Flew the Aresti today for the first time (see Avitar)

Wow!

So much better than the trainer. Easy to land, too, once you figure out how to slow it down - it's really aerodynamically clean. I was kinda nervous about going too slow on the approach, but this Aresti is tame at low speed. It was a good day at the field - lots of crosswind landing practice with the Avistar and when the wind went away, I was ready to step up.

I think the Aresti is easier to land than a trainer - given the option to go around if I'm coming in too hot. But if it's a dead-stick, I may be in trouble.

I got in some knife-edge, rolls, loops, inverted passes, plus a fellow member showed me how to do snap rolls. That was fun. This thing snaps really fast - almost too much fun. Stalls are at a slow speed and predictable - falling gently to the left perhaps because the muffler is on that side?

I used the stock pushrods and everything worked OK except the instructions led me to place the elevator and rudder clevises too close together. If I put the rudder clevis on the outer-most hole in the horn it scrubs the elevator clevis.

I think the elevator throw recommendations are a little light. What do the rest of you think? On low rates, full-up loops are pretty big. On High rates at high speed, there is no tendancy to snap on full-up, and the loops are still not tight. I suppose this plane may not be designed for tight loops.

Using OS 46FX with 11x6. It's not quite broken-in, so I'm still running it a bit rich. Vertical isn't unlimited, but it will go straight up until it's kinda hard to see what it's doing before falling out. I like this engine. It hasn't given any problems being inverted except once when I switched fuel it didn't want to throttle-up until I leaned it some more. It's very quiet and smooth-running. After only 6 tanks of fuel and setting the low-speed needle, I get a nice consistent slow idle. I've heard folks say that the LA engines are easier to operate than the FX. This may be true, but after tuning the FX, it idles, transitions, and runs much better than my 40 LA.

I opened up the covering under the turtle-deck to situate the battery back in there to get a good CG. A square pack wrapped in foam fits snugly under the turtledeck with some home insulation "hard foam" to wedge it into place.

I've read here about nose-over problems with this plane. I didn't see any such tendancies.