My Gt. Lakes Special has a Magnum 52 FS that supplies plenty of power. It weighs 6# 4 oz, which makes the wing loading higer than I would like. This means keeping the speed up; it doesn't like to fly particularly slow. However, the aircraft flies very nicely, has no bad habits. Landings and take offs are well behaved.

I like what Hans Meij did for balancing. My aircraft needs 3 oz of ballast at the front of the cowl with the battery next to the tank.

The incidences came out initially, with respect to the stab, -1 deg on the lower and -2 deg on the upper wing. So I shimmed the aft part of the lower wing mount to increase incidence to 0 degrees. I added a flat washer under the wing at the front mount, which gave -0.5 degree. This configuration is common on biplanes.

Engine thrust is set at 0 deg vertical and 3 degrees right.

Because the aircraft is so short coupled, I keep the control throws small. I can do all of the precision pattern maneuvers and the types of maneuvers the aircraft was designed to perform.

My gripe is the number of design flaws. Ii had to replace the aileron servo with a small servo in each wing to eliminate flutter. The landing gear came loose after several flights due to the soft aluminum clamps; I replaced those with steel clips from the hardware store. The tail controls have excessive hysteresis because the control rods are not adequately supported. I am working on a solution for that.

It is finally becoming an airplane that I want to keep for a while.