| The Indestructable LiteStik Made From Aluminum Arrow Shaft by Lynn Garland, Texas It is easy to use the square parts that you need from the litestik, the things you need the most are the wing mounts(I dont care what anyone says these things save wings period) I made servo mounts from 3/8 X 1/16 balsa and epoxied them onto the shaft I use very small tie straps to hold a motor stick (about 3" long) I then put a couple of drops of thick CA along one side of the stick/arrow to anchor it (you can put in some right thrust real easy at this point) the wings I mounted on two motor sticks, one cut at 6" the other at 6 3/4" draw center lines on the sticks,glue them together with the marks aligned then epoxy the 6" stick to the arrow make sure it is square with the tail feathers and bam you have a place to put the plastic wing mounts and they do not move around! You can also do a little bending on the landing gear wire and reuse it as well. Today I put the first flight on my litestik after all the mods. all I can say is WOW it flew like never before....it even has a very nice glide. I had no problems at all controlling it with the motor cut off, the plane floated around with none of the problems it had before such as gliding like a brick. I will put up pictures as soon as I can, most of the mods were so simple and did not cost hardly anything to do. The things I kept from the litestik kit were. (1) Wings (2) Motor/gearbox (3) Tail feathers (4) Landing gear/plastic wing mounts! I added: (1) 2219 aluminum arrow shaft (2) Wing mount assembly (3) Battery mounting board (4) Servo mounts (5) 1/8x1/8 Balsa pushrods (6) Micro tie strap motor mount Instead of using strings for the dihedral, I balance the plane on the wings at the cg mark which makes the wings bow up under the weight of the plane I then run two 8" or 9" pieces of scotch tape on the front and back of the wings. believe it or not this works great and the best part is that in a "hard" landing it will pop loose and not mess the wings up or break the plastic wing mounts. I also make the plane fly just a litle bit tail heavy (around 1 degree) and it really seems to help out with the glide. I am running the 8 cell .300mah pack and in my test this morning it would putter around on 1/4 throttle with no problems and get this the all up weight is 9 oz. and it flies at least 60 percent better than before, especially in the no power glide area. I made 3 looooong glide landings with no power at all and I did not have to feed in lots of up elevator to keep it that way, most of the glides were well over 25 feet long with no nasty habits at all. The tie strap motor mount works so well, these are the very little plastic tie straps you see inside electronics that tie the wires together. I tested the mount too see if it would break loose instead of damaging the motor or the frame, I nosed it in from about 10 feet up under power and both the tie straps broke clean with no damage to the motor. Lynn |