New ARTF Panic quality.

[Ian Whittaker]

[Andy Stephenson]

I use home cut wing cores and cover them in lining wallpaper and now I have moulded my own glass fibre fuselage which weighs only 5 Oz out of the mould. Even with all the waste from experimenting with moulding it's still cheaper than the cost of the latest ARTF kit.

[kc]

The Panic was advertised by Avicraft as far back as the late 1970's so is one of the real classic RC planes.   Great plane flown by my clubmates at several clubs over the years.   Anyone who has seen the Panic Team fly will know this is one of the best models.

I have always thought that someone could restyle the Panic a little to make it more realistic and maybe it would still fly as well.........

[Martin McIntosh]

I flew a mate`s Panic in the 70`s, great fun. With the price of servos now being very low for good ones why mess about with links? Simply fit four.

[Martin McIntosh]

Just looked up the price of a kit, £279, good god and it does not even include a motor and esc. I could probably build one from my scrap box.

[Caveman]

1 hour ago, Martin McIntosh said:

I flew a mate`s Panic in the 70`s, great fun. With the price of servos now being very low for good ones why mess about with links? Simply fit four.

 

Simple Yorkshire logic, two decent servos £20+, two carbon fibre pushrods about £2, saving £18 or more, and, around 70g in weight.

 

No contest ! Also it's a simple, standard biplane solution. 

 

GDB

[Don Fry]

I flew one with 4 X 20g HV servos, because I wanted to see what crow brakes were like. Hard work to bring the top wing servo wiring into the fusalage neatly.

[Andy Stephenson]

Don,

How did the crow braking work?

[Maurice Dyer]

19 hours ago, Caveman said:

Chris, get the kit. As far as I recall none of the hardware is supplied other than the ‘poppers’, an engine mount, pre-bent undercarriage and saddle clamps, so you can build it with whatever you decide is suitable for horns, hinges etc.

 

GDB

IM no beginner; building flying 45 years, but the poppers/ studs on my kit build Panic were a right pain to do, On now and its waiting its test flight. 

Anybody had these studs/poppers etc come loose in flight ??

Maury

[Cuban8]

On 12/12/2022 at 10:27, Engine Doctor said:

Nothing new re the supply of rubbish hardware in kits . Its sadly been the norm  formany years with many suppliers.  I nearly alway throw most of it in the bin and supply my own. I know it's added cost but even the basic stuff like piano wire is rubbish a nd likely to snap. The distributors don't give a damm either . With the cost of ARTF's going haywire it's just not worth the risk using anything your not happy with. 

What I can't get my head around is why distributors don't do something about it ? After all its their name that takes the hit .

Let's face it, this nonsense has been going on for decades and was all too commonplace even when we bought kits that you actually had to build!

Rock hard floorboard quality balsa, formers that looked like they were cut out after a good lunch at the local pub and instructions that made Chinglish understandable were also a problem that usually met with a casual mention and dismissal from kit reviewers. I'm sure I've still got an instruction booklet comprising several sheets of double sided printed A4 without a paragraph or punctuation mark hardly anywhere to be seen.

  Very rarely did you use the supplied hardware (a few exceptions, naturally) even from well known manufacturers who would supply cheap and rubbishy plastic clevices etc that were quite unsuitable for anything that was intended to fly. I'm afraid the magazines and their reviewers didn't (still don't?) help matters by usually glossing over the issue  and not taking the kit manufacturer to task in print about poor quality rather than "I wasn't happy with the quality of the supplied hardware so I changed it" type of comments.

if it's no good for the reviewer, then it's no good for the buyer. Not good enough at all, I'm afraid.

Many years ago I wrote to the editor of one of the many R/C mags that were around at the time, don't remember which one now, and asked why we never saw a bad review of kit. The reply that I received said something along the lines of "if a product that was offered for review was found to be of very poor quality, then it wouldn't be reviewed but returned to the supplier, with a note saying must try harder'". All very well and good for a pre-production jobby - but if that product was already in production and selling in the shops?.........

