I am working on compiling pictures and thoughts from my build, but wanted to say I took the opportunity to fly mine on Monday.

I set my timer for 6 minutes, then flew around trimming the plane until it hit the low voltage cutoff when I was up high. I thought 'No problem', turned around, made an approach, went a bit too long but didn't want to risk losing power on an aborted landing so I forced it down and rolled into the tall weeds. No problems. Not bad, 8min 30 sec flight. That is a bit shorter than I thought (using 3700 mAh cells), but not bad.

Second flight I hit the LVC at about 4 min 30 sec when I was at about 70' going into a
hammerhead, and at the downwind edge of the field (which is a steep 40' high hill). I leveled out, milked it upwind as far as I could muster, flew a left-hand teardrop to final, missed the mud puddle and the road, set up for final. Uh oh, the wind is picking up (maybe ~7-8 knot tailwind, gusting to 12 kt), set it down on the dirt, and ran the right wheel right into a grass clump. The plane flipped over onto the top of it rudder very fast. I thought it would be badly damaged.

Luckily the only damage was to my ego. I took a very close look at the plane. Besides the dirt on the cowl, wheel pants, wing, and rudder, it was surprisingly clean. Even more impressive was the fact that the paint on the cowl and wheel pants didn't chip! No damage was sustained by the rudder or fin. Also I fully expected to at least crack the landing gear. Nope, not even a chip or stress fracture anywhere. The landing gear attachment block is still solid without any cracking of glue joints.

Needless to say this is a very stout airframe! I have destroyed planes on softer landings that this one, especially the harrier landings which can be very hard on the fuse.

Rule #1 of electric flight: If I can't remember the last time I charged my batteries, there is a good chance they are not charged!

As it turns out my batteries were last charged with a "Storage Charge" setting on my FMA Cellpro, which takes it to about 50% charge state. That was a few weeks ago. When I fly again (using fully-charged batteries of course) I will set my timer at 11 minutes, and work up from there. I expect 12 minutes will give me enough power to go around a few times before it dies on me (again using the 3700 mAh batteries).

So how did it fly? Very nicely. The power using the stock power system gives it a slingshot effect launching out of a hover, and it climbs at a very constant rate to much higher than I can see without any detectable deceleration. Rolling all the way.

IMAC-type patterns are solid. Loops track very well, and snaps are pretty quick but stop immediately upon control release and are easy to keep on a line. Spins break cleanly too.

Knife edge flight was nice, but I think I will go with a stronger servo as it won't quite push up into a vertical with the stock servo.

Slow flight is solid at a fast walking speed. Harriers were not yet very good as I don't have enough elevator throw to push it past flying and into the deep-stall condition. The wing would simply keep trying to fly. I currently have about 25* on high rates and with more throw it will push into that regime.

The manual-recommended 12* of elevator throw is very good for IMAC-type and general flying. There seemed to be a bit of yaw coupling but I was also fighting an out-of-position elevator half (bad tx programming on my part) so I think that contributed to the problem. For mixes I will likely start at 7% top aileron to rudder, and 5% up elevator to rudder, and work from there.

Still working on the best CG, and that will have an effect on the yaw-pitch coupling. The CG on my last flight was right about the middle of the wing tube and it seemed to float a bit better although that also caused it to "hunt" in yaw tracking just a bit.

I really need a few more trim flights and some more setup tweaks before I feel comfortable filming a flight. I will do it as soon as I can however.

In the end this is a very nice plane to fly, it looks great, and really flies like a much larger plane. This sounds cliche but I honestly mean it. Although everything happens faster than the larger planes, it reacts in flight very much like my old reliable 33% Extra but with a huge relative increase in power AND a slower stall speed.

Very nice plane, Tom!