Guillow's 'Stick Models'

[steve pagano]

Any one here familiar with them? Building wise. I came upon a store that sells them and they state on the box that they can be built for display purpose or converted to Control. I would love to build a few of them lol they're nice looking and small sizes usually in the 16-20 inch wingspan area. Also says they can be powered by an .010 (they come that small? i thought .049 was the smallest! lol)


                       T.I.A
                              -Steve

[Wynn Robins]

good kits - real scale appearance - I have never converted them to CL but they make nice static models and fly pretty good under rubber power

[Balsa Butcher]

Fun Kits to build.  Only issue is the stick and tissue construction is too flimsy for C/L and as Ty said - wood is heavy and kits are over-engineered for free flight.  By the time you strengthen the wing for landing gear mounting, reinforce the front end for a gas engine and mount a bellcrank and hardware they will be pretty heavy and still not real strong (Been there, done that more than once many moons ago.)  The SE-5 is the best flying one of the lot as a free-flight rubber powered plane. 

Most serious free flighters toss the wood and lighten the structure to get them to fly well.  An 020 will be plenty of power. If you want to fly free flight rubber power, go with the SIG kits like the  Mr. Mulligan Ty mentioned.  They fly better and don't have to be modified to be flown successfully. As for the Gullow line, many people build them as static display models and they work quite well for that.  Of course all can be flown on rubber but don't expect world class flight times.  I also hear that they are becoming popular for conversion to electric R/C.  As far as control line conversions - it can be done but you are setting youself up for a lot of this...

[steve pagano]

     My plan is to build 4 P-51D mustangs and one B-24 and hang them for display. The mustangs have a wingspan of 17 inches and the B-24 has a wingspan of 48.5!

     Being that they are stick models would it be possible to get a fairly decent finish on them using dope?

[Wayne Collier]

The Gullliows kits may not make the greatest CL planes. In my opinion they are great for developing basic building skills such as cutting, gluing, sanding, and keeping things square and straight.  Making a windsheild out of a little flat piece of clear plastic can really help you develop some patience.  In my personal opinion they are also good for learnig to cover models, even if you just use the tissue suppplied in the kit.  I have an 18" Cessna 180 that I built last spring.  I left off some heavier things like landing gear and wing struts and sanded away lots of the wood before covering with tissue and clear nitrate dope.  Its  really fun little rubber powered plane that really surprised me by how well it flies.  Not contest grade but great fun.

[Bob Disharoon]

Here is a Mr. Mulligan I recently completed..17" wingspan....very tedious to build for me. Bad eyesight and shaky hands don't mix!.Never flew it because the fuse was racked.Gave up and did Rustoleum white.

[Phil Coopy]

Stick and tissue gets us back to the old days  like C/L.  Sometime I get bored with gas stuff and go for something simple, for a change of pace.  This is a Miss Canada Senior I built last month......it's a Easy Built Kit. www.easybuiltmodels.com   Gotta get back to C/L tho......KOI coming up in January.

Phil

[john e. holliday]

I still have my P-61 Black Widow that I built years ago.  Baby Bee outboard, Golden Bee inboard. 
Flies great for a scale plane.  No loops or aerobatics.  Also no throttles.  Got First Place trophy at Pawnee Rock Kansas meet.  Engines need to be fired up again so I can fly it some more.  As I mentioned some where else,  need to get back to flying for fun again.  MERRY CHRISTMAS,  DOC Holliday

[Paul Smith]

     My plan is to build 4 P-51D mustangs and one B-24 and hang them for display. The mustangs have a wingspan of 17 inches and the B-24 has a wingspan of 48.5!

     Being that they are stick models would it be possible to get a fairly decent finish on them using dope?

Getting a "good finish" in stunt jargon would be a bad move.

The structure of these kits is made for a transparent tissue covering with a few coats of clear.  A stunt quality finish would probably shrink the thing into a (well painted) prune.

This is more like it:

[Trostle]

In the days of RC On Line, there was a person who asked about converting the Guillows kit of the Corsair to control line and wanted to use an .049.  He was advised that it could be done, and to make a really nice presentation of it to sheet the flying surfaces and also to sheet or cover the fuselage structure with wood but weight would have to be carefully controlled.  He then asked for good mechanisms for folding wings, retracting landing gear and flaps, as if commercial units for this size of model were available.  When he was advised that putting that kind of detail was not very practical for a model of that size, he responded that he would work out the mechanisms and that he would make it light weight and strong by coating all of the wood structure with CA.

We never heard from him again.  But there was a query on that thread several weeks later from one of the contributors on that forum asking if the thing was completed yet.  That thread made some intertaining reading.

Keith Trostle