More trim flights.

I remembered that increasing the overhang of the handle slows the control response. I also remembered that I never checked the engine thrust settings after I put it together. It needed the engine pointed down a bit and to the right a bit. I moved the elevator pushrod to the outer most hole. All that helped but the plane was too quick on the controls. I had an old handle that was adjustable for overhang and had less line spacing to work with. That really helped soften the controls. Overhang is measured from the grip of the handle, where your fingers touch the handle, to the attachment point of the lines. My favorite set up has three quarters of an inch of overhang and the one for this plane is about one inch more.

Off and running.

The weather turned dry and a bit warmer so I took the advantage and sprayed the clear on the new plane. As usual there were dirt and runs to contend with after the paint cured. I assembled the plane with the tongue muffler and found it to be tail heavy. I added a Higley heavy hub to the nose and that was good enough for a test flight. The first flight was good but the lines were not even, I needed to shorten the down line a bunch. The plane flew wings level and was reasonably stable in level flight. It had a very hard turn so I reduced the line spacing at the handle. At home I removed the tongue muffler and heavy hub and installed the stock muffler and plastic spinner for a nose weight gain of one ounce. That should ease the turns some and I shortened the down line some more.

Rainy Days and Mondays.

I was given an old design plane that had the wing and tail built. That came in handy as the weather has been very wet and then it got cold. Then cold and wet. The little plane has been ready for clear coat for a few weeks now and it's still quite cold. I got the 2 part clear in the but the can was very warm and waitring a day for it to cool proved wrong. The can is still sitting on the fridge ready for use. It doesn't matter one way or the other as it's beeen too wet and cold to fly anyway. We did manage to get the septic system re built after waiting over a week for a day without rain. We celebrated that victory at Big Mike's. Everything wa right with the world until the call that said there's no hot water. The hot water tank had sprung a leak. We managed to get a new one installed the next day. And it's still too cold to paint.