 

[J D 8]

49 minutes ago, Maurice Dyer said:

 

Anybody had these studs/poppers etc come loose in flight ??

Maury

   Seen it happen a couple of times, struts fluttering down but Panic's keep flying.  Not had one [a Panic ] myself but popular in club at one time.

Edited December 13, 2022 by J D 8
detail

[Maurice Dyer]

I remember when the Panic team flew at good old Sandown Park back in the late 70s/80s,

One year . they launched 13 and got 10 back in one piece.......

Happy days. Long gone,

maury

[Maurice Dyer]

1 hour ago, Cuban8 said:

Let's face it, this nonsense has been going on for decades and was all too commonplace even when we bought kits that you actually had to build!

Rock hard floorboard quality balsa, formers that looked like they were cut out after a good lunch at the local pub and instructions that made Chinglish understandable were also a problem that usually met with a casual mention and dismissal from kit reviewers. I'm sure I've still got an instruction booklet comprising several sheets of double sided printed A4 without a paragraph or punctuation mark hardly anywhere to be seen.

  Very rarely did you use the supplied hardware (a few exceptions, naturally) even from well known manufacturers who would supply cheap and rubbishy plastic clevices etc that were quite unsuitable for anything that was intended to fly. I'm afraid the magazines and their reviewers didn't (still don't?) help matters by usually glossing over the issue  and not taking the kit manufacturer to task in print about poor quality rather than "I wasn't happy with the quality of the supplied hardware so I changed it" type of comments.

if it's no good for the reviewer, then it's no good for the buyer. Not good enough at all, I'm afraid.

Many years ago I wrote to the editor of one of the many R/C mags that were around at the time, don't remember which one now, and asked why we never saw a bad review of kit. The reply that I received said something along the lines of "if a product that was offered for review was found to be of very poor quality, then it wouldn't be reviewed but returned to the supplier, with a note saying must try harder'". All very well and good for a pre-production jobby - but if that product was already in production and selling in the shops?.........

 

Sounds liker the DSM Saphir I once built........

[Andy Stephenson]

If the struts on a Panic are very tight to get on, it's because they are not aligned properly and can come off with a small amount of disturbance. There are things you can do about this. If the receptacles on the strut are too far apart, a narrow "V" shaped slot can be cut in the end and the gap closed up with the aid of some pressure and cyno. Conversely if they are too close together a saw cut can be made in the end of the strut and a thin wedge can be pushed in and cynoed into position.

Never pull the strut straight off the wing tip, "peel" it off as this is much less likely to pull the stud/poppers out.

[J D 8]

    Just a thought, but would some strips of Velcro do the job? After all id does a good job of holding lipos in place 

[Maurice Dyer]

What I did is to make a 1/16 balsa wing tip blank ( a new rib), I then drilled through the popper holes into the 1/16 blank and sewed the 

popper onto the wood with strong thread. Then dropped Zap onto the thread. Then I made small indents into the wing tip rib where the poppers would sit

and glued the false wing tip rib with the poppers attached, onto the wing tip.

Sand and  cover. Jobs a good un.

 

Maury

 

 

[Cuban8]

3 hours ago, Maurice Dyer said:

I remember when the Panic team flew at good old Sandown Park back in the late 70s/80s,

One year . they launched 13 and got 10 back in one piece.......

Happy days. Long gone,

maury

Do you remember the Panic that 'broke up' in mid air only for the detached top wing to glide down under perfect control while the low winger that was now left carried on with the display? Great party trick in its day.

[J D 8]

 Must have put a reflex section on the top wing for it to do that.

[Keith Billinge]

My lovely wife bought me the Panic Kit from Avicraft in November for my Birthday. (She's so lovely!)

I've had a look at the kit, but the buiding board is occupied at the moment.

 

The hardware items packed inside, look pretty good quality and the benefit of buying from the designer was, that he included some wing joining bandage and a set of the aileron ball and socket push rods, for joining the upper and lower ailerons.

Very good customer service and a great price too....so I am told.

 

KB

[GrumpyGnome]

The ARTF will come from a different source to the kit I expect, and probably doesn't share the same hardware........🙂