dash008:

The Wonder is a great flying airplane, but there a couple of things that can bite you if you don't know about them:

1. Someone stated that the factory CG was no good. They are wrong. Balance it at the recommended point and it will fly just fine. The trick is not to have too much control surface movement. Set the elevator to the recommended high rate travel, and then put in about 70% expo to soften it around the neutral point. After you get some experience with it, you can play around with movement and expo to get it the way you like it. Put in about half the aileron movement to begin with, as this bird is extremely sensitive in roll.

2. They build nose heavy if you're not careful. I put my elevator servo just ahead of the elevator, stuck through the top. I made a little hatch on the bottom so I can get to it. I used one aileron servo mounted on the wing. All my servos are the old HS 81 MG, and are great for this application as they keep the weight down.

3. The 15 CVR is a great engine, and an APC 7x6 is probably the best all around prop. They are touchy about the first start, and are very easy to flood if they don't light right away. Be very cautious when using an electric starter. I found the best way to start mine was to pull the fuel line off the carb, open the throttle, put my finger over the exhaust opening and flip it until fuel comes out the line. Then, hook up the line, set it to just above idle and spin till it fires. Once it's warmed up it will hand start every time, but that first time is touchy.

4. Try to get your fuel tank as high as possible, right up under the fuse deck, or you can run into feed problems with the upright engine. I ended up putting my battery pack underneath the tank. It's one of the small (750 milliamp, I think) Hydrimax NiMh packs.

5. If you're hand launching, you need some extra "up" trim just at launch, then need to take it out right away. After I got mine trimmed, I mixed the flap switch on my radio to the elevator, so that "flaps down" gave me just a touch of extra up, maybe 1/16". This makes the airplane climb as soon as it leaves your hand. If you don't do this, it can dive on you and it's real exciting while you are trying to reach the stick before it hits the ground.

6. Never, ever use a neckstrap on the transmitter. It can get in the way of you getting to the stick after launch, and again, things get real exciting.

7. Are you certain that the blocks for the dowel pins are in the correct position, and that you did not accidentally get your wing upside down? The manual is a little confusing in this area, and it's easy to get Murphied. The wing on my first one came off in flight because of this mistake, and after that, I got in the habit of completely filling that area in with block balsa so that it wouldn't matter which side of the wing was "up". (My current one is number three.)