jetG52000

...after just 3 short days of owning the moth... she went up tonight for the first time... FLies very nice for such a basic aircraft.. gentle use of the throttle and you will hardly know the plane is missing ailerons..... Second flight didnt go so well... I tried slow flight and the plane performed like an old lady.. very predictable.. I tried numerous stalls and the plane just loses altitude and didnt try to snap either direction... So I thought with that, Let's try and see what happens in a Secondary stall... Wrong thing to do... I recovered from the 1 st stall with about 25 foot of altitude.. the second stall resulted in a severe nose dive and I got it out at about 3 feet agl... Not bad in my eyes for such a cheap airplane.. The bad news, I found a pole right infront of me while attempting to climb back up at about 8 feet.... The nose almost broke completely off where the landing gear goes into the Fuse.. So those of you that own the moth, I highly suggest you beef up this area asap with either popcicle sticks or some balsa... just a word to the wise... other than that, I am off to repair my moth so I can fly it again tomorrow.. Great plane, looks great in flight, and pretty tough for what I put it thru for the first flight..
Jason

3DFanatic

My Feedback: (5)

Always thought that landing gear mount was a little dinky-dink but I've never hit it hard enough to justify the extra weight...

Other then stalling with too little altitude, pretty impossible to crash, huh?

slehmann

I just took out my TM this morning for her Maiden flight, and man is she a sweet flyer. I hummed and hawed about it for a week (we've had some stiff breezes here in Toronto everyday since I built it 10 days ago) but finaly said f@#$it this morning and went for it.

I had a little more confidence because I put a 7.2volt 350mah pack in her, and she flew for well over 20 minutes at pretty much full throttle all the way.

What a bird. I'm SO glad I bought this plane.

I mounted a "plank" of 3/32 balsa behind the landing gear to reinforce the foam on landings. I also opted for a removable wing and put bambo skewers as the connectors for the bottom and top wings. The one on the bottom wings hgives that area some structural strength as well.

I had a couple of pretty rough grass landings this morning., but no sign of the structure weakening.

Slehmann

slehmann

I should have mentioned that I moved the battery back to keep the Cg the same, but I didn't want to trim foam, so I permanently installed it with zip ties.

slehmann

....the bamboo wing gear....