Hi rowarrior, I enjoy your comments! I'm learning good things from Dick too.

My feelings are not that different. If I didn't have to abort about 6 or 8 take-offs for every one I got, I wouldn't be trying to put a gyro on my N.17 either. It's just a beast to get off the ground. I once read that German pilots would sometimes have the wheels welded to the axles, with the axles in bearings, so their planes would go straighter. Yet at Old Rhinebeck no one seems to have a problem.

I think it's worse with smaller planes, and especially when we can't actually sit in the cockpit and make corrections as soon as we feel it's not going straight. The only way I can get my N.17 off the ground is ask everyone to stop for a bit, go out on the field and stand directly behind the plane, and then about once out of six tries I can keep it straight enough to take off. I've been flying tail-draggers for at least 20 years. Once it's in the air I love it, and I use the rudder a lot in the turns, unlike my sport models.

One thing I won't do is widen the landing gear, like BUSA does. Then it looks wrong to me and spoils the reason for building the model in the first place.

Very cool that you fly 1/6th scale WWI models. I'd love to hear more about that. You must be able to take them off OK.

Jim