, gear support, firewall strength, hardware, instructions, covering edges, etc., so plan to do some 'fixing'. But most still fly well and even last if gone over in the building process. This isn't one of them. It just doesn't fly well, and in no way even close to a Four Star. The wing is fragile and not the same airfoil. The tail is soft balsa and also fragile. Not a plane to overpower for sure. They may look similar, but I can't recommend this particular one.

I know copies of planes has been a way of life in the hobby for awhile. But it really was weird to see the four star 40 knockoff ...

Well, I live about 10 miles from Wild Hare and have seen a number of Tom's planes in my area and by far the best looking is the 50cc Sukhoi. The red one with Honda graphics is just killer and one I hope to own one day. I need to crash a few more of the cheap ones first though before I graduate to one of his planes. That and come up with the close to $2000 it takes to get one of those in there air!

Which plane?

How about in aviation design in general. Piper Cub and T Craft, Pitts and Christen Eagle, and the list goes on and on, including all the knock-offs of military aircraft by different countries (the B-29 comes to mind). Duplication ranges from exact copies to just the basic profile or components and airfoils. When a design is seen to be successful, seems people will try and capitalize on it one way or another.

The one in your first picture, that I thought you were asking about.

I kinda figured that I would have to go over it pretty good as I have done with other ARFs that I have built. But if I'm getting a plane that flies 90% as good at half the price, it might be worth a shot.

[Flame Suit] [Soap Box]
Sometimes I think that some of the big box manufactures charge what they do because they can. I realize that what you get with the big box manufacturers sometimes is better doc, hardware and maybe a better covering but the huge differences in prices make me wonder sometimes.

As an example, I play guitar and it is hard for me to fathom that someone could charge $3000-$5000 for an amplifer when all of them are pretty much made from the same "stuff". There's a guy in China selling kits to some of the classic and much sought after amplifiers for $300-$600. You get all of the parts to make the amp yourself. All of these high dollar amps have the same kind of components in them. I guess you are paying for the design time put into these amps. And even that argument doesn't hold water as most of the great amps of today are ripp offs of amps created by two manufacutures in the 60s and 70s. Almost every amp is based on these "old school" amplifiers.

Most of the large scale market are scale versions of the real thing - copies if you will.

I've also started to explore other engine options as well. I have an OS 46AX that runs strong and flawlessly but I also have a SuperTigre G-51 that I got at half the price that is equally impressive to me. My next purchase may be a Thunder Tiger or one of those Sig Aviastar .46 that people are raving about in the glow engine forums. Strong as mule piss and $49.

Regarding the 4-star or Tiger knock offs. Here is a nice example of a monokote covered Tiger 2 ARF copy at close to 40% off of what Carl Goldberg wants for their ARF. This model is made in China like the CG version.
[/Flame Suit] [/Soap Box]

Having said all of that.... The ARFs (Tiger 2 & Avistar) that I have purchased thus far have been from the Big Box'ers. But the economy has forced me to think of looking elsewhere especially when I can get close to the same thing for less than half the money. The big box guys will be forced to change or go out of business especially if this economy lingers for more than a couple of years.

These Chinese knock offs may be what I'm looking for but if I have to rip the covering off because it is junk or because the airframe will fall apart on the mainden flight, it isn't worth it. But short of that and having to do normal (or maybe a bit more than normal) ARF once over and building, I may be up for trying one. If I do, I'll do a thread on it with some high res pics.

I can't build as well as a $500 ARF? The cheap-o ARFs are straighter, and lighter than anything I can build?

Actually I hadn't even read your post when I wrote mine. I was referring to other stuff I see online and hear at the field. I understand exactly what you mean after reading it.

I know I can't...

On 09-15-2009 I received My Super Sport 40 from Aeromax through cyradio on E-Bay.
It appeared to have been packed very well and no damage was noticed on removing from the box for inspection. For a inexpensive ARF the initial quality seem very good. Another thing that was odd on this ARF, it appeared to have been CA-ed in several places, not just hot glued. The covering was well done in a high quality china cote with very few wrinkles. I went over the covering with a iron to make sure it was ironed down.

The instructions for this ARF were the type that You download from the web site. As per the instructions I CA-ed the ailerons onto the wing halves. Then, it was time to install the wing servos. It was at this time I found three wing ribs that were broken. These appeared to have been broken at the factory, because it looked like someone had tried to glue two of them back together. One was glued very well, the second further back in the wing was not glued very well at all. You really get what You pay for. This was the first oop’s found on this plane.

The wings lined up very good and were epoxyed together



The instructions were adequate for someone who had assembled a ARF before.

Well, in my experiences so far with some cheap Chinese ARF's. They do work OK but  the instructions are essentially worthless. usually the instructions are a mix from several different models and poorly translated at best.
So you need some experience in how to build a ARF without instructions. When you buy a more expensive ARF from a brand name company, they include really good instructions and details on how to build the plane. Plus all the parts they include work on the plane too.  About the only thing on a name brand ARF that I change is to use a throttle cable instead. I also like to use the Dubro EZ-Links too in places. Quality control may also be hap-hazard, one plane may be Ok and the next a piece of junk.

The parts may or may not fit in with the plane correctly. So you need to plan on buying extra stuff. For example, the landing gear axles threaded shaft were too short for the fiberglass landing gear struts on one of my ARFs.  I substituted better threaded 1/16" pushrods as the metric push rods that came with the kit, did not match the clevises. I also used a throttle cable instead of the metric pushrod. The motor mount was Ok, but too short for my engine, so i needed to get another motor mount that was longer. Screws may or may not match up either. it is almost like getting the wrong parts package with the kit.

Since I have had wings fold in the past on a couple of ARFs (now this was after quite a few flights though), I opted to use some fiberglass tape and epoxy the wing center section as a additional precaution. Check the landing gear area to ensure it looks stable and add more glue as needed.

Also if you get a damaged or defective plane from the cheap shipper, it is usually too bad, bad luck, thus little to no support from them. But from a big dealer liker Tower Hobbies or Hobby-Lobby, etc. You can get replacement parts, warranty service and even assemby questions can be answered if you have problems.

So it is a question of what you consider important.
I would trust a dealer like www.nitroplanes.com a lot more than Ebay. The Ebay dealers may be trying to make a fast buck off of reject or defective merchandise. but you have no way to know for sure.