Mark's aircraft

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page updated: 2007.02.18

aircraft - gliders - stiletto

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selection

My 1st proper slope soarer. Chosen for its looks and the fact that it is a "wooden" build it yourself thing. Really a pylon racer, but I use it as a sports model.

construction

Blue foam veneer semi symmetric wings with spruce leading and trailing edges. Precut circular holes for the wing servos (2x hitec HS60). Ply sides with balsa top and bottom. I modified various bits, especially the tail, where I used thinner balsa and stretched it a bit. I also put the control horns for the elevators on top, so that they would be out of the way (of the ground) and I could use just 1 control cable. I think I slimmed the fuselage a bit, so it was just wide enough for the elevator servo (hitec HS101) and a standard hitec Rx. Fixed the hatch with a concealed screw instead of the sliding catch. I put some 1mm ply across the wing join. Dowel and nylon screw wing fixing. Nothing under the wing - just space for ballast (although I've never put any in yet). Special 700mAh pack (also from phoenix) required to go in the rather slim nose. Still needs a bit of lead in there. Rewired the wing servos to reach the fuselage down the drinking straw tubes drilled into the wings. Made my own Y lead for sharing the aileron control across 2 servos. Covered in the usual red solarfilm with a black hatch.

flight

1st time I tried to fly it (apart from test glides) was early 1999 at Ashes Hollow at the Long Mynd with the wind a bit too far round to the west. Flew very nicely considering my time away fom the Tx. Unfortunately, I ended up trying to land it over to the left, managing to get confused about which wing was up and smacked it into the ground nose 1st. The dowel broke out of the front of the wing, 1 of the wing servos stripped (nylon gears - you can't trust them), the nose got a bit scarred, but otherwise OK. Since then it has flown several times wih no more crashes. Recently (Mar 2002) managed some sustained inverted flight off the Pole Cot slope.

A very pretty model.

statistics

Here are some more photos.

And video.