Hi.
A friend recently received his Skymaster Hawk, and i just came back from looking at it. All in all a really neat airframe, however there is one mayor problem with the retracts. Because of the awkward forward angle of the retracts, the wheels do not retract straight into the fuse......if you take a look at the picture you will see that part of the wheel is extending out of the fuselage, not only looking really ugly, but also making it impossible to close the inboard gear doors.
We took a look at the skymasterjets website, and saw that they were using the same gear at the same setup.....
How about you guys already working one of these things? Did you somehow get this problem fixed? What did you do? Is there an "easy fix"?
Thanks a lot!!
Greets
Miniflyer

Apologies in advance if you've already checked on this, but is the trunion block in the retract housing or the strut itself hitting anything, preventing it from fully retracting? Is the retract frame backwards (i.e. assembled wrong)? It looks like it might be an 85 degree retract rather than a 90 degree and the slots in the frame may be reversed.

Just guessing....you might try Emailing or PMing Ali Machiny.

Barry

Miniflyer,
Is there no way to rotate the strut a little to level that out? I have one on the way, and I am gonna be pissed if they fit that way. I opted for the Robart body, but it should not make any difference since the problem here appears to be the strut orientation. Keep me abridged of your progress.
Tommy

Hi Barry
Checked all that, the body is the correct 90° body that works perfectly. It clears formers and ribs with plenty of air to breathe.

Tommy
The problem is that the retracts will retract about 15° forward. So if we rotate the strut to be straight in the retracted position, then the wheels will have a 15° toe-out, the tracking will be crap and the wheels will probably come off at touchdown *g*. The strut orientation is really bad as you said.
And yes, my friend is pissed bigtime, because this is not the way an ARF with "scale gear" should work out....

MiniFlyer,

I'm sorry to hear that you are having trouble with the retracts. The retract you received were from an early batch which had some issues. The angle is incorrect. The shipment to the US doesn't have these issues, but some of those that received their planes in Europe may have these problems. These were from an earlier batch, and were sent out shortly before we found the defects. We have since fixed the problem, so contact your dealer or Ali for replacements.

Thanks a lot for all the quick responses, especially to you Eric . I will pass that on immediately, hopefully everything will work out then. Thanks again

Alas again, so fast to jump the gun. I know you guys got excited and very concerned with this probelm only fair to you and your money.

Here check out this process :

Step one: contact person or company you brought from, explain problem, see if there has been an updates or fixes issued that
might have missed your purchase that would clear up you complaint at no cost to you.

Step two: Have I exhausted all avenues with company to fairly satisfy, correct, or replace parts with my issues in a timely
matter?

Step three: If company is of no help or has a fix for your issue, proceed to step four.

Step four: Log onto rcu jet forum, inform us all of the problem and let us know of a positive or negative out come with your
dealing about a defect in a product and how the company handled it and also to see if some smart guy out there
can help you correct any issues that you have found which will help us all in the long run.

Note. most company may or maynot know about an issue, but the good ones are on top of thier products and field reps are reporting back any issues to have them to be resolved quickly, it's their lively hood at stake in this business.

Take it for what it's worth.

I have just received my Hawk but the landing gear has not yet arrived. My instruction booklet shows the landing gear twisted on retraction but fully inside the wheel well. As soon as my gear shows up I will let you know how it fits. The gear was ordered from Skymaster. I am really impressed by this kit.
Regards, David Gladwin

T33, Thankyou and well said.
Miniflyer. I am aware of the problem with the legs. In fact I was aware of this problem before I even sent the first set of retracts out.
I did phone all of my dealers that were expecting Hawk U/C and explained the situation to them and told them that I would send the U/C out right away if the customers were happy knowing what the problem was. Then as soon as the new parts arrived I would send these to my dealers free of charge. I thought this might allow people to continue the build and for those who were not using gear doors, (which as this model is intended as a sport/scale model there are quite a few) this would be no problem at all.
All my dealers reported back to me that customers were aware of the situation and happy with this solution. I am sorry your Friend is not happy, but please assure him we are working hard to solve the problem and get him in the air as soon as possible. For more information either contact me direct on [email protected] or speak to your dealer on this or any other matter regarding the hawk that I can be of help with

T33, i would usually agree with you, however contacting a dealer saturday evening is not really a possibility, and we were wondering wether or not this was a known problem and if there are any fixes, because he stopped all building until he got some word on this. RCU has many wonderful modelers (and even the distributor) on the line and ready to give answers winthin minutes (even in the middle of the night) which cannot be found on the web.
My friend was never informed of the gear situation by the dealer, and was therefore simply stunned to see this (frankly i was, too).
I just had him on the phone and told him about the problem and the solution, and he is now continuing to build his plane instead of having to wait and worry until monday.
Our intent was not to shine a bad light on skymasterjets or attack them in any way, we simply wanted to know about a fix by asking for answers that would have taken days via the distributor.
Thanks a lot
Miniflyer

Miniflyer,

That's cool man.

Good luck, hope to meet you guys at a meet someday.

Thankyou Miniflyer for making the situation clear. I am sorry that your friend was not informed of the problem. Please if he has any problems just feel free to send me an email.
I hope to have the replacement parts here sometime next week.

I have found that you don't have to worry with skymaster and their products. There is going to be problems as fast as these guys pump out planes for us. If there is a problem, Eric is one of the best to take care of it. I have three of their planes and I know of the excellent service, first hand. Take a deep breath, relax and contact Ali or Eric and you will have your problem solved quickly. I am not trying to bash you guys. Hope you get that Hawk up soon and have a great time with it.

Please let us know how the test flight goes !!

My friend has meanwhile gotten response from his dealer, he has promised immediate replacement as soon as the new parts are there.
Thank you all for the answers and support. I'll report as soon as it has flown .
Cheers