Rotorway Forums

As some of you know, I bought what was left of the wreck from Jim’s last year. Wentworth stripped a lot of stuff off it before I got. While taking the controls off the frame , I found that none of the studs in the ends had LockTite on them . One wasn’t even tightened down and was loose. It was improperly safety wired and had only one rivet in it and wasn’t even the proper rivet. Some of them had no rivets at all. All except the loose one did seem to be properly torqued, so 5 out of six ain’t bad, but the loose one was on the cyclic.
This ship was built in Fla. I hauled it to California over ten years ago where it was finished and I actually did a first hover in his back yard. I don’t think it ever flew much there. Then it went to Texas and did fly a get bit there I think. This ship went thru two owners and this thing had these issues till the end.
Right now , I have a ship that had videos of it doing a short flight and declared ready to go. It actually had bolts in the cyclic control that didn’t have nuts on them.

If you buy a ship and you don’t know for sure what’s in side, especially the controls , better check it out really good.

Amen Homer.      In particular, I wonder how many people fall victim to purchasing partially complete kits and assuming that the work previously done was done properly?  I fall in that category.   And while I didn't find anything as drastic as what you described, I found quite a bit "not quite right".   I spent a significant amount of time completely disassembling the kit, inspecting and putting up the parts and starting back from scratch.  
  Sadly enough, what amateur, and many "not amateur" technicians and builders lack is a suitable method of "insuring quality control".  Particularly in hobby building.   Not having time to complete particular task, or assembly in one sitting and not having a good record of what was "final completed" vs "I'll come back around to that", and forgetting to.