Avios Super Tucano

[ICM]

Finished assembling my new Avios Super Tucano 1.6m. A bit more tedious than the typical foamy given the gluing, but well worth the effort. Absolutely beautiful warbird. One small issue. A tiny red triangular piece is missing from the left side shark mouth decal exposing the gray paint underneath. It's only noticeable up close, but I find the it annoying. HK does not have a decal sheet listed in spare parts, likely because all decals are pre-applied by the manufacturer. I contacted HK Customer Service to see if they could get the decal from the manufacturer for me so I could cut out a matching triangular red piece and apply, but no response as yet. If not, I'm considering getting a red color match sample from Home Depot and paint over the exposed gray with a small artist brush. Any thoughts or hints?

[Evan D]

A small piece of vinyl or sticker?

[ICM]

I got a red color match from Home Depot. Applied 2 coats and you can't see any trace of the tear.

[GuitarGuy1144]

Hey all,
I have some info to share. I was asked by some YT influencers to post this. This is specific to Avios Super Tucano.
Last weekend while flying that lovely bird.. I was practicing touch and go’s at a new field to get my muscle memory for landing.. well on my last approach I came in too shallow and some of the taller grass which surrounds the asphalt runway caught the Tucano and it dropped straight down about 2 feet and plopped onto the ground, as it hit the Fuse/Tail sections (where they meet and our glued) broke on me. When I say broke.. I mean the male/female foam that joins the 2 halves were still epoxied together. It clean snapped all around it (see pics).
so after several chats with some more senior foam repair pilots in our club and online.. I got some very good ideas on how to repair this tragedy (can you tell I LOVE this bird).
To that end, I proceed to round up all the bits needed to make her flyable again.. and not just flyable but better than the original design (why is the beginning of the 6 million dollar man running thru me now).

I ordered square tube carbon fiber, 5 min starbond epoxy to do the job.
As you can see by the pics I took 1 piece of the CF rod and cut into 4 equal 1” lengths and used those as my placement markers for both sides. Put them where I believed would give me the best success at strength and thick enough for the rods to fit on both sides.
of note. The one CF rod at the top center faces the cockpit mount point, so you have about 2 1/2” from the break to where the foam runs out before the cockpit installs.
i marked that particular so I knew how deep I could go.
the other 3 CF rods I split 50/50 to take the stresses.
placed all the rods at the best places as already aligned by the short pieces used earlier (see photos).
Then I did a trial fitment to verify it all aligned.
Final piece is to disassemble it all, mix the epoxy up, syringe it into the previously made CF square holes. Sand all sides of the CF rods and Paint brush all 4 of them with the epoxy and press it all together. Make sure any drips/runs can be wiped off asap.

I’m going to let this all full cure (24 hours) and take her out for basically a new maiden.

Let me know if you have any questions.

[Gecko 17]

Hey all.... I've yet to own any Hobby King /Avios planes. Been mostly a MotionRC and Horizon flyer. Would love to hear any overall opinions on their products. I've steered away from Banana Hobby and XFly after hearing to many negative stories. Killing me because the Bone....B1B Lancer is one of my all time favorite aircraft. She is just too sexy and deadly. I have heard that they have been improving but....$700 for a plane and a few hundred more to make sure your maiden ain't a dirt nap....hard pill to swallow.
So...Hobby King and Avios worth the dollars? If they ever get the C-130 V2 back in stock ..I see so much potential for an AC-130 gunship conversion! Who would want that beast in their hanger. If only you could throw flamming basketballs of 105 milke mike from it as well. 😉
All opinions are welcomed and appreciated.
Cheers!
May your landing be like a butterfly with sore feet....and you wife oblivious to your credit card statements! 😉

[stojakovic]

super tucano is a nice plane
but the workmanship is relatively rough，cannot compare with freewing or FMS
but if you like super tucano,it is worth

[Myagerman]

on the super tucano the LED wire from the tail section where does it plug into the wiring block. It looks like the LED wire coming from the front of the plane is plugged into the only LED spot on the wiring block

[xviper]

I have 2 of these planes in my hobby room at the moment. Here is a picture from one of them. You can see where the front light wire plug goes in. The one from the tail is plugged in between the front light and the AIL pins. It doesn't really matter which pins you put the rear light plug in. It can be any empty one as it only needs the plus and negative pins to work.

