I built this Stick in 1986 and flew it until 1989..
It saw some rough times back then..
One time I cartwheeled it off the runway into a barb wire fence..

After I stopped flying in 90 it spent the next 17 years waiting to die in storage.

When I pulled it out of the attic last year it was in sad shape.. the covering was loose in many places.. had holes in others.
cracks in the fuselage, missing parts, the tires even had flat spots

The OS .45 FSR was castor locked..... A trip through the crock put fixed that and it spend some time pulling my Avistar around the sky.

Well it's an old friend so I had to start putting her back together again with a few mods now that I'm flying again.

Mod 1 was bigger ailerons.

I made a built up core from 1/8 stock and sheeted with 1/16"
The finished pieces are larger and the same weight as the old 1/4 slab pieces.

Mod 2 so far is dual in wing aileron servos with wiring tubes.

The tubes are just printer paper rolled on a 1/2" dowel and glued with white glue.
After they dried I drilled holes in the ribs with a 1/2" forstner bit and worked the tubes into place..
They got smashed a bit in the process but running a short section of the 1/2 dowel through the tubes straightened them out and made for a nice backing block while gluing the tubes to the ribs.

next up was repairs.. I had several sections of cracked sheeting on the wing. Broken and gouged wing tips,
Broken sheeting on the fuse. Correcting some early poor repairs.. made a new hatch to replace the missing one. lots of little stuff.

I plan on making a new elevator and rudder with counter balances with the same process as the ailerons.
put in new CF control rods for the rudder elevator Tip: (Kites are on sale this time of year.. many are made with CF rods.. I got one for $2 and got 4 rods out of it.)
I'll also convert it from trike to tail dragger.

I've always felt that a Stick should be done with fabric. It used to be covered with super coverite.
This time I'm going with lightweight polyester and dope.. latex for color and polyurathane for a fuel proof clear.

The goal is an Ultra Stick type of setup but with more of a classic stick look.

nice progress , im new to rc been flying for 8 months now and i have many crashes. so to see sombody ressurecting a 2o something year old plane is incredible. cant wait to see the remaiden . please post some video

Good luck! The Stiks are all great flying aircraft. I look forward to th finished product!

No progress today.. Daughters birthday!
I did manage to put a few coats of Poly on the flight box and sharpened the hand planes..

Today I managed to draw up a new rudder and made a few mods to the elevator.

I made a template to compare the original design and what I came up with.

I duno.. my setup looks kinda ugly.. Maybe it'll look better with the elevator on.
Then again it is an Ugly Stick

I'd already made a 1/4" sheet elevator so I just made a few more changes to that one.
What I did was cut the tips off the stab. hack them down a bit and make the elevator counter balanced.

The last shot is one of the planes I sharpened up the other day. Works great on balsa when it's sharp.

Great job on bringing the old bird back to life. You will be happy with the results. Back in the 80's I built every plane by the book. Somewhere in the last 25 years I lost the inhabition about changing my kits around. I'm back in R/C after a long time away and have been rebuilding and doing all those mods that I wished I would have done to begin with. So far I'm happy with the results.

Kit bashing ROCKS!!!![>:]

Sorry no pics today. I'll take some and add them later..

I split the elevator to provide clearance for the rudder.
I did that by first cutting a notch in the LE and adding a 1/4 square hardwood block to tied what will eventually be the two halves together.
After the glue was dry I marked and cut a section out of the center of the elevator for clearance.
Since this is just a 1/4" sheet elevator I added 1/8 x 1/4" cap strips to the cut area to reduce flexing.

Next I started on moving the landing gear forward to make the plane a tail dragger.
I cut a new hardwood block on the table saw and ripped in a slot for the stock wire gear.

That's all been epoxied in to the fuse.. It fits great!
A 3/32 ply cap with 4 bolts will lock the gear in.

I need to build the rudder next.

After that is setting up the hinges, and some more sheeting replacement on the fuse.
I found a spot with some fuel soak damage.

pics later

Pictures..

i like those elevators. should be nice. make sure the blocks that hold the gear on are real strong.
scott

I hope they are strong enough..
They are oak.. Strange choice I know but hey it was laying around.
I would have used maple if I had any.
It's all glued in to the sides, bottom sheeting and the former with epoxy.
I may go back and epoxy in a 1/8" piece with the grain crossing to prevent the block from splitting in a hard landing.

Another day.. More work and a dumb mistake caused by rushing through things.

I framed up the rough core of the rudder yesterday.. Today I trimmed and sanded it into shape.
Then I cut and glued the sheeting together.. Sanded them smooth and glued them to the core..
That was my mistake.. I forgot to add the blocking for the hinges and ply for the control horn area.
Just to make things worse it didn't click for a few hours so the glue was already dry.

It's times like this I wish the glue didn't bond well.. The sheeting was stuck all to well.

I managed to carve out a 2" strip from the sheeting using a #11 blade.
After a bit of work with a good sharp chisel I had the cuts cleaned up and added the missing blocks.
I sanded the open area smooth with some 120 grit self sticking sand paper cut and stuck on a paint stick.
I cut a new piece of 1/16 sheeting and covered it up again.. It's back under the clamps till tomorrow.

I was kinda mad at myself and forgot to take pics of the repair process.
I just wanted to Get it done.

Looking at the pics I guess it's time to clean up the work bench eh?

