Hi,

I was wondering if anyone has any suggestions to make this thing better?
I wanted to make my Avistar a taildragger so I just jammed a tailwheel up the rudder and cut out part of the elevator. BTW, the labels on the elevator and stab are for my airplane-alliterate dad. I also labeled the wing, ailerons etc. Thanks in advance for your help.

Hi newbie,
try a sulivan tailwheel assambly, mount it to the bottom of the fuse, and run a second pushrod from your rudder servo. my buddy just did this wih his H9 arrow,works great. Sorry no pics. Also, you may want to convert that wing to a bolt on set up while your at it.

I think if you land hard with that thing or the wheel getss tuck somewhere on the airfield, the rudder is gonna get ripped of ... [&:]

Just fit a non-steerable tail wheel. The plane has enough rudder autority to steer on the ground.

MerlinL14 is right you could probably get by with a non steerable wheel. If you really wanted wheel control, I would mount a tailwheel bracket or even a brass tube off the end of the fuse, and run your tailwheel wire up through the bracket and through a hole in the elevator hinge joint into the leading edge of the rudder. Bend the wire at 90 degrees and secure behind the rudder control horn plate. This will give you much better leverage on the tailwheel and take all the strain off the rudder. I just completed this mod on my Kadet. The only difference is my kadet fuse is a little different but your mod should be even easier.

Thanks guys

The above advise on your tailwheel is much better for you rudder's life
span.. Another mod unmention is, If your ok at wood working.. Is to
remove the Dihedral from the wing which will give you better flight
performance... But then again, all the mods will take it out of the
trainer category, though still an easy flyer... And if you fore see family
/friends that might want to get into the hobby you'll have a plane for
them to use...

The Avistar doesn't have a whole lot of dihedral to begin with, so I doubt it would be worth the effort, unless you have to rebuild the wing anyway. When I had my Avistar, I had a few people ask me if I took the dihedral out of my wing, even though it was unmodified...

I agree -pkh-.. Much better to leave as is... But I would think it
would make a difference... Since I had to send my radio/pack in
for a check... I was waiting until it's return to fly again, Well I
did not wait long before I couldn't take it... So charged the
batteries in the Avistar and the 4 channel radio, removed the
LA 46 and replaced with the 46FX And went flying... But pushing
the Avistar a lot more than before.. IE K.E.'s and hanging for
about a min. at about 20' before it fell out.. Member's started
saying.. You know that's a trainer, it should not be doing things
like that, and didn't you say you had a set of Floats coming for
that Avistar, Keep that up and you may have to put it on another
plane... They have a point...