This is Eric with his "Batty". It is really a Stealth Sport by House of Balsa, but we think our name fits better. We've glued this thing back together several times, so occasionally we refer to it as "Glue Bird". There are lightning bolts on the top, and circles on the bottom so that Eric knows whether he's looking at the top or the bottom. Without them, it would be easy to get confused.


This is a two channel airplane...elevator and ailerons only. It is always hand launched into the wind. Here I am starting it up. As soon as it starts, I give it a good level toss. One time I started it and launched it, but had forgotten to turn the electronics on. It went straight up, flipped over and came straight down. Luckily no one was hurt. That took a lot of glue. Now we always do a quick control check just prior to launching.


This plane launches at fairly low speed, but quickly accelerates. Then, hang on because it's small and goes fast. The only way to slow it down is to climb straight up. It can do 3 rolls in 1 second. After 90 seconds, it's out of fuel and Eric flies a dead-stick landing. He usually lands softly and close to him, but he has misjudged the wind speed a couple of times and not made it back to the runway. This plane is not a glider.

There is another way to slow it down. We attached a 10 foot streamer to it. That slowed it down, but I won't recommend it. On a stall turn the streamer got tangled up on a wing. That was another glueful experience.


The plans said that an .049ci engine would be enough. The Cox .049 Black Widow that we tried first was not enough. The plane could hardly fly. So we replaced it with a Russian made Norvel .061 engine. The difference is night Vs. day. This is a wild plane that's fun to watch when being pulled by this amazing little engine.


This guy bailed out once. The battery pack came loose and pushed the canopy off. Fortunately the engine quit before hitting the ground. The plane was easy to find and fix. It took a while to find and rescue the pilot. We never did find the battery. So much for proper disposal.

All together, Eric has probably flown this plane about 100 times so far. We've had to glue it back together about 4 times. I don't know exactly how fast it flies, but it is well in access of 50mph. Being a little plane it looks a lot faster than that.

On 7/29/2001, Eric had what he believes will be his last flight with this plane. He has stripped it of it's engine and radio gear and plans to use it in another plane (model yet-to-be-decided).

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