It's starting to look like a plane again!!

Today I managed to trim up the sheeting on the rudder and cut the notch for the counter balance on the stab..
It's finally starting to come together.

It looks like I may have an interference issue with the elevator and rudder.
I'm not exactly sure how I'll fix it yet.

Hinges are next!

I agree, looks like there might be interference between rudder and elevator.

Is it possible to slide the rudder assembly back a ways? Back far enough so the rudder pivot point is behind the elevator pivot?

a good easy way to fix the interferance would be to vut the elvators. this type of plane dosnt need much throw.
scott

What I'm thinking of right now is to move the rudder up about 1/8" and capping the top of the vertical stab to match the lines.
between that and rounding over the center block in the rudder it should clear. as a bonus it'll cap the end grain making the stab stiffer.

Extending the rudder back is a good idea but it would mean moving it almost 1/2" back.. 1/4" for the stab and another 1/4 for the elevator block.

option 2 is a bit more involved..

remove the center block and either run split elevators (somewhat ugly having 2 control horns)
or make a 1/8" music wire joiner mounted on the hinge CL with a brass tubing bushing as a pivot point epoxied to the stab.

I'll try the simple mod first.

Sorry no updates this week.. I'm on vacation!

I did find an old video tape of me flying in 1987..

You can see the stick I'm working on in the first 10 seconds sitting on a table.
That was the day of it's maiden flight.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEcSjY5KkoM

Ahh yes! The old Midwest Sweet Stik! The best stik ever made. Just doesn't get any better than that. The new stiks just can't hold a candle to them. Good luck in the redesign and hope it flies great for you. Can we see some pics of the final product? Looks great so far.
Regards,
Busted

I'll keep posting updates till it's back in the air..

I'm having fun with it.. Worse case I have the plans and can build another one from scratch.

No new pics but a little progress.

Just to try something new I chose to use my router table for rounding over the edges and cutting the hinge line bevels on the new surfaces.
My router is a bit overkill for the job.. 3 1/2 HP Hitachi M12V.. an 11lb beast.

It worked great but you need to be extra carefull.

I finished hinging the elevator using robart hinges. I used many of the tips form airfield models.
http://www.airfieldmodels.com/inform...ints/index.htm

More progress and new pictures..

Today I hinged the rudder..

First thing I did was mark the hinge points from the plans onto a 1/4x1/4 hardwood stick cut to the length of the rudder hinge line

Then I drilled 1/8" holes in the stick on the drill press.
Now I have a drilling jig for the robart hinges.
I also added a little 1/16 sheet scrap to allow a small gap between the stab and rudder. The covering will close this up a little.

The jig gets taped to the rudder (pic 1)
then drill the holes (pics 2)
In pic 3 you can see we have a nice set of perfectly aligned holes.

In Pic 4 we follow the same process on the stab. (note the 1/16" spacer)

Pic 5 I've sanded notches into the rudder for the hinges.. you want them flush with the TE when folded over 90 degrees.

Pic 6 shows the Rudder installed but we still need to cut the bevels.

Pic 7 shows the finished rudder.. it has almost 45 degrees movement and a nice tight hinge line.

Last pics.. Just showing off the movement it's capable of without hitting

We are getting close to finishing the wood work on this thing..

I did the aileron hinges last night so I think I'm down to making a plate to cover the landing gear slot.

The next steps will be mounting the tail wheel, install the engine, Control horns, push rods and servos

Then strip it down for fuel proofing and covering.

No Monokote for this plane.

Still loads of work to do but less balsa dust!

Main landing gear done.
Tail wheel 90% done.. I need some wheel collars to finish up.
Engine test mounted. I turned it 90 deg from vertical this time.. I was somewhat surprised how tight the clearance between the fuselage and muffler is. It'll clear with no mods though.

Mounted the servos and control horns on the wing.
Made the aileron push rods but still need to solder the clevises on.

Added hardwood servo rails in the fuselage.
Started installing the push rod tubes for the rudder and elevator.
I need a more threaded rods to finish up plus add the control horns.

still to go on the radio install is mounting the power switch, throttle push rod and routing the antenna
fuel tank might be a bright idea at some point too.

Radio install is done except for where to run the antenna.. (there's always something isn't' there?)

Yesterday I got the horns and push rods done for the rudder and elevator
I didn't use the CF rods like I'd planned.. Just a pack of blue gold-n-rods I had laying around.

Finished up the tail wheel and made it adjustable.
Instead of just making an L bend into the rudder I soldered a pin into a 1/16 wheel collar.
The pin goes into the rudder and the tail wheel rod goes up into the wheel collar.
The tail wheel bracket is now adjustable or removable through a small slot on the side of the rudder to access to wheel collar set screw.
I'll post a pic of the setup later today.

Drilled holes for the fuel lines, made a platform to raise the fuel tank slightly
Re-routed the throttle push rod to work with the side mounted engine.

I think it's time to strip it down and start covering this thing

I'm looking forward to those tail-wheel shots...

Working on a tail-dragger myself...

OK Tail wheel pics

I know it's kinda long but it's easy to trim down if necessary.

I'll cut it down when I figure out how much throw I need on the elevator.

If I had to make another I'd rotate the pin 45 degrees from the set screw instead of 90.
Then the notch for access to the set screw wouldn't be needed

The brass washer I soldered on for the wheel is a spacer for a dubro ball link.