As of today, the rebuild is officially complete.

After many months, Pop's old "Yeller" has been rebuilt. Years ago, I thought this old plane would just sit in a closet to rot. It has been given a new life and I can honestly say it is one of my favorite planes to fly.

The rebuild thread can be found here. Think of this blog entry as the "Official Unveiling".

I can't put an exact year on my father's original build. It was either 1982 or 1984. The photos of the 'old' kit are also from his "unveiling" and first flight.

Cheers, -Lee

...I can already hear readers saying "Huh??" "Why??" "Are ya crazy??"

First, I love my 109 LiPo charger. Works great...yadda yadda. But I've always felt it was missing some basic 'charger' essentials:

1) START button
2) ON/OFF switch

I don't know about you but I would like my charger to start working when I tell it to...not when power is suddenly applied. Yea, it works great if your manual connections to the battery or power supply go smoothly....but it ain't that way if you still use alligator clips and struggle to get a good connection. Perhaps I'll get ribbed by those 'geeks' out there who have mastered the ability to conduct electricity with any piece of scrap metal. Me? My hobby room is layed out funky and getting to the shared 12V panel isn't that easy.

The second problem: the ON/OFF switch. Why wouldn't you want one of these? Again, if you have a setup like mine where your power source is nowhere near the charger, you've got to 'move' around to manually pull the cables out. I can't just turn off the power supply because it happens to provide 12 volts to other devices. My solution was to purchase a Radio Shack 30A 12V lighted switch and plug it into my 109. In doing so, I've gained a few benefits:

1) I get to tell the charger when to turn on, not my power source.
2) It's right there on the panel. A short distance between charging cords and Amp knob.
3) It's pretty darn bright. If the LCD is not clearly...Continue Reading

I built a Carl Goldberg Electra a few years ago and it flew great. One day I got a little cocky and tried to catch it. >SNAP< goes the wing.

The covering was removed last year and I fixed the break...along with adding a second top wing spar for strength. However, while I had the covering off, I decided to rebuild the wing with spoilers. This plane floats...and landings are extremely long. If you plan on building a kit someday, take my advice and add some spoilers. You'll need them.

In no way do I claim to be a master builder. However, I have been in this hobby for 20+ years and can glue balsa together like the rest of them. The following is my quick scheme to add spoilers to my existing wing.

First, my wing is one piece. Strong and quick to assemble...but a pain in the butt to handle and fit in the car. My spoiler installation is only going to work if you assemble your wing in one piece. The design is pretty simple: One Hitec HS-55 servo will pull two wires leading to the spoilers. The servo will be unserviceable so adjustments will need to be made at the spoiler. I picked up an E-Flite pull-pull cable set that should work nicely.