Well this is my first post here and I'm from the other side of the pond. I live in small town, Illinois. Pardon any language issues.
The ARF situation is no better here in the states. After I bought my E-flite Diamante I then discovered the weak undercarriage. It folded on a pretty soft landing, no bounce and grass field. I had previously read about this but decided to fly until it broke, which it did. I made my own laminated ply mounting block, reinforced it with tri-stock and glued the whole thing in with epoxy and microballoons. No problems since.
I also had a Hangar 9 Tribute 36 with a known weak fuselage problem. They were cracking at the trailing edge of the wing. Yep, mine cracked in flight. Fortunately ?? I was doing a flat spin and the plane just plopped into a wheat field. I contacted Horizon Hobby and they sent me a new fuse, no questions asked.
This is all still very frustrating. Things have come a long way since I first flew way back in 1988, but they could still be better. Just about every ARF I've built, I have either modified something or changed the hardware. More quality control would go a long way.
