A handle is convenient for hoisting or carrying a flying boat like the ICON A5 in and out of the water. The handle can act as a place for a hook to hang from a ceiling rod or hook. With grooves in the handle you can orientate your model in a nose down or up attitude depending on your CG and where the hook is placed on the handle. Here is an example using the 52.5 inch ICON A 5. Music wire can be used but in this case normal coat hanger wire is used to support the 53.5 ounce (3.3 pound model). You will need wheel collars, plyers, a round file or Dremmel to make grooves in the handle wire.

This technique was adapted from handles that were made for an Apprentice, Timber and Valiant foamy models.

Thanks to Lonny I have extra floats for my second modification. My land floats work great with stearable front wheels and fixed aft main wheels but I want a set for water ops. The full scale Maule has longer floats in the front and some of our models (mine is heavy and has an aft CG) need more buoyancy aft of the step. So I’m experimenting with a plug to extend the stock floats. Here is a 3.25 inch plug extenstion. The step will be in the same location but there will be more floatation buoyancy forward and aft of the step. The plug extension will be from Home Depot and it’s a magenta/light purple shade. It can be wrapped with white trim Monocote and 3 M 20X packing tape for strength and surface protection. The strut mounting plates will be relocated to the original positions for land/water swap out.

I’ll be posting this in the float flyers section for input as well as the wheeled forum....Continue Reading

https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/show...postcount=5641

The above link will take you to the post that has more info on how to make this handle. It is an adaptation of handles that I have made for the Apprentice, Valiant, and Maule.

I really like the concept of the Radian: simple. However when its time to land you better be willing and able to force her down with tight turns and then nosing her into the grass, ground, sand, concrete, whatever. Hand catching is possible but the only way to slow her down is to get to near stall speed and risk the minor crash damage. Since most of my sailplanes and motorgliders have flaps or flaperons I decided to install my own flaps. Yes I have tried spoilers and they are better than nothing but with about the same time and effort flaps are better in my opinion.

What size? I recently installed some old Radian Pro wings that have flaps and ailerons but very little dihedral. They worked fine with AT6 Texan 636 receiver settings that were loaded in. However I felt that more flap area would be better so I increased the chord width of the flap. I put some yellow tape on the wing for a visual cue before making cut marks. I knew that because of the curved trailing edge I would not be able to have a continuous flap hinge but also knew that keeping the flaps short with a trailing edge connector link would work out OK.