Rich,

I agree that most are good value, especially when I consider how much time and effort it would take me to get a model to that same state of completion. On the other hand, I agree with Ty that better methods could be used to attach the leadouts to the bellcrank and this would eliminate 95 percent of the gripes I've heard about them.

What do I expect from an ARF?  I expect my ARF to last a few hundred flights and I expect my ARF to willingly sacrifice its life if necessary in order to help me become a better stunt pilot. 

So far, none have done so, but one is recovering from severe damage suffered at Huntersville.

Take care,

Ron

Hollow fuselages are a bit of an eye opener, at least around the wing and forward to the 'hardwood' engine mounts. And the controls.  I don't think they should last as long as a scratch built model, but they should last at least a season (barring crashes) before they start getting gross. The covering shouldn't fall off in flight, either. Nice post. Steve

So far, I have gotten exactly what I expected from ARFs.  We have two.  A Nobler and a Vector.  I expected to change the control systems and did.  Covering is suspect, but then, these are not intended to be *all out Contest Planes* for us.  So, they are great for what they are.

Would be great if there were more options..  like a Standard ARF and ones that comes with a better control system, and more attention to detail spended on QC for warbed wings and covering etc.  For Example:  Two series of ARF..  a typical ARF and a ARF "CS" (competition series) or something.

I'm quite happy with my current ARF Flite Streak and the Score. sure save me a lot of time to get to that stage.  Even though I had to put in a whole new control system in both, solid fuselage in the FS, and  had to beef up the LG mount in the Score.  Its still good value IMO.

I hope that the manufacturers are listening".
I believe that the control issue is the biggest single correctable issue.
Most ARF/ARC failures that I have seen are a result of POOR ASSEMBLY....poor glue, not following instructions, that kind of stuff. And I also believe that, in the rush to bring a plane to market, there is a tendency to overlook some basic assembly faults.
Covering seems to be an issue that should be addressed as well.
I do see an improvement in each generation from each manufacturer.

Flaps falling off sounds like "assembler  " of the model failure!

Joe Yau brought up a very good point about the market needing a Basic ARF and a Deluxe ARF of the same plane.

Until this happens universally (we do have the Strega with Morris controls) we do have a close alternative. All we need to do is contact Jim at Control Line Central:

http://www.clcentral.com/default.asp

Jim carries most of the ARFs available and he also carries ready made control systems from Tom Morris. Just tell Jim you want a "Deluxe ARF" and he will send you your ARF with all the controls needed (BC, Horns, PRs, ball links, etc) to make up a Deluxe, almost bulletproof, plane! :-)

His ready made Deluxe Bellcranks already have the leadouts bushed at the BC and come in several sizes. Jim has the control dimensions for most ARF/ARCs and can make you a custom, smooth operating, control system that is ready to drop into your new plane, and it will still be working smoothly on flight # 1,000.  :-)

With this system, and a bottle of clear nail polish to seal down the "China kote" covering, you will have a plane that is = to, or better than what many modelers can build.

$95 +/- for ARF + $40 to $50 for a custom made, top of the line, controls, still is close to what a good kit costs. (without paint/covering, labor, custom controls, etc.)

BTW: Jim is a great guy to deal with.

PS: Good thread Mr. P :-)

Awh Rudy, I think I'll flame you just to spite!             

All seriousness aside - good call.  Jim Walker certainly was interested in entry level people having sucess.  I do not know if you have had the pleasure of building a Firecat, but that model exemplified another trait - SERIOUS prefab.  Today, using CA's I think you could have a 'Cat ready for covering inside of an hour - try THAT with your S1 Ringmaster!

BTW Jim Walker was also seriousy experimenting with RC - he'd have loved the "dark arts" RTF's!

Hi Mr. Moritz,

I am sorry to hear that you are so unhappy with your CL ARFs. Like most things in life, happiness is directly related to the gap between our expectations and our reality.

In keeping with Mr. P's VG question that started this thread: I think many people asked too much from the 1st generation of CL ARF/ARCs that came in at a very low price point.

Todays CL flyers that started in CL and never left for the Dark Arts, have a long history of building their own planes and most have developed a high level of skill that produces beautiful, straight, and long lasting planes. These planes are worth a lot of $$$. The CL kits have crept up in price to $100 / $250. Scratch builders can build for less, but put in a lot of $weat equity. When you add paint, time/labor, good controls, etc. you end up with a great plane that is worth several hundred $$$ You would have to pay $500 to $1,000 if you had someone, Morris etc, make it for you. This gives us some idea of our HB CL planes real value.

