Alexdiver

I have recieved an Avistar as a gift. I intend to do the following conversions

1. taildragger plus a steerable tail wheel
2. reduce the dihedral to 1" or so
3. use two aileron servos instead of one
4. bolt-on wings, instead of rubber banded
5. add a cowl to streamline also reduce the "trainer look" of the Avistar

I'm interested in all ideas out there especially pictures of completed projects

Thx
Howard

JustErik

Howard,

Welcome to RCU. Without knowing much about your experience level, it's hard to determine how much detail you need. Any one of those mods is relatively simple for anyone with some experience building a kit, but if this is your first plane and you have no building experience, I suspect doing those mods will be more frustrating than fun. However, if you want to proceed, here's how I'd do the first one on your list, which would probably not be too bad.

You'd need to get a suitable set of main gear, like this, for instance and a tailwheel bracket similar to this. You'd need to beef up the inside of the fuse with some light ply or hardwood where you intend to fasten the main gear. Locate them so that the axles are an inch or so forward of the leading edge. Placement isn't super critical, but if you go too far back, the plane may have a tendency to nose over; too far forward and ground handling may suffer. For the tailwheel, you'll need to fabricate a "hard point" to attach the bracket. It's not likely that the existing structure would last long without it. I'd carefully saw away a pice of the lower fuse and replace it with plywood. Coincidentally, I did a similar mod on a plane not too long ago and actually took a couple of pics.

In this one you can see the original tail. The dotted line is where I will cut and the holes are where the bracket was test mounted.



Here you can see where I removed the existing balsa and made a replaement piece out of ply.



Here it is glued in place and covered.



Finally, here is the tailwheel bracket installed.



Note the short piece of nyrod connecting the steering arm to the bottom of the rudder. This allows a "soft" linkage that will pop loose in hard landings instead of transferring all the shock to the rudder and servo. My landings NEED this kind of protection. If the Avistar's rudder does not extend to the bottom of the fuse like the pictures above, I bet you could get away with a castoring tailwheel. Just install it as above and don't connect the steering arm to anything. The rudder alone should have more than adequate authority to turn the plane.

If you get that mod done and still want to do more, I'm sure we can dig up some guidance when the time comes. It should be noted that there's almost always more than one correct way to do something. If someone else suggest a different method and that seems easier, better or just more to your liking, don't hesitate to ignore me completely.

Alexdiver

thx JustErik
I have quite a bit of "re-kit" experience but always open to the best practices out there and I'll usualy select the ones I like.
I like the quick disconnect linkage you used on the one in the picture, Thats the best I've seen yet. Any ideas on the bolt-on wings?
Thx
Howard

I also re-posted this in the rtf-arf section to try to get answers quicker