The other day, Al Alongi asks me to help him with his Slow Stick. We check and adjust the control surfaces. The right aileron is sloppy—it settles on a slightly different center point after each deflection.

That doesn’t seem like a big problem, since the error is small. We can adjust with a slight twitch of the transmitter stick.

Al is an old-time flyer just getting back into the air. He’s a little rusty and he’s looking for the perfect starter plane.

He first showed up with a scratch-built foam Hammer, the same kind of plane that Mike Nadler and Gary Morgan have been using for combat sessions.

The Hammer is acrobatic and, in the hands of a uncertain flyer, a lawn dart.

After a crash or two, Al asked us what planes we’d recommend for his further development.

Bouncy Foam. A wing, we said. Or maybe an Easy Star. Both excellent for polishing your flying. They’re rugged, made from bouncy foam, so crashes aren’t catastrophic. The wing gives you aileron experience and challenges your reflexes. The Easy Star is glider-like, a relaxing and enjoyable flyer.

Unlike many people who ask advice, Al took our suggestions seriously and ordered both a wing and an Easy Star.

Meanwhile, though, he’d already built a Slow Stick.

My first modern airplane was a Slow Stick. I know that many people have learned to fly with Slow Sticks and love them. Not me. I’ve already written about my early Slow Stick troubles.

Rising Wind. Anyway, as we continue to check out his Slow Stick, I notice that the wind is rising from the North.

Wind and Slow Sticks and shaky flyers are like a bad short story.

I’m in a hurry to get the plane in the air before the wind becomes more definite.

So Al launches the plane and I take off into the breeze, heading toward the trees to the north of the Great Meadow.

Sloppy Turn. The plane flies fine, gaining altitude, until I’m ready to turn. I give it left rudder and aileron to make a crisp turn. The plane slowly wallows left, then overshoots, so I give it right rudder and aileron to correct.

“I hate Slow Sticks,” I say to Al, remembering this essential truth.

I’ve seen people fly them well, and some experienced flyers love their Slow Sticks—Pete Lane, George Kulcher, Mike Nadler, lots of others—but you know what? They’re insane.

I get the plane high in front of us and hand the controls to Al. He maneuvers the plane for about a minute, looking good.

But then the plane drops and he’s not looking good, and a few seconds later our bad short story ends with a crash.

Why do I hate Slow Sticks?

• A Slow Stick behaves like a plane wearing a fat suit. It’s awkward, clumsy, imprecise.
• The wings are fragile. Woe unto the flyer who tries to loop a Slow Stick or come out of a steep dive with a stock wing.
• The tail is flimsy.
• It’s difficult to attach rubber bands to the tiny nubbins on each side of the wing.
• Since most of the gear slides along the fuselage, held in place only by friction, it’s too easy to inadvertently shift the center of gravity, making the plane unflyable.
• Unless GWS has changed the documentation within the last year, assembly instructions are a challenge for a novice builder. Pictures are too small, descriptions are minimal. For instance, GWS includes excellent glue for the plane, but nowhere mentions that it is contact cement, designed to apply/dry/stick together. (Contrast with any Multiplex plane, with excellent instructions and illustrations in multiple languages.)

So there you are. I hate Slow Sticks.

Fortunately, Al is making good progress on his Easy Star.

Tags: Airplanes, Baylands, Crashes, Flying, Radio Control, Slow Stick, Wind, Wings.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 14th, 2007 at 11:11 am and is filed under Baylands. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.