Now, when this CL person buys one of the 1st generation CL ARFs, he compares it to the only thing he knows; hi$ near perfect Home Built CL plane. The $89 ARF comes up short. "BIG" gap in expectations = BIG unhappiness. No surprise here. 

If it were not for GP bringing out the FS and Nobler ARFs, I would have never come back to CL, and I have many friends who have said the same thing. I knew these were 1st generation ARFs, and that at this very low price they would need a little help to come up to modern flight standards. An eve. of reading Sparky's excellent Forum was all it took to find the few mods needed. A call to Jim (please see my post #14 below) for controls, a few pieces of balsa and ply, a little CA, a plastic RC tank, and I was up and flying.

My FS and Nobler have not had any of the problems you mentioned. And my excellent Brodak P-40 ECL has over 150 trouble free flights on it, with no signs of wear and tear, and except for a CF PR, ball joint rod ends and clear nail polish seals, it is built STOCK. It even flew well enough to get me a trophy at a major contest. I expect hundreds more flights on it as well.

BTW: I would call the Brodak ARFs almost 2nd generation, especially the Strega with the Morris controls. I think we will see more and more CL ARFs like this. Just look at Steve Moon's excellent "component", ready to assemble and paint, G. Nobler with Morris like controls for $200. This may be the beginning of the 3rd generation. I think the mfg. (Brodak and others) now understand that CL modelers (especially us "Retreads") are willing to pay more to get an ARC/ARF that can be made to fly well, and last a long time, by using the equipment that comes in the box.

I came from a world where ARFs are better than the vast majority of model builders could ever make a plane. They are built perfectly straight in accurate jigs, they are painted and covered by professionals, and are lighter/stronger than any but the very best modelers could ever make them. My "Extreme Flight" ARF YAK-54 pattern plane is as perfectly built and finished as most of the top CL planes I have seen. These excellent Dark Arts ARFs are several generations down the evolutionary path toward perfection, a path that our CL ARFs are just starting down.

My point is that the CL ARC/ARFs will continue to improve, and the gap between your expectations and your reality will narrow, and thus your HAPPINESS will increase! 

Regards, 

Happiness. I'm talking about time vs result. Feel quite good actually, thank you. My friends have brought home hardware using ARFs. For that matter I have as well in years past. Not so this past season. Louis Rankin's Oriental is not comparable to my Primary Force. For one thing a full fuse plane is less vulnerable to the weird vibrations set up by a soft nosed profile. Also, it is obvious to anyone who saw Louis' plane, that it was assembled by a master craftsman, and was an ARC not an ARF. Doubt that Louis didn't get in there where it mattered and make sure about what was glued to what. Not really possible with an ARF. I purchased my ARF Primary Force a week before Brodak, needing a bird to put in the sky right away. It was assembled straight and glued together better than instructed. Fully checked over by club members including at least two top 20 builder/fliers. None of us expected the nose to be soft. But it was. The instructions for assembling an ARF do not include stripping the covering on the fuse, replacing motor mounts and doublers. Necessary first steps to really fix that bird. Time spent trouble shooting and trying various add on patches could have been spent building a kit built or scratch built profile, a plane with the right ply, right motor mounts, correct glue and quality covering.

Yep, I've seen plenty of ARFs work fine. Some that did not. Most ARFs I know about are not flown hard, flight after flight, as serious competition planes. Usually they are flown three or four times a week, at most, during the summer season. Competition planes are typically flown much more often. Many practice flights, in addition to flights at contests. I've frequently seen the shortcomings of ARFs show up when subject to the regimen of a typical comp stunt bird. Also, I agree, the later ARFs are better. But... still in my opinion, are not to be relied on for the long term. Some ARFs are a pain from the start.

As for answering the original question... I expect an ARF that I put together as instructed to fly as reliably as a kit built plane build by a experienced modeler, who can build straight using tried and true materials and techniques. What's the big deal with meeting these standards. Most ARFs show above average craftsmanship. It's a matter of upgrading some materials and improving this and that. That hard stuff is already good enough.

Hi Denny, (AKA Dennis A. ;-)

Your right. Mr Walker would have loved to see the fantastic RTF RC planes available today. When I worked briefly with ACE they had an unbelievable .40 size RTF trainer. It had everything installed, all controls hooked up, even the TH was hooked to the servo and the throw preadjusted RTF. You could buy it on a Fri eve., charge the radio batteries overnight, and fly it Sat. AM without touching ANY tools or glue! It had the most ingenious take apart system for the wing, tail and the LG, all done by hand with very positive locking systems. Mr Walker would have been VERY happy with this setup. 

