BillB

I recently moved to a new area. There is no place I could fly my Ultra Stik with an O.S. 46AX due to the noise. I had built a couple of electric foamies under 1 pound that performed really well so I decided to convert my Ultra Stik. But I was unwilling to give up any performance! With an 11-4 APC prop on the .46 I had unlimited vertical. After a bunch of research, I decided on a Turnigy 50-45 outrunner with a Turnigy Plush 80 ESC. For a battery I ordered some Turnigy 5000 mah 5 cell LiPo packs. The motor, ESC, and one battery cost me about $112.00 from HobbyCity.com. That's less than the price of a new O.S. 46 AX! I had an 8 oz tank in the wet version. All up weight of the converted Ultra Stik is 6.06 lbs. It's actully a little over one once lighter than the glow fuel version when the tank is full. So far so good. Running the new setup in my shop using an 11-5.5e prop was an eye opener! At full throttle I was getting 13,200 rpm while pulling 67 amps at 1,300 watts! That's over 214 watts per pound. The batteries are rated at 20C which is 100 amps so I'm not stressing them. I did have to reprogram the ESC to High advance to keep the motor from losing sync during rapid acceleration. I used 7/8" standoffs on the motor to clear the shaft in back and also to get the prop closer to the same location that it had with the glow engine. I made a cooling vent in the firewall that is about 1 1/2 inches wide and an half inch high. On the top of the fuse about 2 inches behind the wing I cut an exit hole that is about 1 inch wide and 2 1/4 inches long.
The test flight was off of ice (I'm in NW Maine) and the Stik lept off the ground in less then two aircraft lengths. It was impressive to say the least. Subjectively it appeared to be faster than the glow version. I only flew about 4 minutes as the wind was about 20mph with gusts well above that. The outside temp was about 49 degrees Farenheit. When I recharged the battery I had only used 800 ma. Looks like I'll have nice long flight times. It was too windy to attempt to remove the wing to check the temp of the ESC, but the battery wasn't even warm. More testing to follow and I will post an update.

kzguns

nice work!!

I think this setup would work for my GP Dazzler I may have to try it.
actually that may be overkill your ultra is a .60 size? Dazzler is a .40

KZ

BillB

It's a .40 size. This setup may be too much for a Dazzler. It's considerably lighter than a .40 sized Ultra Stik. But then again it would be pretty awesome.

b16a2sir

My Feedback: (3)

nice build, I bet the prop screams!! I had a similar setup with a H9 super-stick 40 (Value series) on 6 cell, boy that was fun to fly. Untill I lost the lipo in a roll, I didnt have it secured in place!! So I threw the setup in a 46S CAP 232, and 40 seconds in the aileron ripped out.. I could repair it, but alot of work, so I was thinking of another stick maybe!

Any video?

BillB

Caps don't like speed. Any of the current crop of 3D capable models have really large ailerons and they flutter really easy.

Today I got another chance to try the stick. I did 10 minutes of touch and goes on really wet sticky snow and used 2900 mah out of the 5000 mah packs. The snow really sucked. I had to come to a complete stop before I tried to turn, otherwise the snow just piled up on the inside ski and brought it to a stop. When it did stop in a straight line it took full throttle to get moving again. I am flying off of the pond in my back yard as there are no snow free areas around here, yet. My wife started to come out on the pond to get a video, but we were both sinking into the snow and about 6 inches down was about 6 inches of cold slush. She bailed. We're supposed to have a couple of days well below freezing, so maybe this weekend we can try again.