g'day chaps. a few more musings on the jag. i've just returned from adelaide jet action and the jag's first flight with the jetcat 80. it went superbly power wise,a much more appropriate engine for this particular model, however, during the conversion it lost a little weight in the nose~this isn't heading to the catostrophic conclusion that the dreaded words TAIL HEAVY conjur up thanks entirely to the profound skill and cool head of paul bennet!~best test pilot in this solar system! but it did dip a wing on roll out after landing and broke off the outer panel. i consider it a very lucky escape and thank the gods that i have the good sense to delegate test flying to someone with the skill, detatchment and analytical capabilities to make a test flight a wealth of information, not just blast around and say thats nice, or not!

anyway to summarise and i think kevin will be interested in this;

on this flight the C G was set at about 17% mac ~at the last minute i actually tied a 6" shifting spanner in the nose!!!!! this is what probably saved the model!!!! it was very touchie and rocking the wings through straight and level flight. as the fuel burned off it just shifted forward enough to land ok~albiet quite hot. the first test flight had the C G falling at approx 10% dry with all fuel forward and it landed very nicely~ i still can't explain the brain explosion that had me tampering with something that works!! the wing sweep is approx 45* and this it seems makes the wing behave very much like a delta so i've made a new set of extra strong wings for the intact fuse and guts that i so fortunately still posess

kevin the thrust line is just about zero along the bottom of the steel pipe (in elevation) with the top tapering down. with the p80 i tied the model by the main landing gear to a fishermans scale and read out 8kg~ virtually no thrust loss in this bifurcated pipe (it was made by intairco australia) the same scale with the pst read 4.5kg~ so a very informative and downright lucky flight that one! thanks splinters!!!

lets all hope that these middle east problems are short lived and merciful and we can continue to admire these wonderful jet
aircraft as thoroughbreds rather than delivery systems