Wow - Had to Reset Password . . .

I use a program, SlimCleaner, to clean out the cookies etc. and it wiped out my password to get into the application.

So I had to resort to regenerating a password.  It was not hard to do, just irritating thing to have to do.  But sometimes with a clean up you must do those kinds of things.  Done now.

Finished up my Central Hobbies Stik and am ready to go flying again.  It was not a hard task but I had to do a lot of little things I do not normally have to do.  I had to drill and fit an engine mount for my Magnum 0.91 cubic inch four stroke engine.  Not a big problem but some out of the ordinary I had to do.  Got it done but not after first putting a couple of coats on the fire wall to seal it up.   I supposedly had a coat but I ran a bit of sand paper over it, did the typical surface treatment with a mixture of alcohol and epoxy glue.  Not completely satisfied, I then put a coat of polyurethane varnish over it all.  Now it is sealed up.

I had to route the throttle servo push rod through the fire wall back to the servo.  Again, not hard to do, just something I had to do.  It is all set up now.

When I installed the fuel tank, I had to sort of back it up with some Styrofoam.  I have plenty of that from various packing sources like from the new Vacuum cleaner, or an new TV satellite receiver.  I save that stuff, cuts easy with a hobby knife and can be sanded smooth.  That is all in place with a pop cycle stick holding it in place. 

I had to mount the elevator and rudder servo in the aft fuselage to off set the weight of the engine.  In this case the model had provisions for that but as usual had to be reinforced.  I glued pop cycle sticks on the back side of the basic fuselage material.  A doubler of sorts but more to grip for the servo mount screws.

The fuselage was in to parts, the aft part had to be glued to the forward part.  It had four little braces to install, a bit difficult but got that job done.  I removed the installed tubes for the control rods as I was installing the servos in the aft part of the fuselage.

The provides control material was the hardest material I have ever dealt with on a model.  I have these "Z" bend pliers to make the bends necessary for the servo connections and had to use a table vice to close the pliers bending the rods.  As it was I broke one of them and had to result in soldering on clevis connectors on the ends of the rods.  But that too is done now. 

I stuck the battery that is used to power the receiver and the servos as far back in the open area of the fuselage as I could get it.  And I had to add a piece of balsa to mount an on off switch.  Got that all done.

Then the wing mount screws were just that metal screws.  I changed that to 1/4 inch nylon bolts as I am used to using in other planes.  I have lots of such bolts.  That required drilling out the holes through the wing and removing the blind nuts inside the fuselage.   I had replace the blind nuts with 1/4 inch ones for the nylon bolts.

On the wings I had to fiber glass a patch on the bottom of the wing over the joint.  The wings come in two pieces with a connect wooden board about 3/8ths thick.  One must epoxy the about 10 inch long piece into one side, the later into the other side joining the two pieces together.  As a normal practice, I put a fiber glass patch over that area with reinforces the structure considerable.

Last but not least I had to balance the airplane.  I found it came into balance almost perfectly, close enough that I did not have to add any weight to the front or the back.  One does that with no fuel in the tank, so when one takes off the airplane is nose heavy but the fuel burns down and the balance is maintained for landing.  During the flight normal control trim can accommodate the imbalance so that it is not a problem.

I put larger wheels than normal as I fly off a grass field.  Sometimes the grass is a little bit tall, the extra diameter wheels take care of that.  The landing gear is aluminum, pretty standard for this kind of airplane.  It is held on by two screws and that somewhat concerns me, all the others I have dealt with either had three or four such screws.  We shall see how it hold up.

I use Hitec radio equipment and found it to be quite adequate.  I have never had a problem with it.  I had all kinds of fits with Spectrum gear and got rid of it.  I use Hitec servos too but they are standard and work with anybody's equipment.

So tomorrow, I will go fly - again.  And I will continue to restore the UltraStik that ran into the electric fence will.  I was old and had a lot of problems to fix.  But surprisingly it came back together pretty goo, all though a bit heavier with fiber glass patches but stronger now.