I rushed to get my 3rd UCD together for the weekend,didnt bother with the cowl, I did add tri stock and hardwood blocks to the gear blocks and it still tore out!! I did a harrier landing to test everything and was kind of shocked to see it fail. After looking at the block attached to the gear,there was almost no glue at all,seems GP is still missing the point. Now I can see all those posts that complained about a good landing and the gear came out like butter was used for glue. The beefing up I did required at least some glue to hold the main block in. After fixing that I found out how hard it is to get 3 of the same planes with same setup to 3-D exacltly alike. I need upthrust,more right thrust,have to dial in the throws for the "sweet spot" for harriers. The maiden was just about perfect,only needed 2 clicks of elevator, the weight was 8.2 lbs,close to the last one. I used offset to elevator mix as a temporary thrust line adjustment,it works but I think it slows down the torque rolling,will have to use washers to see. My engine was "sagging" and losing power in hovers,temp was about 85 and the new props I cut seem to be pulling too much,will cut another 1/4 " off and narrow the tips to a point. Just about at sunset,the engine came back to life,would pull out better. One important note: I found out something about the Futaba 8 & 9 series radios. If you use the ATV for throttle High & low end point , you can end up with a weird expo-like mix. It only happens if you use a lot of ATV to make the carb fully open & close. I checked throttle expo,thinking it must be set to on, but it was off & set to 0%. My transition was way out of wack,with the first half of stick motion,almost no movement to the carb,then the carb would fully open with the upper half stick movement. I started thinking my servo went bad,even tried my old 8UAF and it did the same. After making the pushrod longer, I found out its something the radio does. I ve had the 8 UAF and 9C for years and never noticed that little quirk? You can get this " default expo" to varying degrees,depending on how much ATV used. It might not be so obvious if a little is "induced"(for lack of a better term)Now I need to go back to my other planes and check them,there might be some expo in them too.
I didnt touch the tail in a hover, but I think I'll be able to do it again with a little more tweaking.