IMAC Dietrich 42% Slick rebuild.

[-Rick-]

Had to do it, just had to have one BIG plane!!!!! I’ve been in the hobby for a long time, but I did take a long “raise a family break”. When I came back I had my first look at gas powered planes, and I can say when I saw how big they had gotten it was “holy frigging s—t!! I LIKE!!!! WANT ONE!!! So this will be my first 42% plane, it will not be the last!!

So I put out an add on a local site looking for a 100cc wreck that could be rebuild and had a few replies, a gentleman offered me a Dietrich 42% Slick 540 which came with a spare canopy and cowl both new in the box for a very low price! The plane isn’t in bad shape but you can tell it’s had a hard life but it’s all fixable and I enjoy working on planes. It was bigger than I asked for but I could not say no!!

I plan on rebuilding and recovering the plane, lots of areas need work on it. I also have a few modifications I wish to make to it. I plan on making this an IMAC friendly plane, not so much for 3D as I suck at that!!! ( So far )


I must add that I have never done anything like doing a thread on one of my projects. It’s this site and you guys making me so comfortable here that is reason I’m willing to do it here! And because I’m doing this thread here I’m also doing one on the Canadian site for the first time!! So thank you GSN and thank you guys!! And a thanks to IMAC Fanatic for giving me the push!!


The plane will be getting Savox servos and a DA150 ( or bigger! ) motor, none of which I have yet and will not be getting till after I move from this house.

Which we just sold, now to find something else, buy, move…. This will be a longggggg rebuild!!!


The covering on this plane is, shall we say, tired! And want it to be my own so the first step for me was to remove all the covering from the fuselage…

 

[IMAC FANATIC]

Subd'

 

[aarestor]

I built one of these but never flew it much as I was at the time afraid of it. Sold it and it died at the hands of someone else. He had some issues with cooling on the 150 and did something different to the cowl to make it cool properly. I will tell him about this thread.

 

[-Rick-]

I built one of these but never flew it much as I was at the time afraid of it. Sold it and it died at the hands of someone else. He had some issues with cooling on the 150 and did something different to the cowl to make it cool properly. I will tell him about this thread.

Cool, Thanks! I heard the former owners also had issues with the motors in it. But when I look at how much they had open on the cowl and how much venting to the fuse and out it wasn't much. I wondered if they understood the importance of exit air back in 2009.

 

[BalsaDust]

subd

 

[SleepyC]

I had one, it flew great! And it was the best looking slick (IMO) ever made.
It had some structural issues with the motor box though so make sure to pin and glue it up nicely.
And you are replacing the covering and that was the other “bad spot”.

Also the Basla/foam/balsa fuse was easy to squish so be careful!

 

[aarestor]

My friend who got this before it met it's end, got the heating issue solved by opening up the cowl and making a lip around the opening. He also got most of the roll coupling issues fixed and the plane was flying great. He just had a bad day when she met her demise, forgot to plug his ailerons in.

 

[bigblueswope]

I had one, it flew great! And it was the best looking slick (IMO) ever made.
It had some structural issues with the motor box though so make sure to pin and glue it up nicely.
And you are replacing the covering and that was the other “bad spot”.

Also the Basla/foam/balsa fuse was easy to squish so be careful!

Other than that, it's a great plane [emoji33]


BJ Swope

 

[Terryscustom]

Always loved that scheme, I remember seeing aarestor's right after he sold it and it was all perfect and shiny......what a sexy airplane. I do remember the engine box was very light and flexed a LOT when they had the cowl off and were testing the engine. I think the sides were thin and there was no top or limited top on the engine box if I remember correctly.

Someone, somewhere has to have the molds for the cowl and canopy on this thing, would be a cool one to resurrect with some current technology and design.

 

[crashflow]

first off let me say that this is a beautiful plane. I had quite a few problems with mine at first but after I figured out what was going on I had my plane flying beautifully. The biggest problem that I had to solve was an air flow for cooling problem. The bottom of the cowl seems to slope up fairly fast on the bottom so with the cowl open up down there the front of the opening is much higher than the back of the opening and it actually created a high pressure area on the bottom of the cowl and would not let the engine cool. I remedied this by putting an air dam around the front edge of the opening on the bottom of the cowl to create and negative air space much like PAU does on their pkanes. This helped tremendously and solved a lot of the issues that I had with the plane. I would suggest that you do something similar. You will want to add an extra anti rotation pin on the wings and beef up the area where your canopy bolts go through as well. I had to do some roll coupling and other programming mixes as well but after those were done the plane flew awesome and looked awesome I hope that you enjoy yours.!