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My SFC-Stick

Here I want to show you my version of the Ugly Stick (SFC stands for Sport Flying Club). It was designed by a fellow club member more than twenty years ago as a project for our youth group. He provided some drawings the wing ribs and fuselage frames as milled parts and a stack of balsa wood for the remaining components. At that time, I obtained such a stack of material but never found the time to build the model.

Last year a new competition was devised in our club. We called it the “Fun Cup”. The rules: Within four minutes, as many rounds as possible had to be flown around two turnstiles 40 meters (~131′) apart. Within each round a “touch and go” had to be done in a landing field of 10 meters (~33′) in length. You got additional points for the final landing.

I really wanted to take part in this competition. But until that time, I had only flown gliders and did not have a single model with landing gear. What could I do? In February this year I discovered the material for the Stick in my cellar and started building immediately.

Originally, the wingspan should be 140 cm (~55″), but I decided to reduce it to 112 cm (~44″). The total length of the fuselage is also 112 cm. The wing was covered with transparent OraLight, white on the top and red on the bottom. The fuselage and the tail feathers were just painted with clear lacquer. The model is powered by an electric motor (DYMOND GTX-3546 (910kV)) and a LiPo battery (3s1p, 3300 mAh). The prop size is 11×7. The total flying weight is 1400 g (~50 oz).

 

The model flew very well. Since I had little time to train the “touch and go” part, my participation in the competition was not so successful. But most importantly, the model is still intact!

The following picture shows me holding the model after the end of the competition.

The model is controlled by an old Varioprop transmitter that I converted to 2.4 GHz.