My third LiteStick. I'm starting to wonder how few of the LiteStick parts you can use and still call it a LiteStick (:-)
For this one, I also got rid of the plastic wing mounts, the bamboo rods, and the moveable rudder. As I was building it I came up with much better ways of doing this, so I didn't add all the gory details. At some point I'll either build the improved version, or at least mock it up. When ready, I'll add pictures and describe the improvments.
Start by slicing off the inner "rib" from each wing panel. I laid a small T-square across the root end on the lower side of the wing and used it to guide a long knife blade across the wing. I didn't cut all the way this pass, I just wanted to have start a nice straight cut. The actual cutting took 2-3 passes with a sharp blade being careful not to tear the foam or the nice shiny red finish.
Next I trimmed the traling edge of the wing panel to a line extending straight out from the pre-cut line on the root end.
I later decided trim the inner end a further 1/8" like the kit originally provides, to allow a place for the trailing edge reinforcing rod to seat flush.
I glued a piece of oversize balsa to the enf of the wing,
allowing more height at the front to form a
TLAR incidence angle.
I made a second rib to match the first one, then I scored 2 lines at right angles to the bottom of the ribs. I made the scores with a ballpoint being careful not to fracture the wood. The 2 sets of grooves have to be on the facing sides of the 2 ribs so that they get glued against each other forming 2 narrow holes going from top to bottom. While the ribs were being glued together I used 2 pieces of music wire to make sure the holes don't get plugged up with glue.
The point here was to have a center rib with 2 thin parallel grooves going from top to bottom. I won't describe this too fully because I've since thought of much simpler ways to do the same thing.
While building this I didn't have a very firm plan and I was
partly improvising based on how things were turning out. I decided
to use .070" carbon rods for the upright mounts, so the grooves
had to be carefully enlarged with a small drill bit. I glued
carbon rods in place so they stuck out of the the top of the wing
(to hook the rubber bands on) and from the bottom (to mount
through the fuselage) as you see here.
After the mounts were in place and checked to work well, I made
a hole in the center of the wing to fit the servo. I cut the
ears from a GWS 6 gr. servo and then wrapped it in paper tape.
After all the seams were protected I glued the servo in place
with CA.
I fitted 1/8" carbon fiber rod to the pre-cut indentation at the leading edge, and at the similar indentation I cut at the rear. Both of these were CA'ed to the rib, but otherwise simply taped in place with scotch tape. For the leading edge, I also attached a full-span length of .040" carbon rod to protect the wing from dings and other minor mishaps.
The ailerons were cut from Peck-Polymers Depron, and were attached with even more Scotch tape. I used a set of spare LiteStick control horns for the ailerons, and made the non-adjustable pushrods from 4 ends which were held in position and glued to each other.
To attach the wing to the fuselage, the carbon rods are inserted through the holes in the fuse, and small rubber bands looped around the fuse are hooked to the upper ends of the carbon rods.
I fixed the rudder in place so it doesn't move. The elevator servo was covered in paper tape and then glued to the fuselage.
The fuselage I attached the wing to has a bit of wear & tear and some additional weight added, but the finished plane still weighed only 7.3 ounces, the same as my regular one.
I really like that the mount allows the wing to be easily moved around to different fuselages arranged in standard setup, canard, biplane, or other weird things you might dream up. On the other hand I'm not as pleased with all the fiddly steps required to get there which badly violates the KISS principle but I'll get around to fixing this in the future.
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