RE: ParkZone Super Decathlon Review
Maybe this isn't a "Super Dec" question only, but we kids bought our father a Super Decathlon for his One Millionth birthday... I'll report on that below, but have a question regarding the PZ transmitter: ours has a small button on the upper left hand side of the radio, jsut above the throttle slider. What is this? I cannot find any reference to it in the PZ materials.
This thread has been very useful and exciting. Thanks to all posting in it!
Our first flight didn't go so well: my Dad was nervous about crashing the rig, so he had me at the controls for the first, hand launched, run. The Super Dec flew away smoothly, until I decided to bring her around to the right. I used right rudder with a little elevator, and she dipped her right wing pretty hard. After an over-correction, and then another, I tumbled the plane into the ground after ten seconds fo flight. There was minimal damage from the grass baseball field, but we were unable to find one of the tiny, red rubber band retainer caps from the wing bar whatsits for quite a while. Since we had a LOT more battery left, there was time for another flight...but I wasn't gonna do it!
Our second flight was my Dad's first with a multi-channel RC plane. We've both flown Air Hogs one-channel ducted fan planes (in fact we took a break and flew one after my crash with the ParkZone) and my Dad avidly built and flew U-control planes in the 1940's. So, by all rights, and having read here the day before, we were both wondering what we'd do to the Super Dec. The hand launch was easy and my Dad took her straight out much further and to higher altitude than I had, before flying the plane for a full-charge run in various flat-8 patterns, experimenting with throttle effect and speed for turns. The plane flies great! My Dad decided not to mess with elevator trim, so he used the throttle to climb and the rudder to turn, treating her like a 2-channel plane and "Gassing out" of any altitude loss. He flew for about 12 minutes, mostly at full throttle and then had to glide-in after the auto-cutoff at about 100' up. He reported it glides nicely and it came in for a decent landing on the grass, albeit on its nose.
After we got home, I installed the jumper in the receiver to activate the "flight trak" servo mixing that gives a little elevator when the rudder is used. That seems like a good idea, and gives rise to my second question: what do you more experienced PZ fliers think about the utility of the "flight trak" feature?