Morning, Bill.

You know, we have a few guys in our club that are flying rather large trainer type planes with rather small engines. One guy flys a Sig Seniorita with an OS 32 engine and no ailerons. It takes time to get going, but it flys. Oddly enough, the last time I flew it with him, I had trouble flying the thing because of the rudder-only operation.. it was just not as responsive as I expected and it took me a few orbits to get it right... I wanted to fly the thing like I do my Skylark 70.. different animal, for sure.

Anyway, one big problem we encounter at our field is that it's grass and it takes a lot to get the thing rolling. I started using those foam large size wheels.. they are light weight and seem to help by getting the prop higher (away from the grass in other words) and easier to roll on the grass surface. Not that this is the issue here, but just something that I did (many others do it too..) to help overcome a take-off problem on grass surfaces.

On my NexStar, the roll was long, but I understand what you are saying with a long roll to get airborne.. like the Sig Seniorita was. I don't know if raising the front (thus the leading edge of the wing) will help, but it can't hurt to try. I'm sure all the aerodynamics majors will chime in here shortly..

Then there is always the larger engine. You might try a prop with a shorter pitch to get more power, but that reduces the speed which may be an issue. I guess it depends on how much you want to spend to get this airplane airborne. If it were me, I'd just give in and put a good .46 on board and be done with it.

CGr.