joco1,

Here's where things stand with my Alpha:

I finished installing the NLG, and engine - that's all ready to fly. The attached picture shows the difference between the Dubro mount blocks (white) and the factory Hangar 9 mount block (black). I was able to reuse the factory NLG but had to grind a small flat below the factory ground flat so I could cant the tiller arm enough to prevent it from hitting the firewall and stopping the plane from turning left on the ground.

To fix the tail I marked the areas of the empenage where I need to remove the covering to epoxy it in place. I didn't mark the covering where the triangular blocks could go - want to see how rigid it will be before I take that step.

After removing the empenage and covering where I intend to glue it all together, I epoxied the tail to the stab. I used the factory wing nuts (coated with loctite) to draw the tail down on the stab, and used a machinist square and clamps to square the two together. When this cures, I epoxied the the assembly to the fuselage using the factory supplied cap screws with loctite and also used clamps to make sure it had good contact all the way around. The wing was bolted down to make sure the tail was parallel to the wing - it was close enough for government work. I let this sit overnight and removed the clamps this morning. There was a night and day difference in the rigidity of the tail - no more side to side slop.

Since the tail was secured quite well I decided to test fly it before adding the triangular stock. It seemed to fly good, but I still an not sure if either there is still something fluttering at high speed or I'm getting a resonance out of the engine. When I hear that buzzing that sounds like flutter and close the throttle the noise immediately goes away. Another possibility may be the cheeks are setting up some sort of resonance and the fuselage, with all the lightening holes cut into it, is amplifying the sound - it stops immediately when the throttle is closed, and there is some sort of resonance when at full throttle and low airspeeds. There is no issue with the control authority under any flight conditions. I was able to coax a true double snap roll out of it with 3/4 throttle, but as soon as I let off it went into a huge spiral.

Power wise the Evolution .61 is more than enough power. I was shooting touch-n-go's with a 14 mph 90 deg. cross wind onto an asphalt runway and found that 1/2 throttle was ample for take-off's. Full throttle is not necessary as the speed is too high for a trainer like this, and it gives me 300' of vertical right from take-off. I was flying at training speed at 1/3 throttle, so I'm going to try a 13 X 5 prop and see if this works better.[img][/img] With the 12 X 6 is will prop hang for a bit, but there is not enough control authority to hover.

So at this point I'm going to just fly the plane and see how it does.

Hogflyer