May 25, 2010

The airplane was built per construction guidelines. I’m using a DA-150 engine with standard mufflers swinging a Menz 32x10 prop and a carbon spinner. Radio control is a JR 10X on 2.4 Speckrum using a 9100 receiver and 8711s on all the control surfaces. I’m using 2 servos on the rudder mounted on the bottom of the fuselage just in front of the tail wheel. Batteries are Duralite 5200mh mounted on the back of the motor box behind the wing tube.

TEST FLIGHTS: The first thing I noticed after starting the engine was that the cowl did not vibrate at all. I’m sure this is due to the elimination of the top “L” brackets and mounting it directly to the fuselage at F1, nice. Roll out was straight down the runway. After the bird came off the ground, just two clicks of up elevator trim and she was tracking true. I put the airplane thru the usual “CG testing” maneuvers. Inverted flight required just a small amount of down elevator pressure. Taking the bird to 300’ I pointed the nose straight at the ground and idled back.

The airplane tracked with an almost perfectly vertical down line and only showed a hint of pulling to the canopy at the bottom of the down line. Mixing was about 2% generally. Less than most airplanes. This machine did all the 3D stuff like it was on autopilot. Waterfalls were very graceful yet tight. Harrier rolls were the best I have experienced, very predictable and controlled. Pop ups were “right now”. The wind was near zero so I climbed for some altitude to see how it would perform an elevator in those conditions. I pulled full elevator and brought up the ailerons then throttled back as much as I dare. The airplane came almost straight down. I think with a 5mph head wind it might start backing up.

Bringing the airplane down the runway in a high alpha was a pure joy. I was worried that I might not have built-in enough elevator throw, but at full elevator it was hard to keep the airplane from standing on its tail and it was rock steady, AWESOME. Although this was its first flights, the engine had many hours on it so I felt good about the reliability. About 2 minutes into the second flight I had it a foot off the deck in a torkroll. No doubt this bird is the most predictable and controllable torkroll machine I’ve ever flown. It also does one of the best high alpha knife edges I’ve ever seen. Lots of rudder with plenty of fuselage side area makes this a knife edge machine. Finally, the landing was on rails.

Semper Fi!