I flew my GP stuka for the first time about 5 weeks ago and haven't dared to fly it since. well today was a great day to fly with little or no wind at all so i decided to try again with this plane. first time i found that this SOB wanted to be airborne like a homesick angel. the elevator was really touchy too. today got it off the ground and flew around for a bit and decided to land but first i wanted to check its stall characteristics, i took it up hight the chopped the throttle it just kept floating no tip stall all it wanted to do was drop its nose a little then pull itself back to level flight. so i started final approach for landing all was good but i just had to touch the elevator and it wanted to balloon. i messed around with my futaba 9 cap and figured how to use expo. fueled her up again and what a plane to fly. its just like a big trainer so docile take offs and landings are just so sweet. i don't know why i have been so scared to fly this plane. i would even go as far as recommend it to anyone as a really good second plane as long as its all set up properly. its just a dream to fly. i would go as far as to say it flys just like a 4* 60 but is not good at all the neat tricks as this plane is not designed for it. i know a lot of people might disagree with me saying this makes a good second plane but if thats what people think i would say to them try flying it and you will see what i mean

You are most evil! Tempting us to buy more planes!!!

It seems like that's a disturbing trend with some of the ARF warbirds.... warbirds are supposed to be difficult to fly, hard to land, touchy, twitchy, stalley, all that nasty stuff, not slow ez stalling floaty trainer like aircraft. Next thing you know everybody will be flying one.......

Andy

Hi pauluk2w, I am happy to hear about your flight results! My lovely wife bought me a Stuka to cheer me up after a lousy winter and I am looking forward to flying it! Could you provide me a few more details on your plane. What engine/prop are you using? Do you use the flaps for landing? I tried the Stuka on the flight sim and to me the flaps just seemed to make the plane even more floaty and hard to land. Any info would ne appreciated. Thankx in advance.

Fastsky. I have a thunder tiger 91 4 stroke in mine and it fly's great with it. i cant think what prop i have on it but i will check it out later and let you know. the advice i have with this plane is that the landing gear may need to be bent forward so its level with the LE of the wing or it will just nose over as soon as it starts rolling. the wheel pants are real thin and will need to be reinforced (if your flying off grass i would say take them off). if you don't have the plane set up properly it will be a real handful. i have not used the flaps. this plane will fly real slow without them and i think if they were deployed on landing it would balloon and stall (i will try them today). your going to love this plane. dont be worried about flying it. what transmitter do you have?

I read your post and am confused. You indicate that your plane was very pitch sensitive. This indicates a CG problem and you resolved this problem by dialing in expondential. This leads me to believe that you still have a problem. Correct me if I wrong with mt assumption.

there is nothing wrong with the CG. with the TT91 engine it was too heavy on the nose i moved the battery pack and rx as far back as it would go but still too heavy on the nose lead weights resolved the problem and it is still a little nose heavy as with all my planes better heavy on the front than on the tail as you will know a front heavy plane will fly but a tail heavy plane will only fly once. i have checked the CG at least 6 times on this plane. have you ever flew the GP Stuka? im not the only one that has had this problem with this plane. i needed a lot of right trim to keep the wing level as it looks like the wing has a slight warp in it. no plane of mine flys with a CG problem but i can see why you asked that question

I also have to admit that when it kept nosing over it made me think as a guy at my field lost a plane recently. he tried and tried to taxi but his plane kept nosing over. when he did get it off the ground it went straight up and hung on its prop for a second or two then stalled as it had no forward momentum. he thought and thought what was wrong until i noticed his elevator was not reversed rookie mistake to make even though he has been flying for 10 years but the tiger moth will fly again

pauluk2w, thankx for the update. I bought a Tower 75 to use in the Stuka. I am going to try it in on a Kaos 60 until I am sure that the engine is reliable. I have quite a few Stuka flights on the GP flight sim and the flaps make the plane balloon like crazy. The plane just wants to keep flying and very hard to get it to lose altitude. Maybe I need to cut the throttle back some more?!? I tried setting the elevator to full down with the trim and it just made the plane hard to control at slower speeds. I suspect the wing loading is much lighter for the model than the original full sized plane. [8D]

Fastsky. you might also want to do a search here on RCU there has been some good advice on this plane. just make sure you taxi it around and get a feel for it, chances are this plane will want to keep nosing over if it does bend the gear towards the leading edge and it will stop that happening. as i said i have a thunder tiger 91 4 stroke in mine and i think it's a great match. when you do decide to fly it just be ready as it will be off the ground before you know it so just be ready for it, i was shaking for about 20 mins after my first flight. on landing you need to keep on the throttle and adjust it when needed.

