Balsa USA Stick 40 plus

[Bricks]

Be sure and set up failsafe on your receiver, so it shuts the engine down if signal is lost. Easy way to check this is turn everything on then shut off the radio and see if it closes the throttle plate and DO NOT USE THE IDLE SCREW on the engine to set idle use the servo otherwise failsafe will not work. I always remove the idle stop screw on all my IC engines.

 

[Ryan O.]

Be sure and set up failsafe on your receiver, so it shuts the engine down if signal is lost. Easy way to check this is turn everything on then shut off the radio and see if it closes the throttle plate and DO NOT USE THE IDLE SCREW on the engine to set idle use the servo otherwise failsafe will not work. I always remove the idle stop screw on all my IC engines.

Thanks, I've already done the stuff to the idle screw. I'll set up the failsafe today

 

[Ryan O.]

Maiden flight tomorrow if the weather's good. I added a spinner for a powered starter. I also moved the motor further back and had to cut some wood to do that. I don't think I'll repaint it because the partial completion fits for a trainer.

 

[Ryan O.]

So I was planning on flying tomorrow, but today there was a big brush fire right next to the flying field caused by a train, so that might be delayed. Luckily it was stopped from bruning the field sheds or any houses thanks to the fire departments of the nearby counties

(I wasn't the one who took the photo)

 

[Ryan O.]

Well the flight may be delayed a bit because they're still making sure nothing's on fire.

 

[Ryan O.]

So the plane flew great during the maiden today. One of the two problems was that I forgot to put loctite on the wheel collar set screws, so the just loosened and the collar and wheel fell off. The other was that the engine's screws didn't have loctite either for some reason. This meant the muffler was just dangling by the tubing connecting it to the fuel tank, and the tube from the carb to the cylinder did the same, leaving a 1cm gap. That killed the engine mid flight, but I was able to bring it back over the trees. When it did touch down the landing gear without a wheel snagged the grass, which cartwheeled the stick. Luckily the only damage was to the prop and the nylon holding on the gear, so if I can get those cheap parts it should be back in the air next weekend Overall the plane's great for everything but taxiing and one wheel landings

 

[Ryan O.]

I found some time today to loctite all the screws and fix the landing gear, so I'll hopefully fly this again sometime next week. Here's some photos I found of it flying without a wheel, and when it cartwheeled on landing because of that in addition to a dead stick:

 

[Ryan O.]

I flew the Swizzle Stick for the first time since the crash landing today at Warbirds Over Wisconsin during the post airshow open fly. It flew even better than before with increased throws, and it certainly isn't lacking for power. A guy with a radar gun clocked it at 70mph flying in level flight. I can probably switch to an 11" prop on it, which will help with prop strikes on landing. With a smaller prop I can likely increase flight times to 11 minutes full throttle flying with a healthy margin.

 

[Bricks]

We have 3 of the Sizzle Sticks in our club one of them gets flown at least once a week.

 

[Ryan O.]

I've been pretty busy lately, but I was able to find a bit of time this weekend to go for a flight, and then the muffler fell off mid flight. The funny thing is that the engine didn't get any louder after it happened, which says something aboout the effectiveness of the janky steel tube with 5 holes "muffler" that I had on there before I kept on flying a bit more without the muffler, and all that seemed to change was how much smoke came out.

You should be able to see the muffler falling in this picture.