Yeah, it's too bad he will not go with a Stik.

You could improve the durability of a plane like the Strega.

I recently assembled a .60 sized low wing acrobatic trainer that I used to train an utter novice.

It had a similiar landing gear assembly on the wings as the Strega.

I thought that the gear would bend out too easily or rip out...

So what I ended up doing is getting some additional "L" shaped landing gear wire.

I installed the provided gear, and affixed an "L" shaped piece to the main gear using copper wire wrapped ( wrapped tightly like a motor coil ) around three separate points on the gear.

The bottom of the "L" was set 90 degrees to the existing gear and sits along the wing to provide torsional resistance.

I soldered the wire with a copious amount of solder and covered the soldered areas with heat shrink tubing. The solder and underlying wire bonds the new "L" to the existing gear.
The bottom of the "L" is held to the wing via "U" shaped straps and wood screws into the stronger wood of the wing. The long part of the "L" runs along the existing gear.

This gives the existing gear an addional support area that resists torsional ( pulling out, back or sideways ) forces while futher distributing the load over a larger area.

It adds very little weight to the plane and unless you're looking closely, it goes unnoticed.

After a few people saw what I did, I started seeing other planes pop up at our field rigged up the same way.

So far this has held up well on several low wing trainers I've put together for others.


The idea came from an RCU member in a thread...