I just Thought I would post this for anyone interested. Someone earlier had mentioned putting in a belly flap/air brake for slower landings.... Well I did it, I cut a piece of the belly pan to come down like a flap between the landing gear.. I have it rigged up on the variable position wheel so you can basically slowly roll it down on the transmitter. I asked my friend "well, should I try it? " He said "go up a bit higher first" I climbed up to about 250 feet, started rolling it in and the belly pan flap switch can also be called the SNAP ROLL TO DEATHSPIN SWITCH !!!!! the plane had been rock solid, but it got ugly fast... I let it fall maybe 50 feet (pulling the flap back up) the spin continued, started feeding left aileron and rudder it stopped spinning at about 150 feet, I let it keep dropping gaining speed then pulled out at about 30-40 feet with no problems.. I was a little nervous because we had seen a 1/2 scale GEEBEE R2 go in at Owatonna about 2 weeks earlier under almost identical conditions (other than the belly flap).

My flap is bowed like the plane belly, not flat, so that may be the entire problem, that extra lift is not even and stable coming off the shape of the pan, we considered all that ahead of time ..but what the heck..sometimes its fun to experiment!

My wheel pants were to long and the thing absolutely wouldn't roll in the grass, so I knew I had to land on the petrolmat, unfortunately I had no idea that the plane was so tricky in a slight crosswind, after 2 go arounds I accidently got slow and landed on the grass resulting in the typical nose over, no real damage couple ripped out holes on one wheel pant mainly.

I have a converted 25cc weedeater in the plane with a 16-8 prop, all the radio gear back to balance..honestly it came in very solid and predictable,I couldn't believe how slow it would come in with that big chunk of motor out there. I just kept drifting off the runway. I had this feeling on my landings if I used anymore rudder than I was it might snap ,who knows?

I think it will be managable with my now trimmed wheel pants, and watching the wind direction a little closer. I did also notice I might have a tad bit to much down thrust as when I throttled up to go around the plane would lose a bout 12-18 inches of altitude before climbing out..

I had some problems with another plane this fall and ended up getting sidetracked and haven't flown the GEE BEE again this year, I need to get it out again before winter.

I forgot to add the first thing I did to my plane was make access panels above the landing gear so I could beef up the wood structure, its not very well done in my opinion, a few people mentioned it before , so I did it before i needed too..