CCRC1
Posts: 1109
Joined: 8/28/2002
From: Waldorf,
MD, USA
Status: offline
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In the original construction article Phil Kraft talks about the name:
"I am not sure who first applied the name Ugly Stik to the design, but whoever it was certainly applied a descriptive name.
Wherever it was flown, I was subjected to a great deal of kidding about finally having developed an airplane even uglier than the Kwik-Fli. There were also a great many requests for the plans, particularly among newcomers to radio control who wished for an easy-to-fly, rugged, expendable airplane to learn on-which this surely is.
There was in the early square design something of a World War I type aircraft. As a joke with assorted scribbling on the plans, we came up with a design vaguely reminiscent of a Fokker-Eindecker. The results were perhaps no less ugly, but did tend to produce a design with a certain amount of charm and appeal."
Phil Kraft
Radio Control and Model Aircraft World
May-June 1966
I could find nowhere in the article where he referred to the name Square Stik. If your article from ACE was from two years after the original article, it may have been referring one of the many, many copies, knock offs, clones or look a likes. 
< Message edited by CCRC1 -- 7/6/2006 3:48:18 AM >
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All Forums >> RC Airplanes >> Vintage & Antique RC >> RE: Phil Krafts Original Ugly Stick 
RE: Phil Krafts Original Ugly Stick - 
I took it to Vista, California and met with Phil Kraft. He looked at my Esquire and asked if I wanted to build some models for him. Between myself and another flying buddy named Danny Jones, we agreed to build 36 of the Jensen prototype kits that were to be called Das Ugly Stick. Phil had my receiver repaired, put it into his "Stick" and flew the model without extending the transmitter antenna. 
It took us a few months, but we did deliver every last one of them to the Kraft facility. 
Test Beds? You Bet. Good Flying, all around fun machine. A Lee Custom Veco .61 would put it straight up till it was going out of sight. Grate flying model that just about every kit manufacturer has copied in some form or another. I have one ready to fly at this time. 