They are fine if you have local help, preferably with a trainer cord setup. Otherwise, the above video is a grim reminder that all it takes is one crash to put you back on a long repair stretch or even a complete write off.

BTW, of all the materials models are made of, balsa is easiest to repair and with a bit of forethought during the repair process is as strong as before, It is just like a jig saw puzzle being assembled with cyano, cant say the same about foam, ABS, coro and fibre as these are a different kettle of fish altogether.   

I think you have missed the covering part  

In any case, foam planes are in general much easier to fix (as the number of individual "pieces" are much smaller).  Most of the time, the worst case needs some X ray sheet and epoxy.

No covering is the easiest part and if you are carefull no one would even find out that you had a crash. For small ruptures etc, generally clear tape with the original pieces carefully sucked up/smoothed down and covered with clear tape makes it almost invisible unless you are few inches close.
For major repairs, you just need to have the same material and colour.

What you say may be true for small indoor/park flier foamies, but try repairing a foam wing on a Cularis with epoxy and xray sheet, the wings will fold up in supplication to the fliers reapiar skills. It is pretty simple, in foam components the strenght is achieved by closely bonded particles of foam,and once broken it is difficult to get the same strength unless stiffening/strengthening material is added, where as in a built up balsa wing all the members contribute to the overall strength of the structure. For example, if a spar breaks you just need to cyano it back and may be add a few inch pieces of thin ply from two/three sides and it would be as good as before. However on a same size foam wing if you add the same size of ply piece the strenght is severly compromised.
I would stick to balsa. Easy to work (new or repair) beats hands down on strength on all exotic material (many of which are very strong but difficult to work with unless you have specialisit tools and knowledge)         

The problem is the crumbling effect of balsa planes.  If someone (this topic was referring to beginners, who would struggle even more) had a significant crash, I am sure one can put it all together, but the number of individual pieces that need to be glued together are much larger. 

My point was that beginners should not try balsa models as the first plane *without help*. If someone is starting on their own, they are better off with small foam models, which can in general be fixed easily the same way they are initially built, possibly with some additional reinforcements like Xray sheets.

Cularis is an extreme case/example. 

BTW, the first ever plane I had to repair was a an electric balsa model named Hotpoint EP (http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=396196), which I drove into the ground during my initial days.  I got it all together myself (rebuilt the whole firewall region, mostly using the original parts), but realized that foam ones are much easier to deal with later on. Not much of the covering was affected (there is a cowl and canopy which helped!), and the rest was fixed with tape like you said.

It may be in Chennai by now !  I had given it to someone who moved back to Chennai for good.  Not sure if he carried it with him or gave it away before he left.

I may not be even eligible to reply this topic, but having worked on balsa in my initial chuck/Freeflight days, I Have to speak for my love for Balsa Smell!

I guess the Al Cheapo ARF/RTF have given a little bad image of Balsa planes due to very poor raw material used and fragile gluing by most of manufacturer.

A purist like Capt who build planes from scratch using the finest hand picked Balsa, is a totally different league. Given the right tool, I find repairing/patching Foam (Depron) not much different than Balsa. But yes, this wont scale up to larger foamies, where Balsa would win.

Coming to strength, I would agree with Anwar bhai on EPP/Epalore planes which are much crash resistant (have seen how tough Cularis and AXN Floater are). But here again Comparing EP plane to Nitro is like comparing Cat to Bull - Cat can safely jump from 10 times its height. The light weight EP power system also makes crashes more forgiving. Coro is again a Mid-point.

At the end, EP planes made of Coro/EPP is surely making the 'Return rate' of newbies much higher. I know 4-5 people who started with Nitro/Diesel (free flight/CL), crashed (No Sim those days) and their first plane is lying in their study room after reconstruction and never see the fields again.

EP starter should come into this Hobby with a self promise of graduating to Nitro some day. I bet they would miss the original fun of flying by sticking to EP all their life. Personally the smell and thud of Nitro makes adrenal rush, something I feel a bit missing in EP - its like comparing Harley to Honda.

The topic name suggests it all, balsa is a much tougher proposition for absolute beginners *without local help*, as compared to small electrics.  Beginners who see the nice 40+ size balsa planes should not get the wrong impression about their durability, and the attached video was meant to help clarify that.

+1 Agree... the L19 Birddog I bought some time would need much of reinfocement while building. Even Mr Sanjeev earnestly suggested me to be careful with Balsa planes and don't come running too soon to buy another from him

<Sorry for this repeated post... my Chrome froze!>

Was that L 19 not from VMAR? Why would you need to build it?  

