I got three more trouble free 10 minute flights on the Shoestring yesterday. Adding the down thrust did not completely solve my issues with the plane but I think I can live with that way it is now. One of my favorite maneuvers with all of my planes is the high speed worm burner run down the runway with the ocasional unintentional touch and go. On my other planes they will drop and you keep it from plowing in by giving it little burps of up elevator. This plane just doesn't seem to want to drop and I find it uncomfortable feeding in down elevator when I'm that close to the deck. I did see from the specs that Rick gave that my wing has +.5 degrees too much wing incidense but given the difficulty of changing that on this plane I think I can live with it the way it is.

I also want to retract my earlier comment about my plane not nosing over. I realized yesterday that the reason it doesn't nose over is that I'm constantly using up elevator during roll out and as soon as the wheels touch the ground to keep the tail planted. As an experiment I tried to take off without adding the up elevator and as soon as the tail lifted it rose well past horizontal and eventually nosed completely over. I guess you just get used to handling a plane the way you need to and eventually forget you're doing anything unusual to make her fly.

Jeff