CGRetired
Posts: 6246
Score: 118
Joined: 9/14/2004
Last Login: 3/20/2010
From: Galloway, NJ, USA
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Maiden flights are always the most challenging. Not because they are hard, but because of the anticipation of a hopeful first flight, and because of the butterflys in your stomach. So, no matter what you do, neutral, a little up, doesn't matter. The butterflys will still be there, at least until you get it up and trimmed for straight and level flight.
With that said, I set my trim for that maiden flight to as close to neutral as I possibly can.
This is how I do it:
Before I hook up the linkage, neutralize the transmitter sticks, and set the servos to neutral. Make sure that your servos are where you want them to be with the stick and trim centered, in other words. This is very important because you do not want to induce artificial trim by forgetting to neutralize both the transmitter and the servo(s) in use. I also leave the transmitter on so that the servos are "locked" in that position.
For the ailerons, I use two pieces of thin ply, about 5 inches long by three inches wide, and clamp them to the wing so that they sandwich the control surface. This places the control surface right in the center and pretty much neutral with the wing surface. If you have a flat bottom wing, it will tend to keep the bottom of the aileron, for instance, straight with the bottom of the wing.
For the elevator, I also use the two pieces of ply as I stated above. And, it doesn't matter if you have a wing-foil type of horizontal stab, or a flat horizontal stab, this works just fine. After this is done, and you are sure the control surface is straight with the wing or stab, connect up the linkage, adjusting the linkage so that it neither pulls nor pushes on the ailerons or elevator, in other words, they remains neutral.
Remove the clamps and the ply, and test the ailerons and elevator.
For your first flight, gradually but quickly add power during the take off roll to full throttle and carefully pull in elevator till the plane climbs and hold this until you are high enough to comfortably remove some throttle and elevator and then turn to pass by in front of you then trim out the elevator. You may be doing several things at the same time, adjusting roll rate to zero, and elevator trim. Do this with no change in throttle, keeping it between half and 3/4 setting so nothing changes and you can set for straight and level flight.
Once done, just fly it to get used to your new plane.
This is probably more than you asked for, but others may be interested in the information.
CGr.
_____________________________
Skylark 70 - OS .75 AX; Excelleron 90 - OS 1.20 AX; Venus II - OS 1.20 AX; And, I still fly my trainer, Hanger 9 Alpha - OS .46 FX! Some electrics. Airtronics RD8000 - Spektrum DX7 - DX6i. AMA 705964.
Semper Paratus!
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elevator setup - 
