Last Updated 26/08/98 21:52
The Stiletto by Phoenix Model Products is a 60 inch V-tailed racer featuring
conventional balsa/ply/foam veneer construction and the ubiquitous RG 15 wing
section that seems almost mandatory nowadays on anything that is thrown off
a slope.
It comes in a plain brown box, and I must say, from the decision to order
one (or three) to receipt was only a couple of days.
There are three of us in our group of fliers that own Stilettos and I was
charged with the construction of two of them - the result of a casual comment on
the slope.
Colin, one of our fliers had broken his Phase 6 and was looking for something to
replace it with. 'Have you considered the Stiletto' I quipped, 'We saw it last
year in Devon whilst Stan was developing it'
'Yes but I haven't got the time to build it, I need it to take to France in two
weeks' was Colins reply.
'Well if you like order two and I'll build yours', and with that I was confined
to my building room for a fortnight with two kits, a bottle of glue and some
glass cloth and epoxy resin.
The fuselage has ply sides and balsa top and bottom decks which allow a very
nicely rounded fuselage to be constructed. The only difficulty in this was that
the ply sides were badly warped which made building a straight fuselage slightly
more difficult than it might be.
The wings are blue foam requiring the leading and trailing edges to be attached
and shaped. The model requires two mini wing servos and the holes are already
cut in the cores for this. This presented a slight problem as the holes had been
cut in the foam blank all the way through and then veneered over. This unfortun-
ately leaves a slight dip on the top skin where there is no foam. I would prefer
to cut these holes myself leaving a little foam to help support the top skin.
The V-tail is shaped from balsa and glued permanently to the fuselage.
Out of personal preference both airframes were glassed using 3oz. cloth and epoxy
resin. The wings and tail were left in their natural wood finish, trimmed with
self-adhesive film. The fuselage was painted wiith car spray paints.
Test flying presented no difficulties but did show up a minor problem. All three
models required half of the available down elevator to fly straight and level.
Checking the plan and the airframes showed that there was negative incidence on
the tail. A quick solution was to remove the tails, adjust the seat and re-glue
the tail in place. Once this was done the models have shown themselves to be very
versatile indeed. They will fly in quite light lift conditions, although if they
are slowed up too much they will drop a wing. Also if too much elevator is pulled
at high speed, they will flick. It must be said though that all three models have
rearwards centre of gravity to make the handling neutral. The recommended CofG is
further forwards and in this position the handling is much more forgiving.
The speed can only be described as quick and using coupled flaps and elevator
turns happen almost before you move the stick! I have flown mine with a pound of
ballast under the wing and in this trim the speed was awesome, although the turns
were slightly wider.
Landings, using raised ailerons to kill the lift, are straightforward and even
carrying ballast present no problem.
At its price every sloper should have one. It flies in most conditions and
outperforms all other kits in its price range, is straightforward to build and
more importantly it's produced by a British manufacturer who is dedicated to qua-
lity kits at an affordable price.
I have since spoken to Stan Yeo (the designer/manufacturer) and received a reply
regarding my comments. The items I raised concerning the building are only perso-
nal niggles and do not detract from the kit. Regarding the Centre of Gravity, I
personally trim my aircraft to fly neutrally - if I stick the nose down it stays
down and does not pull out. This can make the model more likely to drop a wing
and probably accounts for the handling. The incidences are rigged on the kit and
plan to provide about 1.5 degrees positive incidence on the wing. This softens
the handling again but does detract from the out and out speed, so if you want
easier handling stick with the plan - if you want maximum speed rig it zero-zero
I love mine and would buy another straight away.
Stans comments are very interesting and are listed below unedited.
Dear Carl,
Many thanks for your e-mail. I was very interested to read your review of the
Stiletto and am grateful for the support you are giving me.
Regarding your comments re the rigging of the tailplane. I have done some work
in this area myself and have in fact built a second model to the setup you ment-
ion i.e. making the wing and tailplane incidences the same. Whilst it appeared
to go faster I preferred the handling of the original model. If you did set them
up with a rearward C of G then I would expect the model to require down
elevator for straight and level flight to balance out the C of G and resultant
lift moments. I have often thought about incorporating this information on the
plan but have not done so yet because I did not want to muddy the waters for the
majority of customers who buy the Stiletto for general sport flying as opposed
to 'bombing' around. The Stiletto was easily the best selling model in my range
last year and has attracted much praise from customers.
Re the performance. I would not expect it to out-perform moulded machines
costing at least 90% more for a number of reasons the main ones being the
ability to achieve a more streamlined shape and greater wing profile accuracy.
The over-riding design criteria for the Stiletto was to produce a cost affective
pylon racer that if written off in a race did not break the bank. Target perfor-
mance was set at 90% of that of the moulded machines. A number of customers have
closed that gap considerably by minor adjustments to the rigging and C of G
(like you have done) and re-working the ailerons to incorporate the slight unde-
rcamber that is a feature of the RG15.
Re the handling of the Adrenaline v the Stiletto again this comes as no surprise
as a V tail layout is less stable than a raised all flying tail layout. The
advantage of the V tail as you know is that it produces less drag. I try to
overcome this by making my tailplanes larger than is the current practice for
this type of model but this of course incurs a drag penalty. Some customers have
reduced the tailplane area and used thinner material and seen a noticeable
improvement in speed. Unfortunately as with all aspects of design it is a
question of balancing a number of conflicting interests and I always have to err
on the conservative side to protect the less experienced modeller. It will be
interesting to see how the V tail version of the Adrenaline handles as comments
I have heard re the handling of the Eliminator concur my experiences.
The flick roll tendancy you mention in the Adrenaline review surprises me as the
models I have show no tendancy towards this and it has not been mentioned in
feed back from customers . Without checking I believe there is 1 deg of washout
in the wings to reduce any tip stalling tendancies. Moving the C of G back and
increasing the wing loading by ballasting will increase the likelihood of an
aeroplane to tip stalling as will over elevating lead to flick rolling,
particularly on V- tail models. Ballasting will increase the size of the
manouevres as you have noticed.
On the construction side 1/16 ply as used for fuselage sides is notorious for
being like a dog's hind leg but generally after fitting the longerons it sorted
itself out. This unfortunately is the price to be paid for using a thin natural
material. The distortion of the veneer in the area of the wing servo box can be
avoided by profiling the servo bay floor epoxying in position using the foam
sleeves weighted down . Cutting the servo bays out was done to make it easier for
the average modeller.
Once again thank you for your support. As you know I always welcome feedback on
my models. I hope the above discussion is useful and throws some light on the
design philosophy behind the Stiletto. I would be grateful if you would mention
in your review that you have had some feedback from me.
All the best
Stan
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