Hello you all. Today was the first flight of the plane! at the very last moment we choose not to make the first flight(s)? in our regular club, Instead we went to a little used airport, at a beach resort of Guaratuba, at about 100 Km from our city, Curitiba. we were a 3 person team: owner,builder and pilot/designer. Sorry about not posting any fotos, we where too anxious and busy to take any today! :-) The plane had a air leak at the retracts that went unoticed until today, so we decided to fly it anyway with the gear extended and without wheel brakes. We started the P-80 without problems right in the middle of the landing strip, (unfortunately we had a crosswind) walked away of the plane about 30 m and slammed the throtle to 100%. after a 50 m run it was airborne and almost perfectly trimmed! it flew very nicely, with excellent stability and well balanced commands and then, after about 4 circuits my heart almost stopped. I saw the right aleiron shaking like crazy and I almost instantly thought it was flutter, but it was not. this is my first airplane with digital servos and the aleiron was shaking exactly like my thumb! :-) at this point, I had a great relief and started to make some rolls , and point rolls, just to relax a bit. After about 4 minutes flying at 100% throttle, I chopped of the power to 50% , slowed it somewhat and opened the speed brake, and nothing happened , the s.b. didn't open , (later we realised that the servo didn't have enough power to open it) ,so, started a landing circuit
at about 30% power , put the turbine at idle in the final approach and it glided a lot, until it touched very gently the ground. and then, it rolled,rolled, rolled (no brakes) until the nose wheel axle departed the nose gear, and then the plane stopped! wow! we where really happy after this first flight, and the plane performed like we expected. In my opinion it is a lot easier to fly than a kangaroo or hotspot, (and they are already easy to fly) and it seems easier to visualize it too. It was very easy to build.and cheap (this one was ready in 2 months of work of our local builder). I will post more impression in this thread of the next flights and hope that in the next one I will remember to take a foto! :-)

Regards, Enrique

p.s the Tie fighters are not a match for the Hotcat :-)