Lifer

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The Sweet Sick was one of my favorites. With enough rudder throw, it does beautiful barrel rolls and spins.

lflf

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Here's a few screenshots of a brochure I discovered over on ebay put out by Midwest back in the day. Starting with a screenshot of the full ad I then took three screen shots showing portions of the brochure enlarged, for a bit better detail. I don't really know the relationship of Midwest and Frank Garcher to Kraft and the Jensen kit, but it seems Midwest took over the Stik market in a big way, as you can see they had 6 variations of the Stik, and even offered an official Stik flyers cap for sale. Their Super Sweet Stik 60 looks like the original Kraft/ Jensen sized Stik, and the Das Little Stik 20 is the 3/4 sized Stik designed by Larry Leonard, who had a hobby shop in the LA area, and no doubt bought a lot of stuff from Midwest, maybe they supplied the balsa for the Jensen Stik kits. They've filled out their line up with the Sweet Stik 40 (originally a Frank Garcher design that fits in nicely between the 60 inch w.s. Ugly Stik, which they call the "Super Sweet Stik 60" and the 46 inch w.s. "Das Little Stik"), they also added a twin engine stik, a bipe stik, and a low wing stik. This is the first time I've seen the prototypes of all these Stik kits together and realized what a huge marketing campaign Midwest did with the Stik, and that instead of producing a few odd ball Stik variations, each different kit actually filled a spot in Stik line up. These kits do show up occasionally one by one on ebay, and now days at some very good prices.

jaymen

A little "Stik" trivia: The real creator of the ugly stick and how it got it's name.

Zel Ritchie of Space Control, the very 1st commercially available 4 channel proportional radio circa 1959 actually invented what was to become known as the Ugly Stik.

Zel had a policy of test flying each Space Control system, and for $699.00 back in 1960, it was well worth his time to do so. Zel needed a rugged, robust, yet simple test plane he could use and quickly remove and replace the airborne "brick" containing the servos and receiver for flight testing the system. His basic design used 1/4" balsa for the fuselage box, a large constant chord symmetrical wing, and uncomplicated large rectangular tail surfaces. Zel could swap out the airborne brick in a matter of minutes and test several radio systems each time he went to the field. The plane was not a thing of beauty, it was a large boxy fuselage, that sort of looked like a stick of wood, and it was ugly, but it flew really well. Other local flyers like Mathes, Spreng, Dunham and Pullen kidded and joked about Zel's "Ugly Stick" and the name stuck.

One of the flyers at the time was Phil Kraft, who was still just getting into the RC hobby and had not yet started Kraft Systems. Later on, once Phil started producing radio systems, he quickly needed planes to test them in and recalled Zel's ugly stick test plane. He made some refinements to the design but retained the big boxy fuselage, symmetrical wing and simple tail surfaces, and formally named it the Ugly Stik. Phil had a bunch of Jensen Stiks built for use in test flying radios by his technical staff. He later found it more practical to give radios, engines, and fuel to semi-professional hobbyists and have them test fly customers radios that had been repaired. I knew one guy that had about 4 Ugly Stiks Phil gave him for testing radios. So like many other things he did, Phil 'borrowed" from those who came before him, and refined Zel Ritchie's "ugly stick" into the Das Ugly Stik for his own use as a test plane.

GREG DOE

So according to this latest post George Walker had no input in the original inspiration for the Ugly Stick?

UStik

It depends on how you mean that. It's typical Phil Kraft to "borrow" things from others and to have others do things for him.

The Box-Fli may be Phil Kraft's refinement of Zel Ritchie's Ugly Stik, but "Das Ugly Stik" was George Walker's job done for Phil Kraft. George had no ability to technically design an airplane while obviously Phil was unable to do a good graphic design (he was kidded for his ugly designs). That's why George did his manuals, drawings, flyers, logos, advertizing, nameplates, paint schemes, and just Das Ugly Stik design for him (even the name). George even proposed to add some dihedral, not for flying characteristics but for better looks. Phil agreed, Jim Jensen had some wishes for simplification, and - voilà - George made the Jensen kit plans with instructions and designed the box and the flyer as well as the lettering for the model's name. He still has the originals.

