Had a decent day to fly, so out to the field it went. I had previously removed the pins on the high and low speed needle valves to make it easier to properly set up the engine. After fueling it started right up. I ran one tank through to break in the engine, then set the high and low end for flight on the second run (hand started on the first flip too). As I taxied the Alpha out and started down the runway and started to turn around the wind caught it and over on its back it went - guess it doesn't like 15 mph tail winds very well. I fired it up again and this time the winds where down a bit - around 12 mph but had shifted to almost a 90 deg crosswind. We've had some rain so the field had not been cut, and this plane has only 3" wheels so I went way down the field. I decided to fly it with the 3-blade prop that comes with the plane just to see how it does before changing to a 2-blade. It took about 100' to get airborne thanks to the long grass (I wasn't the only one with long take-of runs today) and started into a nice gentle climb. The flight went well with some aerobatics thrown in for fun after I had it flying straight and level with most of it at 1/2 throttle. I found I do need to add a bit of tail weight and increase the elevator throw to max as I ran out of elevator on landing, and in-flight trim tests showed it was still nose heavy.

Overall I was quite happy with the way the repair and first flight went, and I'm also impressed with the ease of operation and the way the Evo .61 is running. I'll add some weight to the tail and re-adjust the controls for the minor trim, do another test flight and then its off to the training arena for this bird.

Hogflyer