This item is discontinued.

GREAT PLANES GILES G-202 ARF
PRODUCT REVIEW
By Jim Pearson

Aircraft Type Sport Scale Aerobatic
Mfg. By Great Planes Model Mfg. Co., P.O. Box 9021, Champaign, IL 61826-9021., www.greatplanes.com
Mfg. Sug. Retail Price $499.99
Available From Retail Outlets
Wingspan 73 Inches
Wing Chord 13-1/2 Inches (Avg.)
Total Wing Area 973 Sq. In.
Fuselage Length 64-1/2 Inches
Stabilizer Span 28-3/4 Inches
Total Stab Area 205 Sq. In. (Approx.)
Mfg. Rec. Engine Range 1.2 2-Stroke, 2.0 4-stroke or 19.5-33 cc Gas
Rec. Fuel Tank Size Supplied 420 cc/14 Oz.
Rec. No. of Channels 4-6
Rec. Control Functions Rud., Elev., Throt., Ail.
Basic Materials Used In Construction
Fuselage Balsa, Ply & Fiberglass
Wing Balsa, Ply & Hardwood
Tail Surfaces Balsa
Building Instructions on Plan Sheets NA
Instruction Manual Yes (27 pages)
Construction Photos Yes

RCM PROTOTYPE
Radio Used Airtronics Quasar 6-ch. (6 servos)1400 mA Sanyo 5-cell pack
Engine Make & Disp. O.S. 1.60 FS Twin/16 x 8 APC
Tank Size Supplied 420 cc/14 Oz.
Weight, Ready to Fly 212 Oz. (13 Lbs., 4 Oz.)
Wing Loading 31.3 Oz./Sq. Ft.

SUMMARY
WE LIKED THE: Ease of assembly, quality of workmanship and materials, flight performance, and looks of completed model.
WE DIDN'T LIKE THE: Loose-fitting wing joiner, soft wood in forward fuselage section, no decals/trim, tail wheel steering set-up.

The Giles G-202 ARF from Great Planes Model Manufacturing Co. is a quarter scale version of the well known and easily recognized full size G-202 aerobatic aircraft. The model comes completely built and fully covered, but still requiring about 20-25 hours for final assembly. Our review model arrived in a very colorful cardboard box measuring 48-3/4" x 19-1/2" x 14", and all the components inside were carefully wrapped or protected in plastic bags. Upon inspecting the various components, all were found to be in excellent condition, with no signs of shipping damage.

The instruction manual contained 27 pages and was loaded with excellent photos and illustrations to guide you through the assembly sequence. The Giles G-202 ARF is an all wood, completely built-up model using conventional balsa and plywood construction throughout. The kit includes a complete hardware package, formed aluminum landing gear that is very strong, a very nice formed canopy that comes pre-painted around the base, and a fiberglass cowling and wheel pants. And a rarity with ARF models, the cowling colors were a perfect match to the MonoKote! Unfortunately, the main gear wheels were missing from the review kit. (A quick call to Great Planes to let them know of this omission had a set on the way to us.)

After looking the components over thoroughly, it was apparent that a good deal of effort went into the design and construction of this model. The main components are all very light in weight and the workmanship was excellent. In fact, when I took the model to our club field the first time, some of the modelers were amazed that this was an ARF and not a model that I had spent months building! The quarter scale Giles has a 73"wingspan with 973 sq. in. wing area; so prior to starting assembly, I decided to power the review model with an O.S. 1.60 4-stroke twin. This is the maximum size 4-stroke engine recommended for this model, and with its two cylinders and complete exhaust system easily fitting completely inside the cowling, it was a natural choice. Good power and the great sound of the O.S. twin ... what more could you ask for!

Assembly:
During assembly, Great Planes Thin and Medium Pro CA was used, along with their Pro 6-Minute and 30-Minute Epoxy where called out in the assembly manual. The actual assembly begins with the wings, which utilize an aileron servo in each panel. After removing the covering from the servo locations on the bottom of the wing panels, you will find that a string has been provided to pull the servo leads through the wing. A nice touch! Simply following the instructions will soon have you joining the two panels together, and that is where the first minor item was encountered.

The wing joiner is a rather large piece of what appears to be pine, which has been machined to a taper at each end that mates with a matching taper built into each wing panel. When this part was test fit into the wing panels, it was found to fit a bit loosely, so a piece of 1/32" plywood was glued to the back side of the wing joiner to take up the additional clearance. This seemed to work out just right on our review model. Not mentioned in the instructions, the bottom of the wing joiner also has a taper which needs to be installed towards the bottom of the wing when the panels are joined together with the 30-minute epoxy. After the wings are joined, the leading edge dowels are glued in place and the wing bolt plate gets installed.

