I have been working on a bunch of electric conversions for Brodak, this one in many ways is the coolest yet, even though it is on one of the more mundane subjects.

OK so you start with the Yak-9.  It is fairly representative of full scale, including the low wing. Biggest concessions designer Matt Kania did (1950?) was to make the wing flat and to use a rugged but decidedly unauthentic fuselage mounted gear.  When I started laying out the electric conversion I tried 5 different layouts (plus a 6th on the Mustang) but could not get one that got the battery low enough and still cleared the landing gear and also did not tear up the wing structure.  "If only the landing gear was out of the way and the wingtip was 1" higher."  (duh?)

So that's what I did.  The first phase of the mod was to move the landing gear to the wing and fit it with some authentic looking fairings.  Next step was to add 3 degrees (about 1") dihedral to the wing.  This allowed me to center the battery on the fuselage, the back of the box sits on top of the wing center, actually helps stabilize that joint.

The resulting build is a great leap forward in adding realism to Matt Kania's old design.  Vertical CG has always been a problem with the Yak-9 and Mustang, I got a hunch that the dihedral will be a nice improvement in that area.  Using the Arrowind 2810, 40A ESC, 4Sx2200 & Hubin FM-0c simple timer.  At 29 oz it should fly well too, hope to find out next week or so.  

The landing gear & dihedral mod will soon to be available as a kit; it will work on IC builds too. The wing conversion parts will NOT work on the original Sterling S-3 kit either.  Electric mod kit will also include the firewall mount & battery box.  It will take a really lenient CD to let this into an OTS event, heck even a Classic event.  Probably will not stand much of a chance in Profile either.  However it should be fun to fly and should look pretty cool doing all the tricks - and sometimes that is enough.


Its a Yak-9 built "Cadillac style", hence the title of this post.        Stand by for the pending BOSS F-51 Mustang conversion...!

How close is it to the YAK 3-view.  Would it be a good alternate to the Brodak LA-5 for profile scale?  I have had good lock with an electric conversion of the LA-5. Another electric in profile scale would be great!  PS looks great.

Very nice Dennis!