We modellers are sick and tired of kits that won't go together smoothly, have parts missing or incorrect size, have insufficient assembly instructions, or have major design defects. In other industries they have product recalls; in modelling, the poor slob of a customer is left to fend for himself!

Even when kit shortcomings have been pointed out by repeated posts to E Zone, deficiencies have not been corrected. It is not up to US to live with your mistakes. It is up to YOU to correct them!

In case you don't know the routine, NO design is ever optimum on the first pass. You build it, test it and tweak it, perhaps three or four cycles before you have a good design. That's what is required. That's what we expect of you. I will look for "Improved" or "Revised" on your kits and your advertising to indicate you have gotten the message.

I'm posting my pet peeve below. I invite my fellow modellers to post theirs, using the same format.

GRAUPNER: The wing mount design on your TERRY is deficient for torsion loads. Catch a wingtip when landing in the grass and you have major damage. PLEASE FIX IT!

To Guillows, of course!

Your wood quality and die cutting have deteriorated dramatically over the years. Your die cutting is now disgraceful!! PLEASE FIX IT!!

The landing gear really needs beefing up. This is a fine FLYING plane, but lacks in its landing ability. The wood used is of extremely poor quality . . . too soft, and cheap hardwood.

Not to throw water on the fire, but direct communication with the manufacturer would probably get better results than a post in consumer advocacy on the Ezone. While your complaints are valid, I'm not sure they will ever reach the proper people by a posting in this forum.

A great addage is to "never accept a no from someone who can't say yes to begin with"

Azarr
www.azarr.com

Elliot

Your gripe is most certainly well founded and has been expressed by each and every one of us at one time or another.

While I agree with you 100% we must also look at the problem from the manufacturer as well. If we are talking about the larger companies and even these are small in comparison to most other industries there is really no excuse for the existance of major problems beyond the first kit production run. And just for the record there was a recall by a model company recently. Hanger 9 found a defect in one of their ARF kits and replaced the wing for anyone who had purchased this model. The problem you spoke of in the Terry is not so much a design defect but rather the result of the properties of the material used in the kit.

Bill,

IMHO it's a design defect if inappropriate materials are used in an inappropriate manner. Or visa versa.

It's easily fixed on the Terry by gluing blocks on the underside of the wing to fit snugly in the fuse. I learned it on ezone. It works well enough that I had to install CF rods on the leading edges of the wings to stop the divots I was getting from landing in a field with small saplings all over. I once cartwheeled it too. The wings haven't twisted off.

Terry

RB

Originally posted by Reformed Slimer
To Guillows, of course!

Your wood quality and die cutting have deteriorated dramatically over the years. Your die cutting is now disgraceful!!

Guillows wood and die-crunching have sucked for at least thirty years.
You can usually make the plastic parts and the decals fly using the plans (outline, mostly) and wood from the hobby shop.

Bill and Red -

Yes, of course it's easy to fix, once you know about it. The point is: GRAUPNER must know about it (if they don't, shame on them!) and they haven't fixed it!! This needlessly leaves every customer to find out about it the hard way!!!!

Elliot

I have experienced the same problem and solved it just as RB has. In my answer to the original post this had slipped my mind which is not too unusual these days.

In retrospect I must agree that the use of inappropriate material is a design flaw. Graupner should have included some method of locking the wing in place to avoid the damage we encountered. I was lucky as my damage was very slight.

I've always thought that the main problem with the Terry fuselage breakout was because there is no third point to prevent the wing from pivoting. Locally we fixed the problem by inserting a plywood piece about 1/2 in deep in a slot cut in the fuselage at the location of the foam insterts. The real problem solver was a nylon bolt at the trailing edge. If I had it to do over again, I would remove the molded portion that holds the nylon inserts and add a reinforced ply piece that could be drilled and tapped. That with a dowel at the front or a bolt at the rear should stop the problem.