That's all, no secrets or obscurities.

jaymen

Imitation is the highest form of flattery. George Walker drew the plans for Das Ugly Stik. I'm sure he added his own personal touches, because Zel said his original test plane was really ugly!
If you look at most plans, they are not typically inked and drawn by the actual designer. Most Carl Goldberg kits have Carl's name as the designer, but were drawn by his draftsmen, who signed the plans. What Phil did was to use an idea that worked; his predecessor Zel had come up with a good idea for a plane to test radios, so why should Phil re-invent the wheel? Phil took the idea to people with the skill to get it drawn up, and kitted, in a form that could be sold. And, in so doing, in typical P.O. Kraft style, he popularized it. Like many things, it's a culmination of efforts and ideas, not just a one man show that is behind them.
Phil, as a tribute to Space Control, used gold color cases on his first propo radios, Zels initial successes definitely had an influence on Kraft.
If you look at the first Kraft Custom multi channel reed transmitters and receivers, you will notice they are the same red color as the early Solidtronics Space Control, and the Deans reed radios....hmmm, why is that? It's because Don Mathes had made the arrangements to get a bunch of cases bent up and anodized, and they all pooled their resources together to get them done in one batch to share, and thereby reduce their individual costs. These guys all knew each other and worked together to a certain extent.

UStik

Again interesting, and I might add that I think Kraft was the most successful of them for his ability to attract people with abilities needed for a project and to make them work as a team. And he was a salesman with a sense for simple technical solutions. You wrote about how he struggled with Mathes and Spreng for a simple proportional design. I'm an engineer but I even think he was right to urge them.

And I could add that Phil Kraft designed the test bed (allegedly called Box-Fli) even in 1964 when he obviously had a lot of attrition of models in testing the prototype KP-4. Only two years later, when he even brought out the KP-6, he may have wanted a kit to have more and cheaper models to test new and repaired R/C gear. It's not clear if he initiated the embellishment to make the model attractive for buyers so a kit would sell in numbers; it's well possible, though.

To me it seems more likely that George Walker was disgusted by the unesthetic Box-Fli (he said that is one ugly stick) and asked Phil Kraft if he could or should embellish it (what I hear from George). Maybe that was when Phil mentioned he needed a kit and George said he could do something about it (my speculation). There is no evidence for either case. Anyway, George made a vellum draft and built a prototype which was maidened by Jim Jensen. So Das Ugly Stik as we know it, its appearance that is, is clearly George Walker's design.

The difference is clear when you look at George's sketch where he overlayed a photo of his prototype with the outlines of the test bed - earlier in this thread.

lflf

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Interesting bit of prehistoric Stik history. I remember reading somehwere here on RC Universe the story of all those Jensen Stik kits someone was delegated to build by Phil Kraft, and how the smell of airplane dope on all those wings about overpowered the neighborhood. This is the first time I've heard mention that George Walker did the art work on the Jensen Stik kit boxes-not surprised as the artwork on the Jensen kit box looks unusually tasteful. I'm attaching a few pictures of this winters scratch built Stik, sitting in the snow outside my workshop door. The idea here is a compact stik fuselage with the classic stik tail and a wing that has been clipped to 48 inches. All black and pretty ugly, I expect it will be a good flyer come spring. Power is an OS 40 FSR which I picked up at auction. Those are great engines.

.

RDJeff

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Has anybody ever built one with the brake system shown on the old plans? I am intrigued by it, and might have to give it a go.

lflf

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Try it and let us know how it worked out, might be interesting. Since I've been flying most people use that little nose wheel brake DuBro makes, which is pretty easy to install. I personally never build anything but tail draggers, those brakes would probably make my planes nose over or ground loop.

lflf

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delete

jaymen

Very good information. All the major R/C manufacturers had test planes, and most of them were built for them by professional builders. Back in the era, it was common practice to test fly radios prior to delivering them. As such there were many variations of test planes, including Zels "stick". The design that was popularized and became known as the Ugly Stick has great legacy and history.

carlgrover

When I got into the hobby in 1987 it was common for guys in our club to have an old rag that was used as a "radio test plane" to prove out the transmitter/receiver before you put it in a new ship.

carl