designer: Michael Richter span: 600 mm weight: 136g

The mini weasel is the smaller version of the Weasel pro. It's designed for light slope flying and flat field thermal hunting. I ordered mine direct from the US and it arrived in about a week in perfect condition. Even with the cost of shipping the model works out pretty cheap and is great value.

Mine turned out relatively porky at 136 grammes (4.8 Oz) but it still flies brilliantly on small slopes.

It's initial slope outing was in rather extreme conditions, with the wind measured at a steady 30mph but gusting to 50. Initially it was impossible to get over the slope at all. After I'd taped 56g (2.0 Oz) onto it's belly I was able to penetrate the wind a little and get flying. Whilst the conditions were far from ideal, it was still an complete hoot to fly

Modifications

I've only made 2 mods so far. The first is to work out a method of holding the radio bay closed and attaching a towhook. On my mini there is a gap between where the reciever bay cover ends and where the bay ends. This allowed the cover to pop open very easily. My solution to this is to use a small carbon rod slid into the correx which slides forward into a hole in the EPP by the battery enclosure. To slide the rod forward and backward I used a paperclip bent into a towhook shape. Essentialy the towhook doubles as a handle.

I've not yet tried this out yet but it seems to take quite a load without comming apart. Because the weasel is so light, the bungee will consist of a number of rubber bands tied together. The mechanism also needs moving into the centre of the hatch.

The second mod is to stop the elevon horns working loose. You can see in the picture that the horns have a very small base which means they can work loose. If I were to build the mini again I'd strip the tape back around the horn and use a decent ammound of epoxy to make sure they don't move. I ended up using a couple of small nuts I found to clamp the horns in place on the top of the elevon.