My Avistar is starting to show signs of being the first trainer. I am going to move over to my Funtana now. But I would like to strip my Avistar and play with it a little. Can I use a radial arm saw and just rip it down the center, and then just cut a piece of ply into a rectangle to fit where the joiner is and epoxy them together flat? And how do I fix the wing saddle inside the plane to acept the flat wing? I want to glass the wing together after it joined, should I just do the joint or should I also add stripps down the lenth of the wing on both sides? My club president says I fly it like a pylon racer, so I would like to strenthen it up and race it in the race what you bring events. Some tail wires and tail dragger conversion, and it should be good to go.

I have used a radial arm saw many times to change dihedral on planes. If you use 6 ounce fiberglass cloth and 30-minute epoxy, you shouldn't need a new dihedral brace, provided you peel the covering back and glass a 6-inch wide area. if you are uncomfortable with this, use the dihedral brace.

The Avistar is a good plane for this bacause it has a semi-symmetrical airfoil as opposed to the usual trainer flat bottom airfoil. Think of the Ultra Stick. It has a flat wing and does very well. Your airfoil is thinner so it will be faster, especially if it has a .46 in it.

With a flat wing, and we have a couple in my club, the plane won't fly much different. You still get dihedral effect from the high wing location. That is, the plane will still roll with rudder. You would need 1 1/2 inches of anhedral on each side to cancel this out. If you are doing outside maneuvers, you should notice better tracking with less tendency to roll out.

You will have to adjust the wing saddle. I normally carve/sand the saddle area rather than move the holes for the dowel. Some times I adjust a little on both. I usually put in anhedral so I need a greater saddle cut away than you will.

The saddle may need so little adjustment that you can ignore it... and just put foam "wing seating" tape on it. The difference in how the wing meets the fuselage will be minimal when taking out the dihedral.

When dealing with a bolt-on wing, its easier to just open up the hole the dowel or peg goes into to allow for the difference. And you are less likely to make the wing sit cocked on the fuselage this way. (This shouldn't be an issue... the Avistar has a rubber band monted wing)

Thanks for the advice. I am going to strip the covering off the whole plane, so useing just the tape instead of the the brace will be no problem. I might convert the rubber bands over to bolts after I see how it fly's when I get it done. I notice with the bands, you can never get the wing exactly in the same place twice. But when you are learning, this little bit does not make that much of a difference, and besides, dip a wing once with bolts and you could have a major repair on your hands, instead of just reshifting the wing.