frednjess

I recently purchased the Cessna Skymaster from Hobby Lobby. I don't get to buy arf's very often and this one looked pretty good. The $59.00 price tag should have been my first clue into impending doom. I received the kit in great shape and the assembly was fairly straight forward. The wing connection clips are very weak, but are easy fixed with small screws through the locking tabs. I checked the CG (none is given and Hobby Lobby will not return my emails) as best I could and moved the receiver and speed control as far forward as I could. This seemed to give an acceptable CG range. My first test flight was directly into the wind, about 6 mph. Roll out took about 50 feet and she rose off of the ground. A slight left bank at 50 feet up was very nice, then as I began to level out the wings began to rock as if in a tip stall. I tried to lower the nose, to no avail. The plane stayed in a nose high attitude, wings rocking, all the way into the ground. Damage to the plane was minor, a little ground rash, a cracked propeller, and a crack in the foam around the motor mount. The members of my club that were present and I agreed that the pane was probably tail heavy and needed some nose weight. I went home and repaired the damage. I went to the field again this morning, after adding some nose weight, and tried for a second time. This time the plane refused to lift off after 100 feet at full power and wound up off the end of the runway, destroying the nose section. A call to Hobby Lobby ended in the customer sales rep saying that "It's a great flying plane" and sending me to tech support. Tech support has a message from me, but has yet to call back. I called Hobby Lobby again and was told that tech support is in high demand and they will get to me when they can. Moral of the story, Don't buy from Hobby Lobby unless you have money to throw away!

frednjess

Hope this helps someone save some money!

schwatd

Hey I'm no expert by any stretch of the imagination but if the plane mushed all the way back down to the ground I can only think of two things that quickly come to mind, one is lack of power plant performance and the plane is too heavy for the airfoil/wingload, or is marginal at best. I actually watched a real Moonie with 4 folks in it do exactly what you discribed and the power plant wasn't putting out the proper HP, the plane just mushed right back down to earth nose high and pancaked on a residential street, minor injuries, except for the airframe which was toast.

evan-RCU

Moral to the story is make sure the airplane has the CG in the right place before trying to fly it. You and the other club members should know better. Sorry but you are out $60 and learned a good lesson. Hopefully when you are flying $500 or $5000 airplanes you'll look back on this and triple check everything including CG before flying...

frednjess

And now I get to defend myself...I did check the CG, based on calculating the dimensions of the aircraft, since no CG placement is given by the manufacturer!!! I've had plenty of experience flying RC planes and helicopters and am a AMA certified trainer with my local club, Midwest Performance Flyers. I'm going to agree with schwatd and say that the thing is under powered and overweight. (Glad to hear the real airplane only caused minor injuries) I'm just posting a warning to other potential buyers. Leave this one alone. One highlight, I've got a geared 400 power system for a B-25 project I've been itching to do... Guess I've got to look for the silver lining.

Kmot

My Feedback: (24)

Foamies! [:'(]

bruff

My Feedback: (18)

Weird, my flies great. No problems at all. When did you charge the batteries? Right before the flight? NiMh batteries do not like to be charged the night before. They lose power sitting overnight. In fact the 2nd owner is still flying it. There is a number of build threads over on RCGroups that have the proper CG.
Again sorry you had a problem.
Bob

B Shipp

My Feedback: (13)

Hey Fred, just curious. You said that you calculated the CG, What did you come up with? Like percent of chord and distance back from the leading edge. If you talk to Hobby Lobby could you tell us what there numbers are. I would like to see if they are the same.

Thanks
Brian-

telejojo

For 60 bucks what would you expect?

Nitro Blast

My Feedback: (2)

Well mine is already on the way, and after reading the posts, I figured I'd repower it from the start.

Funny though as you watch the video's online, it doesnt look underpowered at all.

I'll not do the nicad/brushed setup, brushless and lipos for me please.

frednjess

I was mezmerized by the video too. I even thought it had plenty of power on the stock system. It balanced about 3" behind the trailing edge with the stock setup. After the initial flight I set it to 25% of the wing chord, about 2.25 inches. That's where the nose wouldn't come off the ground. Maybe I just got the bad one of the lot...