Thankx paul, looking forward to gertting mine together. It s characteristics actually sounds a lot like my Sea Fury. It will nose over easy if you're not careful and it will take off much sooner than you would expect by itself without adding elevator. Also very easy to fly once you are in the air. [8D]

Have you got any pics of your stuka yet? i would love to see it
here is mine

Thats such a nice looking plane. Once i'm on my own and i make the big money, I think i'll get the GP Stuka, with a nice four stroke.

I maidend a guys Stuka here a bit ago, and got to fly it a couple of times after that. His had an OS 1.08 in the nose. (talk about over powered). He wound up with a ton of lead in the tail to balance it out. (the first flight was big time nose heavy).

Anyway, even with all the weight, that thing was, in fact, still a floater, with nice stall handling. The flaps were actually rather mild-mannered when deployed during slow flight, I didn't notice much pitch change. (hitting flaps at high-airspeed, on the other hand, I don't know what would happen, but it doesn't sound like a good idea).

I agree that with a little help, most guys could handle it as a second plane. I still won't recommend it that way, but it's possible. The gull wing makes checking alignment harder than it has to be, and it's a bit "strange", but it sure flys nice.

Oh, I do agree that you don't need much elevator travel.

What that plane really needs is a siren and maybe a bomb drop. But it REALLY needs a siren. . Watch the airspeed on the vertical dives. If you haven't done full-flap vertical dives with it, you're missing half the fun of a Stuka.

If I had tons of money, I'd buy one for myself. But I have too many other projects on my list. (like the Spit, just in case any more Stukas show up).

Why...what happens?

London catches fire [X(].

Just kidding, obviously. Seriously though, the Stuka was a dive bomber, so nothing beats flying it in sorta-scale-like dive bomb runs. And for the Stuka, that was near-vertical dives at their targets, none of this wussy shallow dive in thing.

me and my dad were just talking about how the germans put these wistle things on the plane to give it that scary sound when it dives... I thought the plane did that on its own...

that might be a cool feature to add on

Righty. you are right in what you said the stuka had a siren mounted on it that would put the fear of god in anyone that heard it. you can get the siren for the stuka if you look online im thinking of getting one for mine

that would be awesome

found an air siren. I saw the video of it in action. It doesn't match the stuka's scary scream but it's close enough.

[link=http://www.i4cproducts.com/air_screamer.htm]Air Siren[/link]

Fastsky:
Did your Stuka fly anything like the Stuka in the GP sim? I have completed my GP Stuka. I also have G3 sim and was hoping that it did fly like the sim.

I only tried it on the sim my LHS but from what I remember the landings seemed different and a bit harder on the sim. The plane itself for me is a lot of fun to fly. Based on other comments I maxed out the ailerons (about 1 1/2" each direction). Rolls are still slow but it will turn fast like a standard sport plane. I have a TH 75 engine on it which is plenty. It takes off by itself in about 75 feet and actually is surprizingly fast. For landing it can be slowed down to LT40 trainer type speeds without the flaps! I wanted to get used to the plane first so haven't tried them yet. Hint: the colors are hard to make out at a distance. I added some yellow bands to help with that. Also if you are having trouble seeing the plane and are not sure what its doing, let go of the right sick. It will self correct like a trainer! This helped me save the plane when I got too far a couple of times until I got used to the look of it.

Cool. I had a bad experience with a float plane that weighed 8 1/2 pounds and the co. (Modelfly-all plastic) reccomended the use of a .46 2 stroke which is all that could be fitted in the plane without major modifications of everything and the plane could barely get out of the water. The underpowering was the cause of a couple of crashes. I installed an OS .61 FX in it and did all the modifications and repairs and I will fly it later this week. Since then I have erred on overpowering everything at least a little bit. I installed a Saito 100 and the Stuka balanced 2 oz. nose heavy by moving the battery behind the servo tray. Another bad experience/screw-up has caused me to leave my planes a little nose heavy at the farthest forward reccomended CG point to start with. I balanced a P51 (AK models) at the most forward CG point so that it balanced perfectly, checked and double checked it using my GP CG machine and when I flew it on it's maiden, it was tail heavy. Fortunately, while it flew crappy, I did not lose the plane. I took off 2ozs. of tail weight that I added and it flew great. All I had to do is adjust the trims a little.

The 2 oz. heavy with the Saito sounds about right. My balance was right on with the Tower engine.