ORIGINAL: Shimano
I love these too. Before I had to give up R/C back in mid/late 90's I had built and flown a couple GP Cap 21's, and loved every minute of it! That, and the Super Chipmunk at the time, were about my very favorite..
What a toss up thinking back, on what was more of a pleasure.. opening up that fresh balsa kit.. or the first maiden flight day..
Is this a sign of getting old, Gray Beard? dwelling on some old memories of R/C planes? I remember Dad always giving me that look when I'd mention building another Cap or Super Chipy.. I guess he just couldnt get past the idea of them having that 'death snap'. I looked at is as some kind of challenge though. I dunno..
Nice plane harlanb!
I never thought of it as a challange but just something to know about. My advanced instructor warned us about this plane, he was the builder and letting us fly the plane at events.
Most of my own giant scale planes in the IMAC catogory have been the Extra that I like a lot more then the CAPs. The Extras I have had over the years have all given me the stall warning of the wing rock. All Except one!!! It was worse then the worst CAP I had ever flown!!
I have maidened and flown a number of CAPs for people over the last few years and during the trim flights noticed the snap problem has been fixed with some design changes. I haven't found one that was like the old CAPs.
I also do not hear them called SNAPS any longer.
I just warn people to do the stall testing on them, I stall test all my planes during the trimming, nothing much you can do about it but I like to know and see how my planes go into there stall and what speed they do it at.
The one snapping Extra I had {got rid of} I didn't stall test. When I came out of my first stall turn I had a surprise and discovered it wanted power at the bottom. Then it bit me in the butt on a landing after that, pilot error, my bad but when it touched the ground I think it touched all four corners.
Not testing the plane was just a brain fart, not an age problem.
