Hoorah!!! Another Flanker gets some wind under its wings!
Out to the field this morning, hot, and a sign of winds picking up.... bloody 90 degree crosswind too [>:]. Not impressed, but my buddy Al, who is a smokin pilot said he'd take it up and ring it out. So, I let him. I did a once over of all the linkages, etc, and with the Dean's antenna, performed a good range check and I stopped walking after 100'. It performed flawlessly. I am sold on those antennas. Back to the maiden. I fueled her up with some 15% Cool Power Heli formula that I had, primed the engine, and hit her with the glow power. She sputtered a bit then died. Opened up the carb a wee bit more and spun her up. She caught and held her own, then I set up the high needle. Low was fine as transition was bang on and instantaneous. Time to fly. Tracking on takeoff could have been better, but I saw that Al had the rudder on high rates. It took zero, and I mean zero, trim. CG was dead on, but a bit hard to tell with the winds we had, so it needs flights in calmer days to say so for sure. Fast, but the 12x6 may not be the best prop as it had to be flown in the upper 25% to really move, so I am going to try a 12x8 and see how that does. Set up for approach and greased her in. Gear held up, except I forgot to flat file the same set screw on both mains and they twisted outward. Fixed it at the field with a file. I thought I covered everything, but it goes to show you that you can always forget something!
So, she looks bloody good in the air. Tracks great and is not bad for a propjet. I am glad I went with this scheme, but it's a scheme I wouldn't recommend to anyone due the work involved. The guys were impressed with it though, so I am pretty pleased with her overall. I did have some video, but the camera guy screwed up his camera and deleted the file later in the day
... We will try again later in the week to get a good flight video done. Here are a few pics, of a few pose shots, the Flanker just breaking ground on takeoff, one in the air and a landing pic.
Now go fly something fast!!!