when I set up my planes should I set my elevators with little up elevator as my setting or should I leave them in a neutral state for takeoff

I will genrally set it with a very slight up angle for a maiden flight. Really I set *** neutral but use the radio trim up slightly. I do this because I would rather fight a climbing aircraft on a maiden than one that wants to dive.

I always start level and then trim it in flight. If you start with up and the plane needs down, it just take longer to get right. Besides, if a plane needs quit a bit of up to fly straight and level I am going to change the CG or the thrust to fix it anyway.

david

Set it neutral.

Neutral and neutrally balanced. You won't be sorry with this setup.
Curtis

Ditto.

Usually I set the elevator trim to neutral and the cg verySLIGHTLY in the positive angle. Like Mr67Stand says, it's much better to have a climbing plane than one that wants to dive. I say set the elevator neutral and cg slightly up beacuse from my experience ( 22 years ) 9 out of 10 times the plane will want to dive if the cg is spot on. Once you gain experience this topic won't be all too important.

Good Luck...

I keep everything neutral. Smooth and steady take-off, gradual climb to lots of altitude, then start trimming. I'm holding up elevator during the whole climb out, so holding a little extra elevator, if need-be, isn't a big deal.

Never try trimming a plane on maiden until you're at an altitude high enough that you can be relaxed and have fun with your new plane.

I keep everything neutral. Smooth and steady take-off, gradual climb to lots of altitude, then start trimming. I'm holding up elevator during the whole climb out, so holding a little extra elevator, if need-be, isn't a big deal.

Never try trimming a plane on maiden until you're at an altitude high enough that you can be relaxed and have fun with your new plane.

Maiden flights are always the most challenging. Not because they are hard, but because of the anticipation of a hopeful first flight, and because of the butterflys in your stomach. So, no matter what you do, neutral, a little up, doesn't matter. The butterflys will still be there, at least until you get it up and trimmed for straight and level flight.

With that said, I set my trim for that maiden flight to as close to neutral as I possibly can.

This is how I do it:

Before I hook up the linkage, neutralize the transmitter sticks, and set the servos to neutral. Make sure that your servos are where you want them to be with the stick and trim centered, in other words. This is very important because you do not want to induce artificial trim by forgetting to neutralize both the transmitter and the servo(s) in use. I also leave the transmitter on so that the servos are "locked" in that position.

For the ailerons, I use two pieces of thin ply, about 5 inches long by three inches wide, and clamp them to the wing so that they sandwich the control surface. This places the control surface right in the center and pretty much neutral with the wing surface. If you have a flat bottom wing, it will tend to keep the bottom of the aileron, for instance, straight with the bottom of the wing.

For the elevator, I also use the two pieces of ply as I stated above. And, it doesn't matter if you have a wing-foil type of horizontal stab, or a flat horizontal stab, this works just fine. After this is done, and you are sure the control surface is straight with the wing or stab, connect up the linkage, adjusting the linkage so that it neither pulls nor pushes on the ailerons or elevator, in other words, they remains neutral.

Remove the clamps and the ply, and test the ailerons and elevator.

For your first flight, gradually but quickly add power during the take off roll to full throttle and carefully pull in elevator till the plane climbs and hold this until you are high enough to comfortably remove some throttle and elevator and then turn to pass by in front of you then trim out the elevator. You may be doing several things at the same time, adjusting roll rate to zero, and elevator trim. Do this with no change in throttle, keeping it between half and 3/4 setting so nothing changes and you can set for straight and level flight.

Once done, just fly it to get used to your new plane.

This is probably more than you asked for, but others may be interested in the information.

CGr.

From the replies you already have I believe you found what you asked. Would just like to mention something I feel is very important. Once you have decent altitude straight and level go to high throttle and give sudden up elevator. This will result in a nice tight loop, OR a snap to left. If it snaps you have too much up elevator for that plane. Some planes are very touchy that way, most are not but this is good to find out. Not likely on trainer types.