Originally Posted by Mark Vandervelden

Hi Michael I have attached a few more pics taken with my phone on its first outing after having four/five successful flights. Unfortunately it died on its second outing second flight before I could take any of a better quality :-(. It was not heavy at all and the Wren 160 was more than enough for a good vertical climb. It was not a fast airframe but fast enough to impress and had good presents in the air and on the ground. The take off was smooth and not too fast and except for needing a lot of aileron trim (more later) it rotated easily when set up with the recommended CG and 30deg flap. Landings were also very easy and it was set too 45deg flap, it came in not too fast at all evan with reasonably steep approach and no tendency to balloon on the flare. Evan though the CG looked very forward on the plan it flew well at that position, im sure it could have been moved back a bit but did not get the chance to explore. My set up on the first flights were with elervon and flaps with no aileron. I did it this way as I had limited channels at that time but it worked well except for one small issue. When the gear was down the large nose door that sits at an angel to the flight direction made the airframe roll quit hard, this required a "lot" in fact more than all of the elevon trim to fly level. I was particularly concerned because on the last turn onto finals it "HAD" to be in the same direction as the door was trying to pull it over or risk stalling the elervons. The cure was to split the front UC door into two, one each side "left and right" which cured the problem completely on it second outing and I "HIGHLY" recommend this mod. Another small problem I had was the rams struggled to shut the main gears and doors in the right sequence in forward flight and the the first three flights had the wheels up but outside the doors!. It had all worked well on the bench and on pre-flight checks but with the forward flight just did not cope well and I ran out of adjustment with the UP vave I was Using. You can barly see the whells evan when they were out side but falmost flat against the fuz and it behaved ok.The good thing was the Mains drop readily evan with low air presser so landings presented do drama. I would use "trip" valves next time so the doors could never shut until the mains were away. I managed to acquire a new Tx with an extra ch for the second outing allowing me to use ailerons, this meant sacrificing some flap but it still rotated off the deck nicely. Unfortunately this new Tx revealed a major software issue with DMS2-DMX compatibility and I suffered lockout briefly on its first flight resulting in a dead stick that I wrongly blamed on the turbine. On the second Flight I had a full lockout soon after take off, I was lucky not to completely rite it off. I was impressed enough with the F35 its self to now want to buy a replacement Fuz but need to save a wile first. I now have a new and well tested TX so look forward to it flying again some day.