Slow Stick
Step 1 - Research
The Slow Stik seems to be one of the most modified and abused Park Flyers in the world. A quick search of RC groups will bring up quite a few threads.
- Slow Stik Annotated Build
[This guide is great and has many tips on useful mods] - Various Mods
- Carbon Fiber
- Night Flight
- Clipped Wings
Step 2 - Building
Building the plane is fairly easy, although the instructions are vaugue and ambiguous in many places. The slow stik annotated build (listed above) is a decent companion, but it was written for an older version of the kit so some things won't match up with the newer kits. All in all I probably spent about 4-5 hours building the plane. Here are some of the places that I deviated from the included directions.
- Extreme Packing Tape for all hinges, leading-edge, and trailing-edge of wing.
- 5-minute epoxy for all glued joints
- Place the wing at the 12-degree dihedral of the aluminium brace (the directions recommend folding the wing to the maximum dihedral
- Fill the gap in the wing with epoxy and micro-light filler ballons
- Tower Pro 2410-09 brushless motor combo with 20A Tower Pro ESC
- APC 11x4.7 Slo Flyer prop
- Wobbly Prop-Saver
- DuBro Mini E/Z Connectors
- Velcro for battery, receiver, etc. instead of double-stick foam tape
- Neon Green Adhesive Trim Tape for visibility
Step 3 - Flying
Day One
The first flights were a bit 'hariy' given that there was a pretty strong wind. It didn't help that the Du-Bro connectors were lose on the first flight, making control nearly impossible. The first flights also used an APC 11x7 Thin Electric prop which didn't provide enough power. Needless to say, the plane survived a few 'very-rough' landings including one into a pine tree. This plane is so durable that I didn't need to make any repairs. With the wind, trimming the plane was also difficult but finally I got a good 10 minutes of solid flight in.
Day Two
Matt and I went out at 9AM, so there was almost no wind. I also switched to the 11x4.7 prop. These two changes made world of difference. I flew for a solid 15 minutes, there were no incidents! I might have been able to squeeze more time out of the 1500 mAh pack if I really wanted to. I'm looking forward to flying this plane a lot more.
Tweaking
I've tried a few different props, as suggested by Heads-Up RC, and although I haven't noticed a considerable difference the GWS 1170 does seem to provide a bit more speed. I'll have to keep playing with the plane to really get a better feel for hoow the props affect the plane.- APC 11x4.7 SF, 24 oz. thrust at 11.5A with 25 mph pitch speed
- APC 11x7 TE, 22 oz. thrust at 11.5A with 41 mph pitch speed
- GWS EP1147, 24 oz. thrust at 11.0A with 25 mph pitch speed
- GWS EP1170, 24 oz. thrust at 10.0A with 39 mph pitch speed
Planned Modifications
I think my first mod will be installing 'light' wire for night-flight. Now that I have the Fundango finished I don't feel the need to make my SlowStik more aerobatic.