Super Miss ARF Sport Plane

I bought this airplane about 2 years ago under the instruction of a very experienced pilot with the recommended equipment at the time. I'm just now getting it flying, as the man who was building it with me died unexpectedly which left me with an airplane, a VERY BAD instruction manual and no building experience at all.

Now that its built and flying, its a wonderful airplane. I had the Miss 2 before this one as a trainer, and it was a very smooth transaction into flying this. The plane is very stable and easy to fly for beginners, yet it handles basic aerobics very well.

I would definitely recommend this as a second airplane or just as a cheap plane to have some fun with.

I picked this plane up at a swap meet. I got it as a trainer to teach my girlfriend how to fly and convince her that this is a great hobby! She wanted to put it together and really make it her airplane. The construction and quality of the plane is top notch. The included hardware, while not great, is more than adequate for this plane.

However, the instruction manual is terrible!! Absolutely terrible!! It's terribly translated chinese and skips all sorts of steps. If you've never put together an airplane before, there's no way you can do this one with the included instructions, and if you try, you're going to screw up royally. I had to help my g/f all the way through the entire process.

That being said, once it is together this is a fantastic plane!! Super easy to fly, and makes a great platform to teach someone on. Plus its quick enough and aerobatic enough to keep a new pilot entertained long after they've soloed. As others have said, its floater, on the maiden it took me 4 passes to land it. It just didn't want to come down and kept floating.

The way it flies and the quality is 5 stars, hands down. The instruction manual is 0 (zero) stars. Hobby-lobby should make their own manual to put in if they're going to sell this kit. The manual is unacceptable; especially if this plane is geared towards newer pilots.

I will make it brief:
1) Manual is a translation from Chinese .
2) Instructions and illustrations do not match.
3) Instructions miss a lot of steps. i.e. incomplete instructions.
4) Horizontal tail surface mount out of alignment.
5) Extra pieces, I think, in the box.

Once assembled, the plane flies reliably.

Not for Novice builders.

The super miss is an enigma. It is strongly constructed, a wonderful larger size and an incredibly relaxing and capable flyer for beginner or expert alike. The only negative was the fuselage on our kit was warped and the wing saddles were misalingned allowing the wings to tilt five or six degrees to one side. So, I added 3/8 square balsa along the inside of the original wing saddle longitudinal pieces, and then carefully marked a "zero incidence" front to back line relative to the horizontal stabilizer. I then carved the saddles down to this line, creating a new saddle. Actually, if you look at the center reference for a flat bottom airfoil like this, if you align the incidence to zero using the flat bottom as a reference, you actually get about 1.5 to 2 degrees positive incidence. As it turned out, this was perfect. On any given day, our Super Miss is one of the best flying planes at the field. We put in a larger than required Turnigy brushless and lipo setup, using 3S, 1800mah, and about 250 watts resulted. We can fly fast or as slow as a walk, fly inverted with very little forward stick pressure, loop, roll, stall turns, you name it, she will do it and do it well. We are not 3D flyers, so that I cannot comment on, but all the standard aerobatics, this plane will do gracefully. It also does not climb sharply upon application of strong power, a fault of many such flat bottom, high wing designs. I credit that to our zero incidence setup and careful field tuning of the CG. On top of that, it is so easy to fly! My grandson has no problem showing me up, with low inverted passes and all the rest. If you want long flight times, you take her up high and cut the power. Then the high aspect wing and low wing loading combine to create an almost sail plane effect, and you can take your time coming down. All in all, a rugged, well built sport flyer, different than anything else at the field, a great flyer, well priced and very nice to look at. A good size with the 54" span so it flys better than the smaller stuff and yet easy to transport. The only reason I did not give it five stars was the out of the box warpage issue. I cannot imagine a beginner ever getting through that and also I cannot imagine a beginner being able to set her up as carefully and correctly as we did. My grandson did get the benefit of my fifty plus years of flying model experience in the setup routine. So if you feel comfortable to put her at zero incidence and reinforce the saddle, and can wedge in a robust power system, you will love this plane.

Perfect fun flying plane that is if you hang the motor all the out front on the nose and also add a vent to the back of the fuse for cooling. If you can't land this plane you can't land any plane. I fly on the beach and it's great in close quarters. Glides great and refuses to bite. Get it on sale for a real steal.

I purchased the Super Miss about a year ago and it is still going strong. The airplane is easy to assemble and has ample room inside for a variety of batteries, including a 2200ma LiPo I fly with. As the advertisement says, the recommended motor produces way more power than necessary. Take off runs are of the order of 10 feet. Though this airplane is a throw-back to free-flight craft of the 30's and 40's, it is capable of some very nice aerobatic moves. Loops, Immelman's, Cuban 8's, snap rolls, inverted flight, etc are all possible.

Another nice feature of the airplane is its ability to soar reasonably well. In the Summer, thermaling up to "speck" altitude is easy to achieve, as are flights of over a half hour. I have even equipped the Miss with a patch of velcro on the cabin under the wing where I put a miniature hand-held video camera and take flight videos. What a hoot!

This airplane is tough. While doing some vigorous aerobatics with it, the battery got loose and she became uncontrollable. It crashed into a barbed wire fence and ejected all of the electronics out the clear front hatch. Inspite of this, the rebuild took only a couple of hours, a few pieces of scrap balsa and a square foot or so of covering material. She still flys good.

I would give the airplane 5 stars were it not for the fact that it is a bit tail heavy and it is difficult to get enough weight forward to reach a good CG point. With significant power applied, the Miss requires quite a bit of down trim to stay comfortably in control...and this was also true before I crashed it into a fence! This airplane is hard to beat for a hundred bucks.

I've passed over this one on sale twice before, not the third though. The build quality is A+. I don't think I could do it better. Yes, I have built from both kits and from scratch and I take my time to do it right. This ARF will save a lot of time over a kit. If you value your time at all, it just doesn't pay to kit build. The weight is as specified. The covering is snug, no flaws. You do need to provide for some cooling airflow through the fuselage. The instructions are not extremely detailed, but it is all straight forward assembly. I don't have a flight report,yet, but you can see the video here. If you plan to fly off of a less than smooth surface, I would suggest a slightly larger set of wheels.

This is one of those great flying planes that anyone can enjoy. I know I like mine. Easy to fly and fun.