The instructions are clear and easy to follow, and in a short time the wing is completed and ready to fit to the fuselage. Here again, just follow the instructions in the manual. When fitting the wing into place, the forward section of the wing came into contact with the fuselage sides resulting in several areas where the balsa fuselage cracked under the covering. Fortunately, this situation was easily fixed by simply pushing the wood back into place and dripping some thin CA over the affected area while holding the wood in place. Next comes the horizontal stabilizer installation, which also goes very quickly. Here again I was very pleased to find that the stabilizer fit into the fuselage and aligned with the vertical fin and wing, without any major fitting of the components.

The O.S. 1.60 4-stroke twin fits completely within the cowling and allows a very clean installation.

Engine:
At this point, you need to install the engine of your choice, and as previously noted an O.S. 1.60 FT was going to power the review model. Unfortunately, there were no instructions for fitting this specific engine. However, the instructions do provide the required dimensions for the distance from the prop hub thrust washer from the firewall. Since the O.S. 1.60 twin is much shorter than the 2-stroke shown in the instructions, I had to build a 1" extension box to place the engine in the correct position. To do this, I simply made a box out of 1/8" aircraft plywood, with a 1/4" aircraft plywood firewall that placed the engine 1"forward of the original firewall, and glued this in place with 30-minute epoxy. To reinforce the mounting, triangle stock was also epoxied around the inner and outer portion of the box, and the whole thing was given a coat of thinned epoxy to seal it.

The rest of the engine mounting and hook-up went without any problems. The instructions for mounting the cowling are complete and easy to follow, and since our O.S. twin would have all the exhaust plumbing inside, the only holes that were required were for the cowl mounting screws, a Great Planes Filler Valve and a hole to allow access to the needle valve. Additionally, a Sullivan Twin Head Lock glow plug connector with a remote driver attachment was also installed, so no cutting of the cowl was needed for installation! Also at this time, the supplied fuel tank was assembled and installed as per the manual. To complete the front end, the 4" Spin Right Spinner and a 16 x 8 APC propeller were installed.

The exhaust extensions were made from flex pipe found in hardware store plumbing departments. High-temp silicone sealer was used to seal the exhaust headers to the extensions.

The landing gear and wheel pants come next, and here a set of Du-Bro #248 axles had to be purchased as none were supplied with the review kit. The instructions for installing the landing gear, and mounting the wheels and pants are very complete, and no problems were encountered here.

Radio:
For control, an Airtronics Quasar 6-channel radio system was installed, along with six of their #94731 high torque, competition servos and a 5-cell 1400 mAh battery pack. The control horns supplied in the kit are of a heavy duty type, along with the 4-40 control rods and clevises.

Unfortunately, the screws supplied with the review model for the control horn attachment were too short to go completely through the control surface and into the backing plate. Here, I simply elected to replace the supplied control horns for the ailerons and elevator and, in their place, installed 8-32 machine screws. These were installed by drilling the required holes, then using thin CA to harden the wood. The holes were then tapped and the screws checked for fit. If needed, they could receive the CA/tap treatment again. Along with the screws, I used some ball joint clevises left over from a previous project. One item not mentioned in the text is that unless you are using a computer radio capable of setting up separate elevator functions for each elevator, you will need to use a servo reverser.

This is quite common with today's sport aerobatic models, so I opted for a Jomar Servo Reverser (SR-2Y) from Electronic Model Systems. This item is quite small and simply plugs into the elevator channel of the receiver. One of the cables coming from the Y harness goes direct to one of the two servos, the other cable has the servo reverser in it, and it goes to the other servo. This unit even has an adjustment pot built-in to fine tune the servo neutral point. As noted in the front of the manual, you will need a number of servo extension cables for the radio installation process. (The length of the extensions will actually depend on how long the cables on your servos are, but the manual calls out five 24" extensions, which should be plenty long enough for any installation.)

The one area of control hook-up that I had a problem with was with the tail wheel connection to the rudder servo. The manual shows using a wire pushrod between the servo and the tail wheel steering arm. After working with the set-up shown in the manual for over an hour, and not getting satisfactory results, I replaced the system provided in the kit with a simple control horn/spring system that I have used on a number of aircraft without any further problems. The remainder of the radio installation went without any problems. Since the two elevator servos and one rudder servo are mounted in the tail section, there is only one servo located in the fuselage under the wing, and there is ample room for the radio gear, and plenty of foam padding.

