The first Valiant in our area made it's debut yesterday. It was a perfect San Diego day for the maiden at the SEFSD all electric field on Mission Bay, sunny skies, and light winds straight down runway. Bruce Brown's father Chuck did the build, and as expected did a very neat job of it. After a thorough pre-flight, Bruce put in in the air. The plane was set up with the CG in the center of the wing tube, and required a couple of clicks of up trim. Bruce did a few passes, and felt so comfortable with it, immediately flew the Masters sequence. It was clear that the plane was just a touch nose heavy at this CG, so on subsequent flights he moved the Cg back to where it was about 1/18" behind the center of the CG. I did not get a chance to fly it, but Bruce was very happy with it. Tracking was very good, and rolling performance was incredible. Bruce is very happy at this point, and his flights looked almost competition ready right away.</p>

Bruce didn't spend much time trimming using Bryan's "no mix" method (something I am very interested in), as he plans to put the plane on a diet before doing the serious trimming. The plane was built mostly using parts Bruce had on the shelf. Using these parts it came out quite a bit overweight. He mentioned it was around 12.5 pounds in this configuration. Bruce is planning on making some big changes in the setup. He currently is using the big Neu 1515 2Y inrunner motor with the large gear box, heavy home made motor mount, two large receiver packs, two switches, a batshare, and a few other pieces that are adding weight. He is planning on a new lighter weight setup using the Neu F3A motor, no switches, small Lipo RX pack, a lighter motor mount, and removing some of the trays that are unneeded in an electric setup. My guess is he will drop a pound pretty easily. Still, in order to keep this model under 5Kg looks like it would take some serious weight engineering during the build. I am interested to see how other people'sbuilds go in regard to weight.

Below are pictures of Bruce and his new Valiant,the electronic setup, andof course the mandatory beauty shot.....

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