RE: Ultra Stick LITE Done Right ..!
Rick,
I'm hoping that I can mount the servos in the stock locations. If the balance is off I'll move the RX battery behind the servos.
For the firewall, off the top of my head, the cut for the muffler is 1" from the bottom, 1.5" straight back from the firewall, and then I just drew a 45 degree down from that point. The muffler winds up having about 1/8" clearance with the bottom fin on the motor just clearing the bottom of the firewall. I used one of Cactus Aviation's mount plates. I mounted the motor up and then started cutting the firewall and fuse side away until I could bolt the muffler up, then I glued a balsa block in the hole and carved/sanded until it cleared the pipe from the can to the flange. I'll try to get the exact measurements and email them to you.
To be honest, I'm not sure about the balance at this point. I have a feeling that I will probably end up a little nose heavy still. The 3W weighs 48oz with out the muffler, I'm sure the muffler is around 4-5oz. That puts it equal to or slightly heavier than the G26 and I didn't shorten the nose as much as DP did. Once my radio gear gets here next week I will start mounting everything up and see where it balances. When I'm confident in the balance I will recover the fuse.
I'm going with a 12oz tank mounted right at the CG. I figure I'll probably only be flying at 1/3 to 1/2 throttle 90% of the time anyway. That should give me at least 15 minutes of flight time.
On the flaps, I decided to put them on. I'm going to build a wiring harness with a 6 pin Multiplex connector so I only have one plug to worry about. I'm also going to solder up a couple different adapters, one that will Y the flap servos to the ailerons, and one that will give me flaps and ailerons. That way I can try both setups. I can always remove the aileron servos and glue the flaps to the ailerons later if I don't like the flaps.
At this point I have the motor mounted, the wings and tail recovered, and the ignition mounted. Once I receive the radio gear I expect it to take another two weekends to put together. So hopefully by Jan 22 it will be ready to fly. Then I just have to hope that the weather will permit it.
So far I probably have about 20(???) hours in this puppy. I probably spent about 10 hours getting the firewall perfected, and another 10 or so stripping and recovering the wings and tail.
Good luck,
Chris