Hi all,

Just wanted to give everyone here a heads up regarding the new Great Planes Yardstick. IMHO, there are some major flaws in the plane that others need to know before purchase. The first and worst flaw is the quality of the plastic parts. The are so brittle that they break constantly. The plastic motor mount is so flimsy that it broke on assembly. The battery holder/servo tray/landing gear mount is no better, you'll be reaching for the ca every other flight. I'm not talking about after crashing, just normal flight will cause these failures. The worst part of it all is that Great Planes has been back-ordered on replacement plastics parts for this plane since early March and as of this time will not be in stock until the end of April. They seem to have plenty of parts to sell complete planes so why not the parts?

So here I sit with a plane that has a broken wing mount for the last 5 weeks and it looks like another 3-4 weeks until i **might** get parts. If you ask me that is utterly ridiculous. This will likely be my last Great planes purchase.

The other issue is flight performance. It is vastly under-propped with the included prop. Its a chore to gain altitude and about the time you finally get it up high enough the battery is starting to wain. The solution that I found for this is a li-poly 1200 mah pack and a GWS 11-6 prop. Much improvement! It will actually get out of its own way now. THat is if I could fly it but I cant. Still waiting on parts.

Anyway, the moral is that if you were considering the purchase of a Yardstick instead of a Slow stick, get the Slow stick. Im sure a lots of people are considering the Yardstick for the same reasons I did. Balsa wing, carbon fiber...etc. Dont do it. The Slow Stick is ten times the tough little park flier. And $15.00 less too.

Hello azsailor1990...I have a yard stick and you are right about the brittle parts as well as the ice melting climb rate the yard stick has.I gave up on parts and made my own mount...thought i would passon how i did it.First for the motor mount i shaped a small piece of stiff foam to fit the bottom half of my motor and allowed enough foam at the bottom to drill a hole for the fuselage shaft to fit in...First I epoxied the foam seat to the shaft then used a small amount of 5 min epoxy to secure the motor in the foam seat finally i cut some 1/4 in strips of tape and put a band of tape at the front and a band of tape at the rear being careful to keep the motor cooling vents open.....works better than the original.For the battery compartment I modified and used an old plastic servo tray attached with plastic tie wraps and a bit of JB Weld....The thing actually flies better........Hope some of this helps

I'm with you guys. I have both the yard stik and SS. SS is much better, tougher, ... and cheaper. Went through a wing mount on the YS as you did, but cracked only enough that I used some plastic epoxy and that fixed it. Then nosed it over and broke the motor mount. My fix was to take a short length of GWS motor mount wood, bore a hole in it to fit over the fuselage rod, epoxy it and then use a spare GWS 400C-D... finally some power! R.K.

Hi,[8D]
I agree with both of you. The yardstick is brittle and very underpowered. The 400 C or D is a good combination except you have to rebalance the airplane. The best combination I have found is use the EPS - 300C (370 motor gray gearbox) with the (D) 6.6:1 gear ratio with a GWS 11-8 propeller and a Thunder Tiger 2100 MA 11.4 volt Lithium Polymer Battery pack. (The 370 motor has held a very well for me with the 11-volt pack.) However be aware you can burn up a motor using the setup. Once you have the airplane off the ground fly the airplane at ½ to ¾ speed. The airplane will now fly in 10 to 15 winds without a problem.
For butter flying. [sm=thumbup.gif]
Mike

I agree with the plastic parts.. (junk),, the plane looks great in the air.. Very under powered.