RE: Kadet Senior rebuild
Well, I made my first flight today since about five years ago!
Thanks to FMS simulator, my reactions were ok and I took off and landed the plane nicely first time. The second landing was not so good...I undershot the runway slightly due to misjudging the wind and not applying enough throttle. It was flying so slow at the time that there was no damage done. The rest of my five or six takeoffs and landings were really enjoyable. It was the first time that I have consistently been able to do lots of landings where the plane kissed the ground at a shallow angle and rolled along nicely.
She flies much better without the bulky camera pod. She can do loops and even rolls, despite only being 3 channel. I'm using an 12.25 X 3.75 prop and it really slows the plane down very nicely for landing.
One problem I had was that the engine doesn't transition well enough from idle to full throttle. I spent hours adjusting the low speed needle, but I can't seem to get it to transition without a delay/spluttering. It was a bit scary a couple of times when I throttled up to abort a landing and the engine spluttered a bit.
The other problem is that the piano wire landing gear bent back a bit. I didn't think any of my landings were particularly heavy. I can only put it down to the possibility that the wire already had a weakness in it due to being bent and rebent back into shape 5 years ago after a bad landing.