Greeting All,

I have built the Cloud Dancer from plans, powered it with Magnum XL52 which i thought will be sufficient for vertical flight (but it stalls).

I have been flying it for few days now and the first thing i noticed is its tendency to climb once i increase throttle. Once i researched a little more i found that this tendency to climb is designated as Ballooning (I am not sure if it is the correct term, there seems to be a disagreement on it).

So to explain what happens, i trimmed the plane for level flight at half throttle and when increasing the throttle, it tends to climb fast. Now it is not extremely climbing but it still climbs. But when decreasing the speed for landing, it made it harder to land especially with the elevator trimmed for level flight at half throttle. This was at very low wind speeds, nothing significant. This effect made it hard to conduct nice fast low passes over the runway.

I did some research and found that the ballooning effect can be caused by one of three factors or any two or three combinations:
1- The ailerons could be set below the wing when at neutral.
2- The engine could need some down thrust.
3- The wing is fixed at an angle with respect to the stabilizer/elevator (i.e. Angle of Attack).

So after reading this, i found that my ailerons were really below the wing at neutral. I fixed it and it did reduce the ballooning effect, and improved the landing. But it still exist.
As for the engine, i don't remember if i did add a 1 degree of down thrust or not. But since the plans call for it, i would assume that i did. But i can still shim the mount for an additional 1 degree.
Finally, i can't really check if the wing is at an angle of attack with respect to the tail. I know of a tool that was featured in the AMA magazine called !QUOT!Killer Incident!QUOT! or something like that, that can be used to measure this angle. Any other suggestions to measure this angle? easier and faster than building a tool?

What makes it hard in the Cloud Dancer is that the wing is a low wing and bolted to the fuselage on the TE and fixed with two dowels on the LE which makes it hard to shim the LE as a test.

From your experience, should i always expect this ballooning effect? Or should i keep on trying to find the fault in my plane and try to fix it?

Thank You

Fadi

P.S. Check my profile for some pics of the Cloud Dancer.