I maidened my new CAP today and then burned most of a gallon of gas just having fun. It has a stock G62 and hitec digitals. First flight, a couple of 4 point rolls and checked for KE coupling in both directions. Suprise! It pulled to the gear. So I landed and mixed in a few percent of elev with rudder. Next flight started with an 8 point roll 10 feet off the deck.. Nice and crisp. Then I did a really slow horizon to horizon slow roll. As I flew through this move, I noticed something I've found in other caps, too. when inverted, for me the first few degrees of down elevator seem kinda dead. So when I landed I reduced expo for down elevator in normal (precision) mode. Next flight I started in on 3D. This thing harriers like a cross town bus. Rediculously stable. I was doing low harriers and those cool sliding 180 degree harrier turns where you steer with the rudder while keeping the wings level with opposite aileron and add power through the turn. No problem, no wing rock ever. I tried some harriers to TR's and that was easy, too. I felt like with the heavy engine power to weight wasn't as high as I'd like. I mean it pulled out fine, but if you got out of shape too far too low you could find yourself running out of throttle and throw. Mine's still a bit nose heavy so I had to stay ahead of it but it was no big deal. at one point I counted 10 or 11 rotations, got bored and throttled away. But here's the big news.... This plane does the best HAKE I've ever seen! For the first day with a new plane I used this technique: slow pass, pull up to a 45. Feed in top rudder and balance with power. I could easily adjust AOA and speed. Every time it settled into a super slow high alpha knife edge. It looked like about walking speed. When I was done, I'd just throttle up and climb away in KE. I tried a bunch of rollers but they didn't look that great. The problem was the rudder is so much more authoritve than what I've been flying recently. So I kept giving too much correction, too soon. Oddly, Rollers to the right looked better for me today than to the left. Nothing an hour or so of practice wouldn't fix. The trimming I did for the first day was of course rough. So it really wasn't sorted out, like, up lines required a bit of right rudder. But I'll start on that next time out. The plane is very easy to land and made me comfortable right away. I think it does great with the heavy Zenoah. A light weight motor would make this a real balloon.

I'd enjoy reading other flight reports or comments on mine.
Thanks,

Dave