Originally Posted by rhklenke

My son, Louie, has one. He has a couple of flights on it so far, but the winter has basically interrupted our flying schedule.

We had a lot of problems with the gear. It was unreliable and would often stick in the up or down position. Either way was not good - getting stuck up (usually only one of the mains) has the obvious problems, but getting stuck down wasn't too good either. The main gear doors have *very* powerful digital servos on them, and if they try to close with one of the gear down, things get broken.

We put a Xicoy gear controller on it and did a few minor mods and repairs to the gear and I think we have that worked out, fingers crossed.

That video you posted is Zach Spychalla's model. He has quite a few flights on his. He's using a Flexinnovations Aura FCS on his. I talked to him at length and he actually gave us his setup for the Aura - we're using an Aura 12 Professional on ours. Also, Marco Benincasa, the editor of RCJI Magazine, did a 4-part article on setup and flying of this T-7A model. You should definitely get copies of that and read the article.

Here's the bottom line on this aircraft as I see it. First, its very neutral on the roll axis, maybe even a bit unstable. In addition, the ailerons (flaperons) are large and effective. The combination leaves a plane that is very squirrely in roll - unless you have a gyro on it, which I highly recommend.

Second, the directions mention flaperons and tailerons, but they don't mention how to set them up properly. Here's what they should have said:
- if you use flaperons, you do NOT want any tailerons mixed in when the flapperons are up - normal aileron control is more than enough (with a gyro). If you have tailerons here, hang on for a *wild* ride.
- at 1/2 flapperons down, you still don't want tailerons, aileron control with the 1/2 flapperon setting still works OK. You should set the ailerons to move up more than down though, if your radio can do that
- with full flapperons you MUST mix in tailerons - or you will not have roll control (see Marco's article on his first flight for details).

In the two flights we've had, the first one was done with the gear down all of the time. We did not notice any adverse control actions with the gear down, other than the squirreliness in roll. The second flight, we did pull the gear up. When we did that. the roll issues became even worse and Louie had to turn the gyro on the make it more flyable.

Both flights ended with perfect landings - but Louie's heart was beating pretty fast! :-)

We're looking forward to getting it back out in the spring. Both Zach and Marco's experience show that its a decent flying plane, once its setup correctly. You might want to consider not using flapperons, at least to start out with. There is a flyer down south in Carolina that just got one back in October and that's how he's going to set his up...

Bob