Yeah, I've got the ARF rather than the select. Thanks for the tip re including links. That does provide l lot of info fast and I do tend to assume people were there at the field watching me struggle.
Also, the simulator exercises I've been doing have been in the Great Planes PT40 trainer. Essentially the same plane as mine, just slightly larger and glow powered. I changed it only to have the same paint scheme as my SuperStar. Again, this paragraph is just referencing the simulated planes. I understand flying is not exactly the same, but as I said, I was used to one JoyStick. Mostly I got the RealFlight simulator to build hand eye coordination so I wouldn't have to think about which stick controlled what surface. That part's automatic now. Whichever direction the plane's flying.
Recommendations:
Get the CG to the center of the recommended range. This may be the key. You say you have the CG forward of the most forward recommended position. This is very bad. The plane may be starting to lift and it can't get the nose up because it is too nose heavy. Move the battery or other components back, or remove weight from the nose. Get it to the center of the range. Even a little off can be enough to have a major impact on the way the plane flies.
(sigh) I'll try that too. I'm not sure how I'll do it without weighting the tail. In an attempt to move the CG back a hair, I stuffed the receiver behind the battery by attaching it to the battery hatch just before I took the plane out to fly. That's about 3" back and about 1/2" down. I also moved the ESC back about another inch to the limits of the wiring. (What's that good for? .001oz? But I did it.) Everything else is nailed down and can't be moved without cutting into something. The motor obviously is nailed down and designed into that location. The battery is blocked in and those two components are over 1/2 the weight of the plane. The only thing I could easily do is to put the Rx back into the fuse where I'd have to take it out to unplug the aileron servo every time I wanted to remove the wing, or redo the front and rear battery mounts. Fortunately the plane seems to have a surprising amount of thrust so a little tail weight as a quick and temporary fix might not hurt. I was hoping someone had already experienced and fixed this problem so I wouldn't have to do it by trial and error.
I've never seen anything relating a small forward CG to lateral instability though I can vaguely see where it might happen. As I said, I'm just starting on design theory. There seems to be much more paper on pitch and roll instability. Also, if it turns out that the forward CG doesn't seriously affect takeoff, I was hoping to take advantage of some enhanced stability. I'm really getting sick of building planes and infrastructure (I've practically built a fiberglass/aeronautics lab this year + I had a mojor computer crash last week.) I need to see something fly. That's why I stepped 'down' to the trainer. I really just want to see something float around in a few gentle turns and. land. As you can see from my post to Fly-n-3D I can pretty well amuse myself without ever leaving the airport pattern.
Since you are spinning left and right, not always the same direction, I will assume this is not a trim situation.
I agree. While I won't know for sure until it gets off the ground, I carefully checked the control surfaces visually. I fiddled endlessly with the rudder and watched the lateral performance of the plane carefully. At a certain speed, the instability totally overwhelms the vertical control surfaces. I can steer the plane till that point. Then it suddenly snaps around.
You must always take off into the wind. Any other direction at this point provides no useful information.
Here I've got to plead for a bit of mercy. I tried to go with the wind as much as possible and to wait for the wind to die down as much as possible. But the way our field is set up, there's sort of a rule that no one walks beyond the pilot's flight/control line onto the pad. If the wind is blowing out, you put your plane down and taxi to the opposite end of the pad, turn and take off toward yourself. I tried to taxi out as far as possible, but the plane is so light, even taxiing with the wind I would go fast enough to loop. I tried to get out as far as possible and head into the wind as much as possible. And I tried to note when the wind was declining or dead. The results were uniform. A short run and a ground loop.
I still don't know if you have a steerable wheel or a fixed wheel or a drag wire. From the site I presume it is just a wire
How are you charging the battery? Are you using the stock battery? I presume you are balancing he plane with the battery in it, correct?
The plane is a tail dragger. Not tricycle gear. The tail drag is just a monocote covered balsa strut. The type thats just a little bump. The strut is not steerable.
I have a Great Planes peak charger thats got switches for NiCd/NiMh and for charging current.
http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin...?&I=LE2947&P=1
Stock battery. Yes, I'm balancing the plane as it will fly.
I probably should add that in all other respects I like the plane. It seems well designed and constructed. As I said, there seems to be plenty of power turning the prop. On the bench the battery ran for over 10 to 15 minutes at half throttle while continuously working the control surfaces, although that was without a prop. so there was no load on the motor. It was as easy to put together as anything else I've built. Big enough inside for my mits to work on it.