acdii

Well, finally got it out to my friends house, and his brother was there too. This guy is a hot dogger, he can fly a plane through a hulahoop. In fact one flight last night the plane ran out of fuel, and he was able to keep it aloft long enough to get it within 20 feet of the runway before plopping it into the soybeans.

Well it was pretty windy last night, which made flying the Apprentice a real kicker, it is so light tht the wind was making it do things it shouldnt, but was fun to see it go from 10MPH to 50MPH just by turning around and giving it full throttle. Because of the wind, I didnt want to maiden it since Iwasnt sure if the CG was correct, and let my friend take it up. Well turns out it is tail heavy, Ipulled the manual out when Igot home and found the leading edge referred to the point at the root and not the actual leading edge of the wing, makes a big difference. Iwill need to get some weight added to it. Anyhow, we flew it around a bit, he got it trimmed for roll, pitch will need to be re-trimmed once I get it properly balanced. Iflew it for a few minutes myself just to get the feel of it, but Iwas getting disoriented due to the low clouds and kept losing track when it was directly towards me, has a pretty thin profile.

Now that Ihave flown a tail heavy plane, Iknow what to expect, pitch ups are frequent, just a touch of up and it goes UP. Now that it has flown, and once I get the balance corrected, I should have no problems flying this one. The landing was very nice, it took it's own sweet time touching down, but touched down smoothly. The take off roll was pretty long, so Iwill need to figure out the distance I need to see if this one can be flown at my house, since I may not have enough open ground for it. We didn't use the flaps other than dropping them in flight to see the reaction, which was pretty much what I expected, it popped up.

Afterwards he got his plane back up, the landing was so soft in the soybeans that the only thing that had to be done was pull a leaf off the landing gear. His takeoff was so long that we thought for sure he was going into the soybeans, but at the last minute it popped up and he flew it "treetop" level over the field. You could see the prop wash on the leaves. Then he got it up and flew it around a bit, then did some screaming low level passes across the runway, inches above the ground, and one time we thought for sure it would hit, but he pulled it up with 1/2" to spare. Several times we thought for sure the plane would go into the beans, but everytime it would pop up and leave the leaves shaking. This guy is good! Did Imention it was windy? And Raining! Rain on foam wings makes a distinctive sound as it flies past you. One of my Apprentice flights was when it started to rain.