Sure is a good plane! I teach a quite a few people to fly Rc, and these things are about the most agile trainers I've flown. I Got distracted the other day while letting a kid fly one on the buddy box. He had it inverted, headed straight down Wot about 30' high when I realized he was in trouble. Any other plane would have bit the dust but I was able to snap it around and pull it out about 5 feet shy of planting it!

That's good that you use your planes to help others learn to fly

I roughly checked the CG last night with a little help from my wife. We put our fingertips under the wing on either end about 2-3 inches back from the LE and it balanced pretty good. This was with about a half tank of fuel in it though so I'm going to empty it tonight and check it at 3 1/2" back per the manual. Hopefully I won't have to add any weight but we'll see.

Thanks for all the help! Really appreciate it.

be sure and do you CG balance close to the fuselage and not at the wing tips

Will do. It was difficult last night because I had to hold my 2 month old while picking up the plane.

Just curious, what is the reasoning behind measuring near the fuselage vs the wing tips?

On the stock original Avistar it is not critical but on an Avistar that has anhedral rather than dihedral it would make a tremendous difference.

Another example would be an (as original) low wing plane like a Kaos. You have to balance them up side down so more mass is below your balancing device pivot point. If you do it at the wing tips, there is less mass below your pivot point.

THE END RESULT by not balancing close to the fuselage and not having more mass below the pivot point would be over sensitivity of the balancing process and the multiplication of error. You would be trying to add nose weight but then you need tail weight. You can never find the correct spot. The plane will always seem out of balance.

It is best to get yourself accustomed to balancing up close to the fuselage for these reasons.

If you want a real aerobatic Avistar you need to try one with the dihedral reversed with the wings drooping. Looks weird but they are better balanced for the full realm of arobatics.

Sorry for the mistake, wrong thread.

After the repair's I would re- balance the plane again before flying it. JMO.

I made an inexpensive little jig for checking my Cg. Its just a scrap piece of 2x6 with two oversized kinder-garten type pencils dropped into two holes drilled near the sides. Just enough room for the fusalage of a .40 size plane to fit between with an inch or so to spare. Round off the edges of the erasers a little and they work pretty good for resting the wings on without damaging the covering.

Well I emptied the fuel tank last night and marked the wings 3 1/4" behind the LE and it balanced just a little nose heavy. With a full tank it will be great. I'm guessing it was very nose-heavy before and I never noticed a problem. Going to try to get out to the field this weekend to tune the engine and get it back up in the air. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Thanks for all the help!

Mine flew best when the stab was absolutely level checking the CG at 3.25. Landings are easier as well.

Sounds as though it is ready to go

[font="Times New Roman"]Should fly just fine like that, especially if you are used to landing warbirds,but like Tom Nied said, it will land slower and be a little more responsive if you can move the Cg a little farther back. Keep us posted!

I'm just finishing my assembly of my second Avistar and have just completed the balancing. My battery ended up 6.25 behind the rear wing dowel former. Just behind former F5. By getting the battery back there, I only had to add .77 ounce at the tail to bring it to balance. I'm using a GMS 47. If I ever would do this again, I'd be tempted to mount the rudder and elevator servos on the outside of the rear fuselage. Or maybe even better, shorten the nose portion. But it comes down to, "hey TOM!, It's just an Avistar!". Have fun with yours, They're meant to be fun.

On the two I've got with .40 La's on them, I ended up shoving some foam into the fusalage, aft of the servo tray to make a nest for the battery and shoved the battery back into the hole. Using a square futaba 600mah battery. Had to trim a little off the header that the rudder and elevator push rods run thru so the battery could slip in and out, but this got my Cg back where I wanted it without adding anymore weight. Its working pretty good so far. The one I've got with a Magnum .46 still required some weight on the tail.

Yeah if I had a square pack rather than a flat pack I think I could have gotten the battery further back in the fuselage, but I can't complain with only the addition of .77 ounces to the tail to bring it into balance. I did convert the landing gear to a conventional tail dragger and lost the weight of the nose wheel, which I think helped. I know one thing, if I didn't push the battery that far back, I would have had to add 3 ounces of weight to the tail to bring it into balance. So I feel I did good. With a little surgery it would not be too bad moving the firewall (former F1) back, and it would be easier to bring the Avistar into balance. But whatever it takes, it's worth it.

Been thinking about making one of mine a tail dragger. What did you do for steering on the tail wheel? Seperate pushrod, or did you tie it in to the rudder?

Tie it into rudder makes life much more simple

Before gluing the Rudder on, I glued a torque rod I made from 1/6 music wire to the Rudder. Much like what you have at the ailerons except the arms are in line with each other. So that transfers the rotational movement of the Rudder down through a small semi-circular hole at the elevator's leading edge in the center. That hole allows the torque rod to pass through. It's long enough to come just to the bottom of the fuselage. I used a Sullivan Tail Wheel Bracket http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin...&P=SM&I=LXFV47 mounted to a block I glued behind a hatch cover I made in the rear fuselage bottom. I knew I'd probably would have to add a little tail weight, so this hatch has dual purpose. Tied the torque rod and the Tail Wheel Spring wire they give you together with just a piece of fuel tubing. So there's no direct mounting of the tail wheel to the rudder, so in a jarring landing, the rudder hinges don't get a jolt. I think you could almost get by with a "free wheeling" tail wheel, but that's not the biggest rudder to have much authority. I figured some steering would be fine and am not worried about precise steering. Haven't flown it yet, but it looks sound.

Well I just got back from the field and what a beautiful day! Took about 2 hours of messing around with different people at the field to get the engine tuned but finally dialed it in. I thought since it sat for a year unused some gunk had built up in there but luckily not. On the first flight it wanted to climb and climb even when all the down trim was exhausted so we landed it, tightened the clevis and went back up. Flew great! Brought it around for a landing after flying the pattern for a while and was planning on having a slow, test landing about 20 yards up but when I got over the end of the runway the engine died! I dove a little quickly and made a pretty good landing, if I do say so myself. I wanted to get another flight in but batteries were getting low, it was crowded out there and getting later in the day. I'm going to try and go again tomorrow when there aren't so many people there.

Cool! The nice thing about an Avistar and what I remember from my first is that you can get a rhythm going. Takeoff, fly around, land, fill the tank and repeat. Do that about 8 times and you've had a great day at the flying field. Socializing is great but the Avistar can be great fun and a real workhorse when it comes to gaining flight time. I'm looking forward to sport flying mine. Unfortunately the weather up here in Chicagoland is cold and a recent covering of snow, so its going to be awhile before I'll get out. Happily I can report my second Avistar is finished and ready to go.

I might just try a free wheeling tail wheel first. The Avistar that has the .46 on it also has a custom rudder. I made it about 100% larger than the original so it would Knife edge better. It does this excellent now so it might steer on the ground ok with a free wheel.

I lived in the south at one time and I remember how crowded the flying field was on Sundays on a pretty winter day.

The last time I flew (late November '08) it was 47 degrees. Think that's about my lowest limit for comfort while flying. As you can imagine, I've been flying RealFlight lately.

I cheated the other day. It was about 33 degrees out, dead calm, and no one else around, so I got back in the truck and put the Tx antenna out the window! Took off, flew, landed, refueled and repeat, all warm and cozy! No danger of interference where I fly, but I wouldn't reccomend this anyone!(one of those "do as I say, not as I do" things!)