Hi Jim..

Gunny uses a bit (hell, a lot) more of the grass runway than he needs to rotate out.. his beast gets up to flying speed pretty quick. He's done an outstanding job of paying attention to previous builders' experiences regarding incidence; so his trim requirements are darn near neutral. The weight of the bird is no handicap with the engines he's using.. the thing climbs out with authority when he pulls the stick back.

Pretty early on in the project I managed to talk him into cutting a new wing for it.. the one provided with the kit was pretty ugly with regards to the quality of the foam cutting. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to talk him into cutting one with a bit thicker airfoil, knowing he'd wind up a bit heavier than the 'prototype'' kit. He's a bit stubbon at times. As it stands now, around the kit's stock airfoil; the bird flies nice and slow and very stable with his flaps down at about 12 degrees or so. He's set 'em up as 'progressive'.. the inboard set droops a bit lower than the outboard at full deflection, and we expect it'll exibit no adverse tip stall in hard flat turns at low speed. I'd have used a bit thicker airfoil, but honestly can't fault the flying performance of the bird when 'dirtied' up a bit. With the wing clean, it flies pretty fast... and has a 'oh my' sink rate when he backs the throttles down below 70%. With some flap cranked in, he can fly quite 'scale like' at about 50% throttle.

Pilot-wise.. Gunny's a superb pattern flyer... and he's got a lotta multi-engine time on various models. The guy uses rudder without thinking about it.. a trick I'm still trying to get my forebrain to assimilate. I have no worries about him getting on the rudder the instant the bird exibits adverse yaw (engine out); meanwhile; he's got a healthy amount of aileron differential, and we cut those new cores with about a 1/4" of washout at the tips. The bird does tight, beautiful scale-like 'flat' turns with just a bit of cross-control.. just like I'd expect it to.

As it sits now.. and after looking at if (and harrasing him, arguing with him, teasing him and tormenting him) for damn near 3 years on just about a daily basis as he's worked this project, I gotta say he's done a spectacular job.. and it looks just as good from 3 inches as it does from 30 feet... inside and out. Truly; this is a remarkable scale modeling masterpiece.. all the more so, having endured the abuse heaped on him by myself and his other buddies throughout the project cycle.

Heluva Job, Guns!

Steve Anthony
NoBS Batteries
www.hangtimes.com