Flight Update!!!!

Hello all, what a surprise tonight when I got off of work at 5pm. The wind had all but died down! What a surprise especially since at lunch it was blowing pretty good! Well we got the store closed up and headed on home. I pulled "8 Bits" off of the mantle, connected the battery and attached the wing. Walked outside into mid-high 90's, no wind backyard, which is directly connected to our High School practice fields. This was just about as perfect conditions you could ask for outside of the heat and bugs. Throttle her up to about 60% power and gave her a lob. She climbed out very steady and rock solid. She flies very scale like in my opinon. Not under powered but also not too much power either. Part of that is because of my wiring. I've ran the battery though a switch that has smaller gauge wire so it can't pull at max capacity from the battery. Knowing how my dad flies, it will be just fine.

After all I did build this plane for him so I had his flying style in mind with this configuration. I flew her around, back and forth, eleptical flight path, flat figure 8's etc... for just over 15 minutes. I even took her up to about 50' agl, pushed her over and pulled back hard. She really didn't want to loop, but she did. I was surprised by that. However again I know my dad's flying style and loops are not really part of it! So bottom line the plane is balanced well, flys straight and level at about 60% power.

Over the course of the flight towards the end I did have to continually increase throttle to adjust for the drop in the battery level. After landing when the plane was at full throttle and motor winding down and could not maintain altitude, I removed the wing and check for any "hot" components. As expected the motor, battery and esc were warm to the touch, but not hot. So this was good news, the ventilation that was designed into the plan was cooling everything adequately!

Once back inside I put on my "LiPo fuel gauge", and it told quite an interesting story. The battery did not discharge evenly. The first cell had about 80% and the second cell was down to about 15% to 20%. If the battery had discharged correctly the flight time would probably have reached 25 minutes without any troubles!

Well I really do hope my dad enjoys this plane as much as I enjoyed building it for him. Here's to many a long flights and joyous times!

Bill