[xviper]

I haven't seen this thread for a long time and forgot it existed. There has been a lot of posts on the other forum about a couple of deficiencies on this model. Primarily, they have to do with the collapsing nose gear.
When this was first reported, more and more posts started to show up about the bad nose gear. People associated with HobbyKing had a panic attack, since the reputation of a brand new product was in jeopardy. One of the guys involved in helping to design this plane came up with what I consider a "knee jerk" solution to a misunderstood problem. The solution was this "wedge" that was placed under the nose retract cylinder body - NOT a solution at all and is actually a very BAD idea. I'll explain in a moment. It was very quickly shown that this wedge did absolutely nothing to prevent the nose gear collapse.
The nose gear can collapse under the slightest rearward pressure, some less pressure than others. This is due to the fork of the trunion ending up just a bit too far over the worm drive cylinder. A slight pressure easily pushes this beyond the cylinder and the whole strut just folds. This can sometimes ruin a perfectly good prop. This was due to the end stop contact being placed too far - a design flaw. The replacement was supposed to rectify this, but stock has always been a HobbyKing problem. If one was lucky, the strut collapsing didn't do any harm and you could just snap it back and make sure all your landings were greasers. If you weren't lucky, when the fork got pushed beyond the cylinder, this causes a hairline crack in the plastic retract body - very hard to see unless magnified. Subsequently, the nose gear collapses even easier. Later batches of these planes came with the revised retract and the wedge in place.

Why is this wedge a BAD idea? My S. Tucano had the nose gear collapse after driving into a gopher hole. No damage, snapped it back. All was well. However, it so happened that I had a set of JP retracts - all metal and end points were determined by over-voltage, NOT end point contacts as most retracts in our foamies are. I modified one and installed it into the S.T. Worked like a charm. Near bullet proof.
The following weeks, a friend's S.T. did the same thing. Ran into a gopher hole but at high speed. Not only did the nose gear collapse but it hit so hard, that it buckled and cracked the front wooden platform. Had the wedge not been there, the gear would have just collapsed and the nose gear mount would have just ripped out. The wedge relayed a lot of the force into the wood floor and broke clean through. I took his S.T. to repair it and put my second JP unit into it. Had the wood floor not break, it would have been a fairly simple job of repairing the mount, install the new gear and be done with it. The JP retract fits near perfectly into the mount. Only new holes need to be drilled - done deal. I had to completely rebuild that section of wood floor, using a lot of epoxy and hot glue to reinforce and fill in spaces where foam was gouged out when the floor buckled. Quite the ordeal. Had the break been more extensive, the front of the plane would have needed to be split in half along the seam.
I have since left out the wedge out and am leaving it up to the owner to put it in or NOT. I say, "Throw that darn thing away"!

[xviper]

Those who have been following the S. Tucano thread on the other forum know that this plane is no longer sold by HobbyKing. HK has even removed the webpage and what very few parts they have must be found under "parts" in the plane section. So, it is now called the CNHL (ChinaHobbyLine) Super Tucano. CNHL is in the process of getting stock on the plane and already has stock on many of the spare parts. They appear to stock almost every part for this plane, unlike the previous seller who stocked so little, it was like trying to find a 4-leaf clover in a sand dune.
This is great news since HobbyKing has no shipping methods for anything sold to Canada (past few months). We can put stuff in the cart and maybe even pay for it. They just won't ship it to us.

[LouisH]

CNHL also claims on its website that this is the improved version where weaknesses have been addressed and that they are indeed working hard to keep parts in stock. I'm curious why this popular aircraft is suddenly no longer available from HK; perhaps it was due to too many initial problems and poor parts availability.

[xviper]

CNHL also claims on its website that this is the improved version where weaknesses have been addressed and that they are indeed working hard to keep parts in stock. I'm curious why this popular aircraft is suddenly no longer available from HK; perhaps it was due to too many initial problems and poor parts availability.

The last batch that H.King sold had all the improvements, so the ones that CNHL are getting are identical. As for why HK lost the S. Tucano, this is anyone's guess. I'm guessing that there was a contract dispute between HK and the manufacturer for this plane. I'm totally in favor of this happening to more and more of HK's models as they will not ship anything to Canada now and for quite a few months. Next up for me is hopefully CNHL will grab the Catalina from the factory. The "King", in my view, has become the illegitimate Prince.

[xviper]

Looks like the HK (Avios) Twin Otter is no longer supported by HK and no parts are available. Maybe CNHL will pick it up too.

Wouldn't that be nice. However, I still see the product page, just no stock and no ETA. I do see some parts available for the TO, but Canada is still off the shipping destination.

[xviper]

BTW, I love my S. Tucano. I got the first batch, without the "wedge" (IMO, not needed) but with the poorly designed nose retract (bad placement of end point contacts on the little board). My friend also got one about the same time as me. Then he ordered a second one - NO JOY. That's when they stopped shipping stuff to Canada. I also ordered the Catalina. Same deal. No shipping options.