Okay, 'Assemble' it, Your Highness!! Its like KDU car come to India - 'Knocked Down Units'  and just assembled in factories.

Must be a SICK person to market a DVD full of plane crashes downloaded from u tube. I guess there are people who get cheap thrills from others misfortune.
-Sorry Anwar I don't mean to critisize you for posting the link. I am referring to the person who made the video. and definitely not you
Avijit

Totally disagree  you have  possibly not repaired ELAPOR , my Easy cub had a crash  where the front 1/4 th of the plane literally fell a few feet away from the fuse  ona crash with the motor,  ESC and battery  with a bit of cyno and transparent cello tape she was up and flying in  5 mins again .

I have had  crashes with Easy Glider Pro , easy Star, twin star  Easy cub , acro master , fox  , funjet etc  and all are still flying  without any change what so ever  till date .
I have  had wing breaks in the case of the Twin star  and it still flies till date .

Capt if you have a broken Cularis wing I am willing to set it right for you to be as good as new may need a bit of carbon fiber at best  , with due respect  your observations on Coro and Elapor is totally  wrong .

I think the crash  resistance of balsa is the least among all the material mentioned above .

The Topic title is true  any which way you look at it , I deal a lot with beginners  and can tell from 1st hand experience


Sai

Sai - Everyone knows about the "repairability" of elapor (the hot water method etc), and that makes elapor itself an extreme/unique case.  The Captain may be referring to structural strength of the wing after such repair, which we really do not know (well, if it flies again for a long time, guess that is enough of structural integrity )

With CF reinforcement  at the point of break there is no structural loss I have done it to my Twin Star so I know  EPP is even easier , coro is the strongest  and can at best tear and can be repaired with cyno and another piece of coro for the worst case  so what are we talking about  

.... that beginners starting alone should choose foam (any type) or coro, as opposed to big balsa models !

Sai sir,
For Balsa you do not need carbon or fibre, a bit of cynao/epoxy/Quickfix (whatever is availble) a bit of thought and some strategic reinforcement with the same wood (or bit of ply) will have you flying again, no need for any exotic material.
Pound for pound, the compressive strenght of balsa is unbeatable when compared to any of these foams.
BTW You may have noticed, that all my Blasa modesl which break also fly for a long time. If you have lately sauntered to the other forum you would have seen pictures of my profile Katana and unless I tell people there is no way you can make out it has been repaired and still flies strong. So was/is the case with my other planes which have had mishaps.
And sorry to disappoint you, but I do not own a Cularis, that was just to give an example, To give another example, I used to have a cheap chinese foamy, (the one with twin pusher and two channel non proprtional control I think it was CC Lee product) which had foam wings looked pretty strong and was laminated with some kind of paper material, but the wings broke when the model once went into a strong thermal and refused to come down and the only way to get it down was put into tight turn (you could only turn with power on) which kept on tightening and finally lead to collapse of the wing. Now if I had just used glue and stuck things back it was sure to break at the first outing, whereas the same size, weight, profile, aerofoil balsa plane when stuck back together with glue (without any reinforcements) would have happily flown. This was a model I used to carry to field take it up search for a thermal and then give it to any kids /anyone interested to fly (nothing much to fly anyway) as an inducement to get hooked to the hobby. People from Bangalore may remember it, the thing ultimately landed up being my sons toy and got dissected to distruction.          

you use wood and balsa we use carbon fiber rods which is anyway not exotic material today. for a beginner this is far easier than cutting , shaping, sanding and finally covering is far more difficult and time consuming than sticking 2 carbon sticks.
 BTW , when my TIGER - 60  BALSA wing was smashed by the jeep you were very much there and gave up the wing as gone.
But, it was a re-built one piece  coro wing which got it back into the air, this wing is there till today fully intact .I dont think I  need to say anything more .

I use Xray sheets and even balsa to reinforce my foamies, and no CF rods except the initial ones !  And about the looks, the X Ray sheet comes in after many 10s of crashes, the initial ones are just small quantities of epoxy only, and they are stronger than before !  Even after may crashes, the model looks like new, until frequent holding/pinching to stick and release the battery using velcro causes the foam in that area to soften (and that is where balsa comes in).   

Yes, it increases the weight of the model over time, but when it can hover at 30% throttle initially, this is a non-issue.

You should post it here too   People have had enough of the OSF (one-shop-forum)

Which FORUM  is there another one