I was at a contest in Chicago the other week, where I had the opportunity to talk with Rusty Dose. I was flying my new Integral for the first time, and Rusty reccomended that I try the APC 21X14 prop. Well I did, and I was very pleased with it, but one of the first things I noticed was that I was only drawing about 3000 mah out of my battery pack, and this was compared to when I flew the previous day with an APC 22X12, and pulled about 4000 mah out of the same pack.

At the time I noted the difference, but I thought that it was due to the difference in wind from the first day to the second day. This was because on the first day I was flying in quite a stiff wind with liberal application of full throttle in an attempt to get the plane to penetrate, whereas on the second day the wind was much less.

Anyhow, since then I've had a chance to fly this same prop in all different types of wind conditions, and I can report that when I'm flying my Integral with an APC 21X14 prop, I'm pulling from 2600 to 3300 mah out of my battery pack, as compared to 3600 to 4100 mah out when I was flying the APC 22X12. I'm flying the current AMA masters pattern with 23 manouveurs, which takes me a little under eight minutes to complete, and there appears to be no loss of power when flying the 21X14 prop as compared to the 22X12 prop.

Right now I'm flying with a 25C 4350 mah pack, and I'm only draining about 70% of the charge out of it. Which is great, because at this rate I don't notice any change in performance from the beginning of the flight to the end. Also, this pack is about five ounces less than a 25C 5000 mah pack.

This is my first electric pattern plane, and since I'm just getting back into pattern after a fifteen year layoff, this is my first real 2m pattern plane, so I'm fully prepared to have missed something obvious here. Have I been fooled by randomness? Has anyone else experienced anything similar?

By the way, now that I've had the chance to get some flights on my Integral, (about thirty ..) it's really starting to fly well. I'm using 2% of mix from throttle to down elevator, and 7% of mix from rudder to ailerons, and 6% of mix from rudder to elevator. I'm not carrying any trim in the ailerons, and very little up trim in the elevator. Also, my CG is about 10 mm back from the front edge of the wing tube, and right now I can't think of a single thing I'd want to improve. (except maybe that flatulent sound it makes when I do a snap roll...)