ORIGINAL: maukaonyx
Lastly be prepared for a wild climb if you did not put any down thrust on your engine. I glued a home made ply thrust plate on the firewall for about 3 degrees down thrust and it works good. When in the air and I apply full throttle from straight and level slow flight (no flaps), the plane goes straight, not up, not down.
You got that right, Jon! [X(] I was prepared but now it is back to the bench to put in down thrust. The problem is that I will need to move the motor-mount blind nuts in the firewall to keep the prop centered in the nose of the cowl, and the prop will be at an angle to the front of the cowl. Interestingly, in a couple of photos I have of the full scale T-28, the front of the cowl seems to be angled down. Other than that, the plane flew well, but very slow compared to my T-34 pylon racer. I did not get to use the flaps, but it was easy to land. Needs some drag on the wheels though as it rolled off the end of our (rather short) runway. I did not do any real trimming as I need to get the thrust line fixed before anything else makes sense.
Ground attitude is still too high, even with the nose gear bent to simulate the real gear and a smaller nose wheel. A shorter nose gear will get the prop rather close to the ground so I may consider making up a new set of mains.