Originally Posted by
bri6672
I had tons of flights in mine before I sold it and this is what I learned:
Dont use take off flaps, it makes the jet wheel barrel and like to get it in the air before it's ready!
Use very little rudder if any! I like rudder in my jets but the rudder is extremely effective and causes roll!! I had no more than 1/4" of travel in mine and that was still a lot...
Be sure the nose gear is on a separate channel, lots of the crashes were guys leaving the nose and rudder on the same channel, they would trim it in the ground for the nose gear and not realize that they added a tiny bit of rudder trim, when the jet would lift off the rudder would roll it over and then into the ground....
Crosswinds.... I flew mine in crosswinds every so often, it is totally doable but remember the rudder will add lots of roll! The jet will weather vane in the crosswind and some guys would try to compensate with rudder and roll it into the ground. The anehdrial also is a bit of issue with the crosswind but if you keep it in the ground longer it won't have a problem.
The jet definitely likes to shimmy around when getting slow but it never seemed to be a problem.
If Iwere to build another I would put a cortex or 3e on it and I think it would improve the airplane quite abit, but still very minimal rudder!!!!!
I read this with great interest. I had one of these models and considered it to be one of the prettiest scale models at the time. However it was the only plane that I have owned that proved to be unflyable. In the Uk we always fly in winds and normally about 20 mph or over is considered too strong. Most of our ex RAF airfields have been built on a standard pattern with the main runway aligned west east the then prevailing wind direction. It does seem that this has changed in the last 75 years and we just have to be ready to fly in cross winds. Large heavy jets can normally fly in cross winds especially when the wind direction is not exactly 90 degrees to the runway. Sometimes were are lucky to fly on main runways enabling small jets to take off across the runway.
My A7 was powered by a MW44 which was ample thrust. The first flight was in a cross wind and we were flying on a narrow perimeter track. Dave my pilot has flown loads of weird different models some never flown before either as models of full size so was very experienced. He took off and found the plane just such a struggle to fly as it seemed to want to flip over on its own. In the end he landed in long grass wide of the runway and the wing broke in half and the fuselage was badly damaged. I repaired it all and the next time I took it to fly we were on the main runway. This time I had one of the UK's leading display pilots at the sticks. He took off and the plane promptly flipped upside down and smashed itself to pieces on the runway comprehensively destroying itself. We were both a bit shocked as it was so unexpected. I thought at the time I must have assembled the plane with the ailerons reversed and that the pilot had not checked the controls, however unlikely this was.
it seems from your post that this plane has a rudder issue and needs hardly any, and that cross wind flying is not encouraged. That seems a likely explanation of the problems we faced.
The one thing I can say having flown both engines that the Kingtech 45 has more power than needed and is a great engine. The plane is very small and if I was looking for a demo plane I would have gone for something larger to fully utilise the power. Yesterday Dave flew my Swift glider with the Kingtech on it and despite weighing 8 Kg with fuel it was very sprightly.
Good luck with the A7 and do let us know how the maiden goes.
John