Kits That We Have Built


The Tiger Stick is an almost-ready-to-fly airplane made by Thunder Tiger. It has a high-wing, a symmetrical airfoil, and either tricycle or conventional landing gear. Mine were powered by a Thunder Tiger 40 engine, and  used a Futaba 6-channel radio for control. The first one that I had crashed on the first flight because of dumb thumbs, but the second one that I had flew for a long time before wearing out and crashing. I built my first one with tricycle gear, and the second one with a tail dragger. Looking back, the tail dragger was a lot more fun. This airplane seemed to be fairly easy to land, but was a little heavy on takeoff with the plain .40 engine. One thing about this plane that we thought was cool is that when flown at high speeds it would make a high-pitched whistling sound (like a jet). Aerobatics were sluggish when compared to my Top Cap or the Uproar, but they were still way better than what a trainer could do. The main problem that I had with this airplane is the quality of the hardware that came with it. Eventually the poor hardware caught up with tiger stick #2 and sealed its fate. The thing that bothers me the most about crashing my airplanes is that I rarely get to see the impact. I have seen only one of my kit planes at the moment of impact (MOI). They always seem to duck behind a hill or a line of trees, so maybe I should do a little tree chopping and a bit of earth moving in the vicinity of our little airport.

The Uproar, sold by Tower Hobbies in kit form, was a high-performance mid-wing 40-size airplane. I got my uproar after the second Tiger Stick went down. At first I used my TT-40 engine until I thought a .46 might be a little more fun, and it was. The radio was a Futaba 6XA with five servos and a 500 ma battery. The wing-span was 48", and the ailerons were full length, so it had a pretty nice roll rate. I had flown mine from the forward C.G. limit to the aft  limit, and I liked it best all the way back. This thing handled about like a jet at high speeds, but it was still loose enough to do some nice tumbles. Top speed with the .46 was about 80mph, stall was about 15mph. The rate of climb was very good (straight up), and it could hover ok. The Uproar is a no dihedral design, so it was as stable up side down as it was right side up. The kit went together easy and quick. Something that I liked about the kit was that there wasn't  any hardware included, so I could choose my own. My Uproar died of pilot stupidity after many flights, and more than a year of service.

The Shrike is a 10 size kit sold by Lanier. I got mine from Sam when it was mostly assembled, and I finished it up in a couple of months. It is powered by an O.S. 10 and is controlled with a hitec radio system. On the initial flight attempts we had some trouble getting it to fly straight after hand launching it. We soon found that you have to give it a pretty hard toss to keep it out of the grass. On the first successful flight we were a little worried when stuff started flying off of the airplane, luckily it was just the decals. The first flight characteristic that I noticed was a tendency to tip stall, the second was a very high roll rate. The O.S. 10 isn't really powerful enough to do any serious aerobatics with, so I mostly just do high speed fly-bys and jet type maneuvers. Two things that I would do differently if I built another shrike is that I would use Monokote instead of econokote, and I would cover the fuselage instead of painting it. Right now the shrike is not in use because we had some engine vibration problems, and a C.G. problem. 

The Top Cap was built from a kit sold by Morris Hobbies. It is a double tapered mid-wing design with a profile fuselage. Unlike many other profile type airplanes, the radio gear and fuel tank are mounted inside the wing.  This airplane took me a lot longer to build than my uproar did, probably because I had never built a profile airplane before. The instructions seemed to be a bit screwy in some places, so I just put the thing together how I thought it should go and it turned out just fine. The engine that I used was a O.S. 46FX and the radio is a Futaba 8-channel. Top level speed  with a 12X4 prop. is 80mph, the rate of climb must be around 5000fpm straight-up. This plane will hover, but I think the C.G. is too far forward to really be stable in the hover. On a windy day I can land this thing into the wind so that ground speed is about 0. The Top Cap is the first plane that I have used monokote on and I think it is more resistant to fuel, but is more brittle and harder to use than econokote. Overall this is a very fun plane, but I think if I crash it I'll just move on to building real airplanes for a change.

The Knighthawk is a plastic utility airplane kit made by US Aircore. The plane that I have had experience with is owned by Doug Laird. The materials used in the construction of this  airplane are three different thicknesses of corrugated plastic. The Knighthawk is a high-wing configuration with a bomb bay pod that mounts under the fuselage. Doug's airplane is fitted with a tricycle gear, but a tail dragger can be added later if he wants it. The best thing about this airplane is that it is very hard to break in a crash (I know this from experience). With a .40 engine up front performance is ok and it's easy on the fuel. One time I did over 100 touch and go landings on just a few tanks of fuel and I think I could do one every 15 seconds. This is a really fun airplane to fly because you can bang it around a bit without any damage, so it's about perfect for Doug. The Knighthawk did have a major crash, but it looks as if it may once again have air under it's wheels because of the expert advise offered by a great r/c mechanic and all around great guy (Larry) and his lowly assistant (Sam).