ORIGINAL: Razor-RCU
I dunno why folks care about hand launching an airplane- It is generally pretty easy (after maiden
) to launch them and they are slick with no gear.
Keep us posted Big Bad Guy!
Hand launching doesn't scare me, but belly landing with the prop stuck on compression does.. despite my efforts at locating the prop here-and-there it still ends up in a dumb location sometimes when I shut down the engine on my Magnum. Coupled with the landing speed it has caused some aggravation. But, draggy landing gear would irritate me too so you gotta take the lumps with the gravy. The second last time I was out the prop stuck just short of TDC and snagged on the grass, resulting in an endo and torn wing mount. Took all of 10 minutes to fix but it was still a PITA at the time.
The Magnum is somewhat fun to fly, and indeed is fairly quick, but even if a Q500 is a hair slower I think the superior all around flying qualities make it them a more entertaining + affordable "I wanna go fast and have fun" aircraft for similar size engines. Yeah the Magnum looks swoopy and all that but that means the square root of diddly-squat at these airspeeds.
MJD