Hurricane arrived

[mike hartung]

Hello guys and gals I recieved my Sea Hurricane in the mail today; thanks very much. I thought you might like to see the Yak-9 that I just completed.

[billbyles]

YEAH!!  Yak 9s forever!  I still have the one I built in 1994 & it is still flying (just to keep Keith Trostle on his toes.)  Mine is very high-tech with an L&J Fox .35 & a beat-up original Y&O 10-6 prop...well, maybe not so high-tech but fun anyway.  The Yak is a replica of the one I built & flew when I was in high school and I just had to have another one.

[mike hartung]

Yup Bill my first Yak-9 build was 48yrs ago.

[Dalton Hammett]

Mike

    That looks extremely nice..........

DH

[Terrence Durrill]

That is a great looking Yak-9.  Is that from a Sterling kit or another manufacturer?  I started C/L in1953, but didn't get to build a Yak until 1987.  I fly the Yak with Foxes, .35 stunt, .29 stunt and .25 stunt engines.  In 1987, I found a hobby shop going out of business and there were 6 Sterling Yak-9 kits on the shelf.  Knowing that Sterling was also closing up shop and the Yak-9 was going to be a classic kit in the future, I bought them all.  So far, I have only built one , but I have started a second one.  I don't know if I will get them all built before the call to the great circle in the sky, but, the Yak-9 is one of my favorite sport planes.   

[billbyles]

That is a great looking Yak-9.  Is that from a Sterling kit or another manufacturer?  I started C/L in1953, but didn't get to build a Yak until 1987.  I fly the Yak with Foxes, .35 stunt, .29 stunt and .25 stunt engines.  In 1987, I found a hobby shop going out of business and there were 6 Sterling Yak-9 kits on the shelf.  Knowing that Sterling was also closing up shop and the Yak-9 was going to be a classic kit in the future, I bought them all.  So far, I have only built one , but I have started a second one.  I don't know if I will get them all built before the call to the great circle in the sky, but, the Yak-9 is one of my favorite sport planes.   

When I built my current Yak 9 in 1994 I used the original Sterling kit for patterns and supplied my own wood.  The wood in my Sterling kit is just too heavy; for example, the kit fuselage blank as it came in the kit weighs right at 6 ounces.  The fuselage that I made ended up weighing 3 1/2 ounces including motor mounts, doublers, scoop & canopy.  I cut the middle out of the blank up to under the canopy, added a balsa stick truss in the cutout area, and sheeted the sides with 1/16" balsa with carbon fiber strips (.007"x1/4" wide) under the sheeting at the top & bottom.   The rest of the kit wood was replaced also as it was equally as heavy.  The finished airplane weighs 25 ounces with a metal tank & Fox .35, which is not super lightweight but a lot lighter than if I had used the kit wood.  The finished fuselage is quite stiff torsionally and has flown all these years without any structural problems.  The main problem my Yak 9 has had is that about two years after I finished it guys started building much better flying OTS airplanes so my brief run of OTS trophies came to an end.

Bill Byles

[john e. holliday]

I had one Sterling Yak 9 that I did with the flaps.  Leaned the engine out and fly.  Did not know about it being overweight or bad wood because it would do all the loops, eights and inverted I wanted to do.  I let some kid have it later in life that was getting into CL.

[mike hartung]

Thanks for the kind words about the Yak-9 guys. It was a Brodak kit and the wing is a lot differant constrution than the old Sterling kits with better wood than Sterling also. Just the same I still remember having a really good time with those Sterling kits back in the early 60's. Tight lines to you.

[john e. holliday]

Someone needs to come out with a kit like one of the first I had.  All printed wood.  Instructions say cut out side the line and then sand to fit.  Die crunchong put us in seventh heaven.