Covering:
The covering on the Giles G-202 is factory installed Top Flite MonoKote. The review model came in a very colorful red/white/blue base color scheme, and was trimmed with a contrasting orange and yellow that really makes the whole model stand out. Like nearly all ARF models, the Giles did require some re-shrinking of the covering to remove the wrinkles that seem to occur during shipping from the factory to the U.S. However, this touch-up only took about an hour and the covering job was really first class! All the colors matched up perfectly with the mating surfaces, and there weren't any unsightly bubbles where the various colors mated up.

All in all, an excellent covering job! Even the canopy came pre-painted around the base to match the red covering on the fuselage. The cowling paint and pattern matched the covering almost perfectly, and the wheel pants were left their natural gel-coat white. The only thing missing to really make the finish complete was the lack of the appropriate aerobatic aircraft decals. For some reason, these were not provided in the kit, so some decals were purchased and installed on the review model.

Flying:
With the model completed, it was time to check the balance and adjust the control travel. With the O.S. 1.60 twin up front, the review model took about 5 oz. of stick-on lead weight under the stabilizer to achieve the proper C.G. Next, the high and low control throws were set, and all controls were checked again for the proper direction in relation to the stick movements. Since the engine had previously been used in another model, there was no break-in needed. For those not familiar with the O.S. 1.60 twin, this is a very smooth running engine that makes excellent power and has that beautiful 4-stroke twin sound, making it all the better for a model like this. (Note: to allow the exhaust to exit out the bottom of the cowling at the rear, I made up two exhaust extensions from chrome plated flex pipes that are found in the plumbing department of all home improvement stores.) These are very inexpensive, and as a side benefit, the added length also helps take the bark out of the exhaust sound without any noticeable loss of power. (Be sure to seal the engine exhaust pipes to the headers with high-temp automotive silicone sealer.)

With everything checked, set and running properly, we were ready to go. On the taxi out to the runway, the ground handling was checked and found to be very good at low speed, with good response to the rudder input. On the take-off roll, very little rudder is needed to maintain a straight heading, and with the model accelerating quickly, it was airborne in about 75 feet. Once airborne, it had an excellent climb and required only several minor trim adjustments to having it flying straight and level, "hands-off." On this first flight, the control response was checked out in both the high and low settings.

The stall characteristics were then checked out and found to be mild and easily controlled. Next came some basic aerobatics such as loops, rolls, snaps, spins, and knife-edge flight. Using the basic settings called out in the instruction manual, the response to the controls is very positive, without being overly sensitive. As you move up to more advanced aerobatics, you may want to increase the control travel, but that will be up to the modeler and their level of skill. The C.G. called out in the instruction manual is certainly a good place to start, and for sport flying, seems to be just about right. On landing, just keep the airspeed up a little and don't get too slow prior to touch down. With our model, I found that if I kept the engine idle a little higher than normal, I could do very nice wheel landings and "go-arounds" that not only look good, but are great fun!

One item that I did find a bit annoying, is that the tail wheel is quite small, and if you fly from a grass or gravel runway, you may find that the tail wheel bracket digs into the surface since only about 3/16" of the wheel extends below the bracket. This is not a problem if you fly from a good paved runway, but if you venture off the paved surface, you may find that the tail wheel acts more like a tail skid, and unfortunately, there is no room in the bracket to install a larger wheel. Not a major problem, but it may take a different tail wheel assembly to correct the condition should you encounter it.

After flying the review model for 2-3 weeks, I used tape to seal the aileron and elevator hinge gaps, and feel that this added to the effectiveness of these surfaces, even at low speed, and this is with the hinge gaps very close to begin with. Seeing that I'm not a "3-D flier," I can only suggest that you follow the recommendations given in the manual for C.G. and control travel. This section also gives you a description of many of the various 3-D maneuvers.

Having now flown the Great Planes Giles G-202 for about two months, I'm very happy with both its looks and performance. It's large enough to see well and it will accept a variety of engines that can provide the performance to allow you to perform the advanced aerobatics if your skill is up to the level needed. All in all, I liked this model very much, the quality of our review model was very good and it's really fun to fly. So, if you've been flying a smaller sport aerobatic model and are seriously thinking about moving up to a little larger aircraft, this one deserves some serious consideration. Check one out at your hobby dealer, we think you will like what you see.