60in Tweety 40 ARF (Balsa)

Product Rating:

Product Review (submitted on December 27, 2014):

Please note this review applies to the aerosport 46 as well. both planes are extremely similar in terms of construction flaws and results. These planes have a glaring error in the instruction manual. On page one is should say:" Cut out the current landing gear plate from the wing forward to the firewall and replace it with something at least double the thickness and place triangle stock in all four corners of the lg plate. Failure to do so will result in immediate failure of the landing gear on or before the first flight!" The LG on these planes is guaranteed to fail on or before the first flight if you build it as is. You will be lucky if no serious damage occurs. Mine actually failed while the plane was sitting at idle after its first landing. It rolled to a stop sat that there for a moment and then as I approached it collapsed to the ground. There is no other possible outcome no matter how soft your landing is and mine was a total greaser. Gentle and perfect!!! In addition the hardware is just plain dangerous for an aerobatic plane even an electric one. Replace it with at least 2-56 solid rod hardware. The rest of what's wrong with this plane was "my fault'
I refuse to risk crappy performance from inverted 2 cycle engines so I side mounted mine at a bit of an angle. The result was major hogging out of the cowl. I should also mention the firewall to prop washer distance was 10mm too short necessitating a major change after much of the plane was completed grrrrr frustrating. Bottom line: don't trust the measurements in this manual. When finally completed and upgraded with adequate hardware and landing gear reinforcement I was at the end of the flying season here. Another annoyance because this plane and instruction manual were inadequate out of the box. The finalized version flew very nicely and with a JBA 56 ABC had unlimited performance and did all the moves patter 3D etc without any stress. So the end result came out very nice and flies great. I am looking forward to flying it next season since it needed so much work this season I couldn't enjoy it! The phrase "Hey it was only $85 kept popping into my mind. What can you expect? How about this- a safe adequately thought out and designed model that is not a particular challenge for someone with 25 years building and flying experience like me. Woe unto the beginner. For all of the above reasons these arf's are not really a good value. Your better off spending 20 bucks more and getting a great arf. After these I finished of an hobbyking katana 46 that I got for under $100 on special. It is so much nicer to assemble, so much better off and flies easily as well as either of these that the 10bucks or so more I spent seems like a great investment. I may grow to love the aerosport 46 as I fly it but frankly its so lightly framed and fragile I will be lucky if it lasts more than a year. Double check EVERYTHING on this arf after every session or you will be in pieces before you know it! Oh and yeah- it will actually fly well on a strong 40 glo but I suspect given the absolute lightness of the structure the "GP" was wishful thinking. Fix the above and stick in a 40 sized electric motor.