RE: Katana 50 by Hangar 9
Well the maiden is done and in a word, AWESOME!!
Got 4 flights on the Katana today and I was impressed, hangar9 has a hit with this plane..
Ground handling was fine, taxied it around once and pointed it into the wind. She tracked real nice an just a tad of right rudder was needed once the tail came up. She took to the air nice and easy and looked great doing it. I needed one click on the elv. and one click on the ail. and she was flying hands off.. It was a little windy today but the Katana flew great with it, she really cuts through nice and goes where you tell it to...
I set mine up on triple rates, low, high and crazyand just used low for the first flight and did notice that more rudder is needed on low rates for good knife edges, they did say this in the manual. The plane tracked very well in loops and rolls were nice as well, mild but nice...
Landing this plane was as much fun as flying it,great control at slow speeds and not a floater like my Reactor was.. I tried different approaches, steep angles, long low approaches and each was very predictable,she responds nice to the throttle allowingmeto control my altitudewiththe left stick for a change... I always said the reactor was a nice plane but didn't care forhow it handled landing in the wind, the Katana is much better in this department, a true joy to land...
High rates is when the Katana went from nice to Awesome... Snap rolls were mind blowing and recovery was down right sexy..lol Rolls and outside loops were a blast and knife edges across the whole field looked great at high speed and low speeds.. I never clicked into crazy rates, next time out for sure. I wanted to get it home and go over all the screws and make sure everything was good.. I did have two of the cowl screws come loose even though I used a little locktite on them, I will take care of them in the shop... Also, with the landing gear located where they are, turnarounds on windy days in grass are not a problem, the Katana sticks to the ground very well... The saito 72 had plenty of power, yesthe 82 would be better, but the 72 pulledher around great.I got a vidon my buddies phone and will post it tomorrow when he sends it to me. Well there you have it, if you were on the fence with this plane, trust me, get one...
Jimbo