New power for the Twister.

A long time ago, probably 2005, I bought 3 OS .40LA engines off ebay. I messed with them for a while and then switched to the .46LA. I had a lot better luck getting the .46 to run right. I collected several .46's and found that the .40 and .46 shared some of the same parts. I ordered the missing parts from O.S. Engines in Japan and took the rest from the .40 engines and made three more .46's. About 10 years have passed since then. I was looking at the .40's the other day and went to ebay to see if I could find enough parts to build a running .40 engine. I found what I needed, a crankshaft, from a vendor in Minneapolis. Then I contacted him and inquired about other parts I didn't see on his site. He replied that he had them in stock. He made up and order for me to buy through ebay. Reasonable prices and free shipping. I ordered them and a second crankshaft. The first crankshaft came in yesterday and I assembled one of the .40's put it on the test stand and ran it to see how it liked it's new parts. I installed it in the Twister and it's ready for action. The third engine has broken mounting hole and can be made usable if need be but for now it's just sitting. I was flying at the park a few days ago and a bird almost made it through the circle. I felt the lines pull and the plane twitched as the bird hit the lines. I figured the bird would be dead but I couldn't find anything, not even a feather. Hitting a bird is a first for me.

The last Twister.

No, Sig is still making them. It's the last one I will build. It seems that I've always had a Twister. Even when flying R/C I had one and would take it to the field about once a year and get in a flight. Fox .35 in the nose. Since then I have built several from kits and from scratch. None flew that well. I was out of projects and ws looking at the kits in the hobby shop and the Twister was the cheapest so I bought another one. For some reason I almost built it without changing things. I had some silk span and used it to cover the whole plane. I did extend the fuselage 2 inches at the rear. I never liked the canopy shape so I changed that a bit. I added a piece of 3/8 balsa to the nose to ad strength. That's about it. I used dope for the fill coats and white base then Dupli-Color engine paints for the trim colors. I sprayed on some two part clear for the final touch. I had an OS .46 LA I wasn't using so that is on the nose. A stock muffler puts the balance in the right spot. I am amazed at how well this plane flys. All my usual changes got left out and I built it mostly to the plans except for the 2 inch etension.