I hope that our CL ARFs evolve to this level someday. My guess is that Mr. Walker would strongly recommend that ARC/ARFs be allowed to compete for his namesake trophy. 

Thanks for the positive comments. I'm glad that I did not get attacked by corporal curt or Mr F for my comments about Mr Walker wanting ARFs to be allowed to compete for his trophy. 

I think if he had lived a little longer he may have been the one to introduce ARF/RTFs into RC rather than us having to wait for the Lanier planes of the 1970s.

Hi Louis,

Thant is a great looking Profile Bear you have there! Are you saying this is available as an ARC or ARF? If so, please let me know where I can get one. .... TIA 

Regards, 

Rudy,

Yes, the Bear Profile is available as an ARF/ARC; however, you first have to purchase a Top Flite Tutor II.  My Bear Profile is a Tutor II that I bashed into what you see in the picture.  I have been flying it for 3 seasons now.  Yes, it is very competitive in profile and PAMPA.  The Tutor II is one the best flying profiles out there!!!!!!

I vote: DOWN WITH ARFS! Joking of course. It seems to me that the first generation ARFs often got the hard stuff right, while short changing some easily fixed components (if they were fixed at the point of initial construction). Better covering, or at least covering that stayed stuck when gone over with a kote iron. High grade plywood doublers and motor mounts. Improved controls. 90% of the plane was usually good or high quality. Guess evolution is part of the process. Frankly, with all due respect, Louis Rankin's being somewhat disingenuous. First off he's a master craftsman who covers his ARCs with monokote stuck down to an under adhesive. (Give it up Louis, where is your picture by picture description of the MAGIC process of doing KOTE. His monokote jobs are fantastic!) After seeing his purty Oriental ARC at the NATS  (if looked like paint, period) I'm sure he went through the ARC component by component fixing plenty of this and that.

The economics of Chinese manufacture probably distort these planes some. For instance, if you're selling an ARF shipped from China for $100, $20 worth of name brand covering material is not going to be possible. So. Whatever you use to cover the plane, it will have to be manufactured in house or near bye. I guess that's why the Moonies have opted for clear covering on their nifty component "kits." Similarly, $5  worth of 5 ply is not going to happen. I guess maple trees don't grow in China, hence the crushable motor mount material.

Unfortunately 90% of right is not right. This summer debugging a couple of soft nosed profile ARFs was a major ongoing frustration. I don't plan on going back there, doing that again. As I said above, could have built a few Twisters instead.

The modeling clay secret sounds intriguing!  I'll probably never have the opportunity to visit your shop or see you at a contest, but I'm sure interested in anything that would help the covering process.

I fully agree that monokote does take a lot of time to do it right.

Don,

I will be at VSC this coming year.  Come on over to Tucson and I will hold a covering clinic one evening in the hotel room.  If there is enough interest I can even try to coordinate one of the conference rooms for an evening.

Dennis regarding the ultra sharp leading edge. On the Cardarf at least, it doesn't matter. I left mine alone because I wanted to have it exactly "out of the Box". See my last reply on the ARF disapiontments thread. It's an eye opener , I'm not blowing smoke.     Rainman aka Gary Tultz   

Hi Dennis,

Thanks for the reminder on our ARFs LE. This is an easy (and Free!) mod that can't do any harm, and most likely will help on most ARFs.

RE: controls, Do you actually put "bearings" in your controls? Like these:

http://www.centralhobbies.com/control_linkage/clevis/mkd.html

Or do you put in some form of "bushings"?

If you use the CH type control bearings, do you use RC type horns? I think this would work well in our CLPA planes. Not only would it make our controls very smooth in operation, but they would last for thousands of flights! :-)

Regards, 

Hi Dennis,

Your right, these ball bearing control connectors are cool. I have seen them on pattern planes, but I have never used them. I think they are as perfect as we can get in modeling. Their accuracy and smoothness would be wasted on me, but may be useful to some of the top flyer's like you, Buck, etc. I have been using ball links for over 20 years and they have always been good enough for my "much less than perfect" skill level. ;-)

I agree with you about the many items we in CL could use from the car and Heli world. Their parts make our airplane (both RC and CL) HW parts look downright primitive! The titanium turnbuckle pushrods we use in RC come directly from the car world, as do the ball links that have now migrated from cars/heli to RC planes then to CL. 

Good point about the importance of using some form of bushing for our control horns. I would hate to have the hinges take on all the loads of a modern, large CLPA plane. I admire your modeling skills, but I'm too lazy to build my own like you do. I have to call Jim at CLC       http://www.clcentral.com/       He has the excellent Tom Morris horns. They have a brass tube bushing and the brass clip you described to go into a slot in the wing/stab TE. They even have these cool little nylon pieces on the horn that keeps the bushing centered on the clip. The adjustable horns are perfect for making EL to FLP % trim adjustments.

