ORIGINAL: R/C Art
ORIGINAL: Lucky Dog
Glad the flight was a success!
So, how'd it fly?
I keep waiting for the pilot or the designer to chime in here.........but in their absence I will expand on the flight just a little bit.
First of all, we learned a great deal about the airplane and the design. At 3172 suare inches of wing area and 39.4 pounds ready to fly less fuel, it was very light on its wing.........so weight isn't a problem.
Secondly we learned (as previously stated by Larry) flying wires are going to be required for normal flying. I am a little dissappointed about this because I wanted a very quick to get ready for flight ''plug & fly'' type of model. But since everyone else was planning to add the flying wires, no one else was bummed out about that......soooooo, I will fit functional flying wires to my model. It won't add too much tothe assembly time and will add immensely to the appearance of the model! Wires are a very prominent feature of the Fokker Eindecker series.
And lastly, we discovered that the stab was
Sorry about the delay, but I got a call I had to take.......
And we discovered that the stab was strong enough but not stiff enough.......as the elevator was pulled to the up position I gently pushed it back toward the neutral popsition and noticed that the front of the stab was twisting up.......we also discovered (the call was from Paul) that the stab incidence was at a positive 3 degrees. What we deduced was happening was this condition was causing a lot of drag and turbulance but not imparting much of a pitching action to the airframe - thus it was slow to gain altitude. Also Paul checked balance again back at the shop after the flight and the result was that it was tending toward a tail heavy condition.
The fix here is relocate the stab to a zero incidence reading and brace the stab to prohibit twisting.
The next test flight will indicate if these fixes were correct.