Bug HLG

I have had my Bug(s) since the summer of 2001 and I really have enjoyed them. I have three wings and I have built over 8 fuselages (I fly them hard). Lately, a friend and I have started dogfighting them, with no contact yet. My weight is 100 grams with two CS-10's, a JR 610M reciever, and four sanyo 50 mah cells. Flight times have maxed at 45 seconds, with one lone 1:30 flight. I'm still struggling to thermal with the plane because it's so small and flys through thermals too quickly for me. Instead of Carbon tubes, I used wooden dowels for the spars and the boom; they were a little flexable, but worked well enough. Routing the pushrods outside of the fuse is not very difficult using small aluminum tube guides. Pushrods are getting more solid with .025" wires and tail surfaces extended further towards the bottom of the 'V' to use less bend in the rods to get up to the horns. Still a fair amount of play... Less dihedral is NO fun. 5" dihedral doesn't cut it for me. I'm around 5.5" and handling is much quicker and allows easier rolling into turns. However, with 5" dihedral, I can hold inverted for 15 or so seconds (awesome when you're 5 feet off the deck). Lately, we've been playing with ailerons and an extra wing servo. It's too heavy and not responsive enough, but my friend did an awesome vertical roll into the ground from 30 feet. Anyone else had problems blowing off tail feathers on launch from tip- launching? My count is three times so far. Dan E. DanStrider@...