As I have mentioned before, I think the combo of an ARF/ARC + one of Jim's custom Control systems make an excellent CLPA plane. 

Well people,I believe the buyer should be getting more then I did when I recieved my Brodak Cardinal ARF(yesterday  March 26th ,2008 from Sams Stuff Hobbies))-When I recieved it ,the body  was nearly broken in two.The only thing that was holding it together was the 1/32 ply on one side-It was broken approx.1/2" behind wing slot-Now,I`ve built around 8 RC ARFs and the quality is FAR superior(all 8 are still in my hanger) then what the C/L community is recieving.I`ve built ARFs by Great Planes ,Hanger 9 and Sig ,to name a few.They are all high quality and good workmanship-I was expecting the same when I (unpacked) my Cardinal to my great misstake(should have looked her over good first)-or I would have sent it back forsure.The wing also had a ding in it,on top(broken sheeting on leading edge)-I also noticed that the rudder has NO offset? This don`t seem right either(I`m going to offset it 5/16"!).Well I`m going to repair the fues and fly this thing, I hope it lasts a few flights anyway-I have more then 50 flights on some of my RC jobbies and they show no signs up giving up the ghost yet and I have a habit of over powering all my planes.I love this hobby and build an equal share of my planes from kit form.The 5 hour (claim) build time the Cardinal supposed to take ,looks like it will take more like 30 to get er right!Just my 2 cents worth. I hope sincerly they improve the quality of the C/L jobs  to RC standards and give the customer what they want and should get!Oh I hav`ent even checked out the controls yet either-Just trying to get back into C/L abit and retaste abit of my youth.
Ron

I also noticed that the rudder has NO offset? This don`t seem right either(I`m going to offset it 5/16"!).Ron

Ron,
As De suggested, you should get in touch with either Joe Mader at Sam's Stuff or someone at Brodak's depending on whether the damage was done in shipping or it was packed from the factory that way.  Both have outstanding reputations for customer service.

Relative to the rudder offset, if you do decided to repair and assemble this Cardinal, don't add rudder offset.  The current thinking is to use only enough rudder offset to be sure that there is no inset.  I know that is different from what we were taught long ago and I had to learn the hard way.  Any significant amount of rudder offset will make the airplane difficult to trim.

Steve

I repaired the body and recovered 2/3s(gold with original black front-) of it.Actually looks better then original-I did contact Joe at Sams Stuff and he agreed to thro in a tank with the deal-good enough for me.You guys ,I have a couple questions, do you think a OS .40 LA would do this plane OK`? & Why does the LE have to be rounded more?If I do that, of course I`ll have to recover where it`s sanded-I plan on using one solid rod to elevator horn (horn to horn) and an adjustable ball link there for adjustments.
OK where`s the warm weather.I`m RTF but weather not co-operating here in western MIchigan-Sunny  but cold 25 right now at 10AM.
Ron

Thanks Rudy,I have the Cardinal just about finished .I did round the LEs and used ball links on controls.I will use the 40 LA because I`m just starting out again in C/L and would like the plane to fly abit on the slow side anyhow.I did notice one other thing I don`t like is the rear of fues seems to have alot of flex is this normal on this plane or just another bad trate on my particular Cardinal?I was even thinking about running guy wires from tips of stab to wingtips.Anyway I`m sending picture of the monster,still have to mount tank and do final balancing.Should be a good plane to practice and improve my flying ability.What would be a good weight for this plane when done?
thanks Again -Ron

I watched a ARF Cardinal fly with a Fox 40 (old 4 bolt bp) for power.  Looked like it had plenty of umph to me.  I am putting a GMA Fox 40 in mine as soon as I can get a couple of other planes in the air. Hoping I will have the Nobler in the air this weekend.  Still need a little more bench time on the B-40, but that won't take much more time.
Lee TGD

I will use the 40 LA because I`m just starting out again in C/L and would like the plane to fly abit on the slow side anyhow.

Remember, the size of the engine will not necessarily affect the speed of the plane (unless the engine is too SMALL!)  Prop selection determines air speed more so that anything.  Get the engine running right and prop it for the air speed the airplane likes.  LA 46s in ARF Noblers work, and fly as fast or as slow as you like.  Billy Werwage was using a ST 46 in his Vulcan, a 1956 design I-Beamer in the typical Classic Fox 35 size.