Yesterday I received a replacement for the Smoothie ARC I bought myself for Xmas. The plane I returned had cuts completely Thur the balsa leading edge of the left wing. Turns out I should have kept it, the replacement has a broken back wingtip that is going to be impossible to fix. Is anyone else having this kind of trouble with Brodak Arc's?
Richard,
I too have had no issues like yours with my Super CLown, P40, Vector, BabyClown, BiSlob ARF's, or my Nobler Arf.
Now that isn't to say they were perfect, but all were relatively easy fixes.
So I can't say whether I was really lucky, or you have been really unlucky.
I think ARF's in this price range (less than $130 or so) fit a particular niche in the hobby. They are great if you want to try something out, but are not sure whether you really want to spend all the time building one from a kit. However due to the low cost (not much more than the kit), they often, because of the assembly line method of building, come with some issues.
On the other hand, there are "premium" ARF's--in the ~
>$200 range (
and I apologize if I am unintentionally insulting anyone. The ranges are pretty approximate and not hard quality points!) where a lot of care has been put into the engineering and design of the kit. Here I think you have a better chance of finding something similar to what you would have if you built your own kit.
Just my opinions.
edited to fix a homophone problem!