Other People's LiteSTICKs - Ed Couch
Never one to settle for the obvious, Ed decided to make a canard from his LiteStick. In case you're not familiar with canards, they've been around a long, long time (all the Wright Brothers planes were canards). They have a few advantages such as being difficult to stall and greater efficiency.
Their disadvantages are that they have more limited CG range, and since they can't be stalled it's more difficult to shed airspeed when flaring for landing.
The thing works and works well. I designed it on Saturday afternoon in about 30 minutes and had it setting on gear in 2 hours. I finished the radio installation next morning and test flew it 10 minutes after the final piece was fitted.
Weight is around 7 ozs. depending on the battery pack. I use a 120 mAh 6-cell packs for indoor flying and 8-cell packs outsite. Duration on 6 cells is better than 4.5 minutes and on 8 cells is about 4.0 minutes.
The battery is a Sanyo N6-PT nicad pack which contains 6x120 mAh and sells in stores for around $9. You can break the packs down to whatever configuration you need such as to make 8-cells packs for outdoor flying.
It doesn't stall in the conventional manner: the nose drops back to level and the things picks itself up and continues on its way. Landing are also no-brainers, let her settle under power with the wings level, round out when about 6 inches high and chop the throttle - the aircraft will land self.
It flew great right from first flight. Flight characteristics are a little unusual in that your mind seems to forget what goes first. Several times I caught myself looking at it backwards or prop first and had to stop and actually think about what I was looking at. PAY ATTENTION to this the first few flights.
There is no trouble with ROGs as the angle of the vehicle is positive and it takes off when it's good and ready. Prop clearence is minimal at best and I do have a couple of nicks on the end of prop but otherwise takeoffs and landings have not proved a problem.