Cool, 20 minutes between flights sounds better than 45.
One thing that is a contributing factor to the length of charging time is the condition of the batteries in the transmitter. Tired batteries from a Costco brick are going to require a longer time to recharge the flight battery then a fresh set of Duracells.
On the ruder blipping -- I'm not surprised a single blip of rudder doesn't do much to turn a craft with significant dihedral... Do you think increasing the rudder area might give better authority? I was planning to use a rather small rudder, so as not to enter a Death Spiral if I held it too long, but it sounds as if a largeish rudder might be in order?
You have touched on the heart of the WMF to Rubber-powered plane conversion issue. Freeflight planes are designed to have stable flight characteristics, our conversions have to overcome this and yet, because of the lack of elevator control, not totally destroy the models ability to self stabilize in the horizontal plane. The other challenge is the lack of proportional control in the rudder throw. The problem With the Pup is not a lack of rudder authority, but rather limiting the amount of control it has over the model while maintaining the horizontal stability. If anything, the rudder on the Pup is too large, and thus has too much authority.
The transmitter does not control the length of time that the rudder is held over. When you push one of the turn buttons the rudder swings to full throw and stays there until you release the button. Blipping the turn button is a very crude method of achieving proportional control with this radio. If I were to hold the button down until the model has completed it’s turn it would be in so steep a nose down attitude that to recover it would zoom to a stall. Your idea of a small rudder is definitely the way to go, just don’t be surprise if your model has problems responding to input.
Do you think you could do touch-and-goes with your Pup?
I think so, although it would be more like a “bounce and go!”
As far as tissue vs. plastic goes, i'd like to stick with tissue and try to keep the dope light (also, one can supposedly spray on Krylon to get a good finish without the weight (or extra strength) of dope?), but I've heard of something called "airspan" that should be ueber light... part of the appeal to me was doing this in a "stick-and-tissue" model, "stick and plastic film" just doesn't sound quite the same . If that's what it takes, though, so be it!
I too like the look of tissue on a stick built model. I built the Pup about three years ago with the intention of flying it exclusively indoors, thus “dry” tissue, I am looking into alternative covering products that maintain this look for my next project. I think that the use of Krylon, or any of the other enamel spray paint would result in a much heaver covering than the traditional “(thinned and) brushed on clear dope and colored tissue” finish. Besides, when a produce is sprayed on a porous covering material the product usually penetrates the covering and ends up on the frame materials resulting in a much heaver plane.