Okay, here's the deal...As I said in another post, I've built many FF stick-and-tissue planes from kits over the past twenty years, but never have even seen or heard a model engine running.

I don't want to dive into RC and dump money into stupid mistakes (ie--crashing).

I abhor the idea of RTF's and ARF's, as I love to do the building myself. For some reason I love watching a pile of balsa sticks and sheet turn into a frame.

I've searched the free plans links listed here on this site and have found several large (5-8' span) models that I think would serve me well, be easy to build, and fairly sturdy.

Here's the idea...The plans I've found are mainly free-flight duration models--They were mounted with smallish glow engines set to run for a short run (8-15 seconds) and then the ship had a free flight back down to terra firma. These plans are some 60-80 years old, long before the advent of RC. Some were built with dethermalizers as the better-built ships were often lost when they hit thermals and flew away, only to land 30-40 miles away after a 4 hour free flight.

I'm thinking of building one of these as a "dead-stick" RC model. Sound crazy enough for you? Then read on.

These birds were built to be inherently stable. After all, no human controlled their flights, so they had to be self-righting and smooth operating. Most are fairly large, with a low wing loading ratio. With that in mind, how about adding a small RX unit and a single servo to control rudder so that I can keep in over the field I release it from?

I'm not at all worried about acrobatics or finess. I only want to keep from losing my ship.

I figure that if I do this, I can learn how to trim my plane so that it flies well by itself. Once I can do this, I can then build later ships with full RC ability, with powered flight.

Mainly I need advice on which control system to go with and advice on how to modify a non-RC stick and tissue to have control panels. Again, I'm thinking to start with only rudder for control. If I can safely turn my ship in a circle over a field, I'll be happy, as it will eventually land itself. I wonder about how I might need to adjust the wing loading with the additional weight of a servo and all additional gear, or if what I have in mind will be light enough that it won't affect flight much.

Let me know what you think. Understand that whether you agree with me or not, I'm gonna do it...So give me some advice to help me out!