Well, i took my maiden flight yesterday... man what a crazy one. When i got to the field it was so windy that the plane was nearly ripped out of my hands by the wind while i was carrying it. I just had to fly though so i waited for it to calm down. After about 5 minutes it seemed to calm down quite a bit. The thing is, it seemed calm relative to how windy it had been before, but had it been this windy normally, i still would have thought it too much wind to fly.

In any case, i taxied out and began my takeoff roll. Man that saito .72 is one sweet runner by the way. The wind was coming in at about a 45 degree angle to the runway, shortly after the tail came up, but before i was ready to rotate and begin flying, the plane began rolling to the right while still on the ground. I was only at about half throttle at this point. I'm not sure if it was the right thing to do, but what i did was slam the throttle forward, throw it some left aileron, and up elevator. Suddenly the thing was pointing straight up and climbing like a rocket. I got it leveled out about 100 feet up. From there i thottled back to about 1/2 and continued to climb at a much more gentle rate... for about 2 seconds. Thats when the first big gust hit the plane and immediately threw it to knife edge on it's right side. The rest of the approximately 2 minute flight consisted of me frantically trying to keep the plane more or less right side up while the wind bucked it all over the place. On one pass the plane was travelling on a path parallel to my shoulders but was facing almost directly at me due to the wind. I was just trying to keep from crashing long enough to get another slight break in the wind so that i could try to land.

After about 3-4 terrifyingly out of control laps the wind took a very short break so i brought the plane down very fast and tried to make a practically zero approach landing (i wanted it safely on the ground before the wind picked up again, i didnt care if i hit the runway or not). The thing turned out to be a sweety and floated forever all the way down the length of the runway. I finally put it down on about the last 4 feet of runway and it obviously rolled into the grass. At which point the nylon LG bolts snapped (as i wanted them to) and the plane finally came to an undamaged stop. What a relief!

Needless to say, i decided that it really was too windy to fly for the rest of the day. It's lookin' nicer today though, i think i'll go give it another shot in an hour or 2.

One thing i noticed was that my ailerons seemed somewhat unresponsive. I think i got too much glue in the hinge gap and they weren't deflecting enough or moving very freely. I've cleaned up the gap and incresed the deflection. I may try sealing them with a small strip of covering also.

I sure hope my next flight will be a little less nerve wracking!