Nodd

Maiden Flight Details
Well the video was fun but I left out a few details. So before you ask...

I used a 2100mAh 3S battery. I landed after 15 minutes not because the battery was getting low but because I didn't want to push my luck on the first flight. I believe I made four, maybe five, climbs during the flight. The battery was at 11.02v when I checked her after the flight, so still had plenty of juice for a few more climbs.

I didn't try to do any thermalling, instead the flight was spent playing with the elevator trim mostly, the rudders & ailerons didn't need trimming. You may notice at the end of the video I show there's maybe an 1/8" of up trim on the ruddervators. The tail was mounted at 1° to the plane's datum line. In hindsight it could probably have used a tad more incidence.

You can't really tell in the video but the flaps & crow mixing were pretty effective. I tried them out while nice & high. It produced a fair amount of ballooning when I dumped in full flaps but that's to be expected. Fed in slowly & with the down elevator I mixed in, the flaps behave nicely. I put them to good use in my rather over extended landing.

Currently I have very little crow mixing, the ailerons move perhaps a 1/4" up at most. I'll play with it more but I think I'm going to stick with the flaps as the main speed brakes so that the ailerons don't get all mushy on me.

Important safety tip! DO NOT mess with the trim when you're 20' off the ground & in a hard turn. Not sure what I was thinking but as the video shows, I took my eyes off the plane for a split second & almost sent her piling straight in. I'm SOOOO glad I was able to recover in time, would never have forgiven my self.

Some may have noticed my ESC was set to slow start. I did this just for the maiden flight. I thought without a proportional throttle it might be nice to have the motor spin up to speed gradually instead of all or nothing. I'll be setting it back to normal after I'm done messing with the throttle to elevator mixing.

The middle position on my three-way throttle switch was set at 30% thrust. Turns out that's pretty wimpy. I think I'm going to increase that to 50%. At 100% she climbs out very nicely though. I think I may have nailed the motor/prop combo.

I will be producing plans for this sailplane. I'll let you all know when those become available.

Anyway that's all I can think of for now. Thank you once again for following my build & a HUGE thanks to those who offered advice.