Well, good and not so good news. After warming up with the 'Bolt yesterday at our unofficial season opener, (when we could get as many together at once) tried the Bear with all the changes. Just had enough down trim to neutralize what was almost an uncontrolled climb on takeoff. Good thing all that power.

Had my jet friend as a spotter so did some testing and noted some of the characteristics of the new elevator setup. Too much expo, (36% on the 9303) and too much travel were the first to be caught and that created some interesting control problems, especially in turns and landing attempts. The second was a horrendous down trim change when flaps extended. I did have some mixed in and after landing, (yeah, right) took that out again. Had been caught by my own rule of not trying to work with too many things at once.

First landing had that expo create some problems as I was riding the outer edge with almost 1/4 stick before effective pitch input and had a pretty hard bounce which bent one leg back. That eliminated the chance to retract and belly in so second try ended up catching one wing on the high grass at the side of the strip. Cartwheeled into the ditch making all sorts of noise, but other than the second leg bent the only visible damage was mud splattered on the end of one wing. Everything came apart with no apparent problems and plan to look closer at it once cleaned up.

Will also look at some way to have a bit of elevator movement programmed to the other lever to offset any changes when flaps deployed beyond what trim can correct. This will only be there till I can figure out what to mix in for final programming.

On that note I am not happy with the elevator servo resolution and will look for something with better characteristics.

All I can say is this plane is surviving far more that every expected. The reinforcements are proving durable, but I do have one overriding complaint. Those gear legs are far too long, making even the easiest landings a pin-bending event or taxiing likely to nose over. If I ever build another would look closely at moving the actuators inboard or reworking the wells to shorten the legs.