hi guys, I'm from south africa,started flying two months ago and soloed last saturday.my trainer is the Thunder Tiger MkII but I bought a Ultra Stick .40 that i almost finished building.any tips or advice what the main differences in flying between the two will be?like landing, take-off and simple aerobatics, etc.?

If I remember correctly the the Stik has a semi-symetrical airfoil as oppsed to a more flat bottomed airfoil on the previous plane so it will not float as much on landing. This is both good and bad. Landings will be more predictable but not quite as good of a glide but still more than adequate. Also will have much less dihedral so it is more of a "point and fly" plane. It goes where you aim it with less self correction in the roll axis. Again both good and bad. easy to control as long as you are prepared to fly it at all times.
Overall, you should enjoy the plane. Just remember it has a variable throttle and you don't have to go wide open all the time until you get used to it. Take off and get to a safe altitude and throttle back some. Then just get used to it. Before long you'll be tearing up the sky with it.

thanx

I've had two UltraStik.40s. Both flew good, but both exhibited the same problems.

It appeared to me that the plane was designed to bore holes in the sky, do a few of the less demanding stunts, and land with less chance to stall. And not much more.

Both of mine could be slowed to a crawl without any tendency to stall. The only thing they did when slowed almost to a stop was to drop the nose. Neither would do a snap because the elevator really didn't seem powerful enough to stall the wing. I wound up losing the 2nd one from flying it with the CG so far back it was too hard to fly. I'd been moving the CG back to get it to stall.

Both of mine were awful when I attempted to knife edge them. They'd roll up ok, but when I gave them rudder to hold the knife edge altitude, they'd almost snap roll. (chuckle.... so they would snap, only not when the wings were horizontal... lol ) The rudder couple was massive.

If you look at the two situations, it's obvious why the airplane wouldn't snap roll. At least, why it wouldn't do an upright snap. When you try for an upright snap, you are stalling the wing by pitching the nose up and you're hitting the rudder to cause the snap. When you hit the rudder, the strong couple tries to tuck the nose down right when the elevator is trying to pitch it up. I'm surprised the tail didn't break off.

Can it be trimmed to sort out those maneuvers? I wouldn't be surprised if some flyers could, but I didn't have the experience to do it at the time I had them. And after going on to other airplanes, have not wished to try one again. Maybe someone will jump in here and tell how they got theirs to snap and KE.

BTW, the tradeoff that I saw was that the airplanes were extremely steady on landing. I often landed them almost vertically with almost no forward speed. Heck, they really didn't want to stall. That in itself could be worth the tradeoff for some flyers.

Also, neither of mine had the flap/aileron wing configuration. I'm betting the flaps were there to get the airplane to fly "wilder" maneuvers.

The Ultra Stick .40 is easier to fly than the TT trainer. I have flown both. The altitude at Potch makes a difference to most planes but the Stick should be easy and fun to fly. BTW, I am originally from SA and flew near Pretoria (or whatever they call it now.)

Safe Flying!

thanx for the advice blikseme3000!what do u mean by the altitude makes a difference to planes?
PS they not sure themselves if they call it pretoria or tshwane, and now they want to change potch to tlokwe

At higher altitudes, the engines that run on air/fuel deliver less power. And the "thinner" air makes the airframes act as if they were heavier. There is less lift. Same things happen on very hot days.