Wow!  So far I’m completely underwhelmed by my Electric Super Clown ARF.  From past reading, I’d been prepared to have to glass the nose ring, but that in no way prepared me for what I got when I opened the box.

The small parts scattered around the box from the parts bag that had split open was something of a harbinger of things to come, I guess.

First thing I noticed was that the ply nose ring was coming apart.  There was too little/no glue in between the ply laminations.  The second was that there were big gaps between the wood of the fuselage and the nose ring.  I’m talking about gaps of about 1/8” by ¼”.  Third, looking down on the nose ring, it was glued in with about five degrees of LEFT thrust.  Disappointing to say the least.  So I went ahead and wicked glue between the ply laminations and clamped it together.  After that dried, I fiberglassed the nose ring to the fuse.  I’ll shim to get the thrust angle correct.

Next, I took out the covering iron to shrink the incredible amount of wrinkles in the yellow covering.  The fuse and wing went okay, but the fin was miserable.  I passed the iron over the fin/rudder, and the clear film lifted from the red adhesive.  Unusable now.  I’m going to have to cut a new fin/rudder set and cover them myself.

The instructions say that the wing should slide in and to use thin CA to glue the wing in place.  Thin CA?!?  With these gaps?  I was figuring on using epoxy before I read the instructions, and that’s what I’ll have to do.

I haven’t gotten any farther on the build other than gluing the flap control horn in, which also took a good bit of measuring and trimming to make fit smoothly and correct.

Now, I know ARFs need a little work to complete, but of all the ARFs I’ve built over the past 30 years, this is the most disappointing.  Especially as I’ve always found anything I bought from Brodak in the past to be of superior quality and workmanship.  Maybe I’m just the one guy in a thousand who got the Monday morning , post-hangover, first plane of the day from the factory.  I hope so.

Now, a couple of questions about hinges.  The instructions say to use thin CA to do the flap hinges.  I see that as a disaster in my shaky hands.  Also, I’m going to go to pinned hinges on the elevator instead of the CA hinges included.  I see in a post by John Paris that he used Pacer Hinge Glue on his ailerons.  My local shops do not carry this, and I’m not in a mood to wait a week or so and order it mail order.  Can someone point me to a good glue to use and method for mounting these hinges?  I’ve always avoided pinned hinges as my hands aren’t always that steady, and I don’t want to get glue in the hinge pins.

Thanks for bearing with me,
Mark

I used those CA hinges on mine, and the controls are really stiff. It flies OK, but if I had it to do over again I wold not use those hinges.
My nose ring also had some left thrust built in. Thankfully it snapped off during assembly, so I glued it back on with a little right thrust.
The way I understand it, Brodak has a new vendor producing their ARFs now. Hopefully they don't have a large supply of the old stuff and we can start seeing the new product soon. With any luck the quality will be better and the covering will stay on.

A lot of the CL ARF's are pretty junky.  Lots of bad joints and warped parts, not to mention all the control system parts and hardware package that just aren't trustworthy.  I've been down the ARF road with several of the Top Flite offerings, a couple Sig's, and a Brodak, and by the time you get done fixing most of the problems, you could probably build a plane from scratch and come out further ahead.

The melted Vaseline method of keeping epoxy out of the hinge barrels is what I use.  30 minute epoxy seems to hold best of what I've tried. 

Look for "Tacky"glue at your craft/fabric store for hinge glue It fills gaps nicely and remains flexible. I vote yes on the Vasaline trick. Consider, also, pulling all the pins and inserting a wire through all the hinges to assure perfect
Alignment.

Also, Tacky seems to be identical to that canopy glue at high price.   

Just fold a piece of heavy duty aluminum foil or cut the bottom off of a beer can! Doesn't take much to melt Vaseline.

A lot of guys use thin CA to install pinned hinges (with the Vaseline trick), per John Miller's article in the .txt file below.  Steve

I had the same problems, but used pinned hinges and 30 minute epoxy.  Used 15 minute epoxy to fillet the wing.  The most time consuming part for me was to clear out enough space around the motor so that the motor was free to turn, and then to re-glue that nose ring area so that it could still be strong-enough.

But it flies well now.

Dave

Ditto on the space around motor.  For the price and time involved putting it together, I'm happy.  It does fly well.