The Astro Hog (original) was designed to fly with what amounted to just being assisted free flight. The old reed rigs were not proportional like our more modern R/C systems. They were either on or off when it came to the various control surfaces. One needed a ten channel reed system in order to somewhat equal a four-channel proportional system today. Each full throw direction of a control surface took one channel, such as up elevator, right rudder or right aileron. The sixth and tenth channels were used for a tim feature, such as trimming the elevator slightly.

Anyway, just as we should do today in many instances, our models should be mechanically trimmed to fly straight and level with "hands-off" the Tx. More so, back in the days of the Astro Hog. Remember, you didn't have proportional trim the way you have with today's R/C systems.

There are folks reading this column that have actually designed/setup/flown reed controlled models. I have not. I'll depend on them to jump in here and fill in any necessary details, or to make any corrections to what I have said. However, my point was that the stock Astro Hog was set up to fly more like an auto stable free flight model than today's pattern ships. Yes, reducing the dihedral might be a good idea, but sometimes it is fun to fly the old models just as they were designed.


Ed Cregger