Glacier Girl

My Feedback: (4)

Something else to look at. Since there was apparently no lack of power on the first launch, and you didn't have it on the second one. You listed a cracked prop and mount damage in the foam.
Very good chance you hurt the motor too, and didn't realize it. Those cheap brushed motors can burn up the wiring pretty quickly if you stall them. Motor might still spin, but power would be way down, hence the long runout and no launch.
Also you could have changed the motor angle in the first landing and changed the thrust line.

schwatd

Glacier Girl has some absolutely excellent points, I have a Cessna 182 Skywagon to fly around just for fun and after a couple of crashes, it barely had enough power to get off the ground. Once I got it apart I found that the back brass shaft bushing had punched out of the motor detents and was elsewhere in the airframe. I replaced the motor and no problems. And I hadn't even thought of the split prop but that's an easily overlooked situation.

4*60

My Feedback: (41)

Thanks for the warning. I will be extra careful on this one which I will be receiving shortly. $60 can give you a good little flyer.

Anyway, as someone who installed a prop backwards once and couldn't understand why the GWS Tiger Moth was so underpowered, I feel your pain. Perhaps there was something basically wrong with that one. I know you didn't mean:

"It balanced about 3" behind the trailing edge with the stock setup. "

BTW the TM now has plenty of power with the prop on correctly. I am not saying you did anything wrong just saying there could be many reasons including one bad ARF.

frednjess

Yeah, I meant leading edge...

aerowoof

should balance at the aluminum strut according to people who have built this.

kerrydel

My Feedback: (2)

I don't care if it's $60 or $600, if they market as an RC airplane, then I expect it to fly.

Kerry

aerowoof

do a google search,you should find a discussion group about problems with this plane as I did.there is a problem with weight and the gear drive housings being weak.possibly in the first mishap you meeseed up the gear drive unit and had less power.also the nose gear needs to be set to have a nose up attitude at rest .they need lipo batteries and if possible brushless motors.

frednjess

About brushless and lipos, yeah, i know. Actually, I just received my hobby lobby catolog this morning and lo and behold there's a new brushless lipo skymaster!!! Pg. 36 Exact same airframe, new motors, and a 2100 11.1 lipo. Granted, it's also $239.00. It's also made out of the same expanded bead foam which I won't buy again because as soon as you set it down a little rough the stuff comes apart and is tough to fix. I'm trying to fix my wrecked skymaster (see pic at top of forum) but it's taking alot of guerilla glue. I think I'll be staying away from these foam models and stick with the balsa and fanfold planes. I can fix those or replace for next to nothing.

aerowoof

try using elmers glue to glue the foam it is cheap and hold well on foam and does not expand like gorrilla glue.

Nitro Blast

My Feedback: (2)

I think I'm just going to add 1 cell to the pack, and run a 50 amp controller.

Looking it over I dont see the real issue with power to weight. What I do see is a battery pack of questionable origin. No juice, no power. I'll add 1 cell, and make a pack out of better quality cells.


Looking closer, heck man for $60 bucks this is a fun scale airplane that had servos motors and props. Deal.

aerowoof

nitro blast,
problem is the weight of the plane with the nimh pack 44 oz too heavy needs to be around 40 oz sell the battery pack and get li-po pack actually two that will fit in the battery location and flys better

Nitro Blast

My Feedback: (2)

Thanks for that, I'll do it. I have plenty of Li-Po's. I'll just plug one in with the wattmeter first, and run a simulated flight and watch the voltages and get a good, safe time limit.

Thanks again.

Barlingbomber

Hi,

glad to have found this thread. Got one of these from Germany on Ebay. It came with zero instructions (but yes it was cheap!). the ebay blurb said it comes with 5 servos, a speed controller, but no receiver, however I can see the last few inches of an aerial poking out of the tail boom so I'm not so sure... My problem is that I have no info on the speed controllers in there and don't know what the stock power pack is supposed to be fro those motors. can someone who got the full package please fill me in on the standard configuration? The space for the battery pack is a cube so its obviously some kind of square battery pack, which I guess I'd have to make up as I haven't seen many that shape on the market (am I looking in the wrong place?). I like the idea of 2 small LiPos and brushless outrunners with separate speed controllers . Would the gentleman who was planning that like to tell me which motors, controllers and LiPos he was thinking of for this application?

thanks,

Phil