I went out to the field today with a rebuild of my Ruperts Dad. I had a radio failure about six months back and it ended up landing on the wrong side of the shore on the pond behind our field. Not to much damage, but the lower leading edge sheeting was completely blown out on the water landing. I got everything back together and fixed some things I had done badly on the build. I spent a few hours yesterday setting up all the servos and linkage and I was ready to go today.

I got out to the field and there were only two other guys there. I got things ready and had to make some adjustments on the throttle servo. Ready to go and I get out to the flight line. One of the other guys was just ready to land and I told him to go ahead, I'd wait. Darn, if he didn't snag his landing gear on the fence across our runway and really screw up his 1/4 scale. I shut down and went out to help pick up the pieces. I felt bad for him. After clearing up the runway, I decided to go on up. Started up and out to the flight line. The wind was kind of quartering the runway, so I was going to have to ease up on the right rudder for take off. Just as I'm about to lift off, the right wing dips, I pull it level and I'm airborne. It a touchy plane on the elevator and I went through some bug gulps trying to get it level. I couldn't hold it level, and I was having trouble with the elevator getting it to gain some altitude. It sure looked like a pick up the pieces flight. I finally got it heading up and picked up some altitude. I relaxed the sticks and it did a right roll. Fought it back to level again and kind of took a quick look at the sticks and I about had the ailerons almost pegged to the left holding it straight. By now, I getting up kind of high. I cut throttle and got it on and approach. I don't think I've taken more than two or three breaths this whole flight. I made a fairly good approach and just as it about to touch down, a wind gust his from the left and it weather vaned into the wind, heading right back to the pond. I just pushed it over and popped it on the ground. The only damage was a broken prop.

Back on the bench and I started checking things out. DUMB DUMB DUMB, I had swapped right and left aileron when I plugged the plane together. I had about 10 up and 10 down giving an aggressive right roll when the stick was neutral. I completely missed that on the preflight. It also pointed out that my linkages were not setup correctly, there shouldn't be much more than a couple clicks different if you swap the servos. Oh yes, I have a flaperons setup, Right aileron on CH1 and left on CH7.

So, preflight checklist now included making sure both ailerons are at the center when the sticks are in the center. Even though the plugs are color coded so I don't switch them. I must have switched them at the receiver when I put the harness in.

Time to drag out the trainer again. The last month has been nothing but white knuckle flights.

Don