Bad Boy – The business end
Check out the shiny OS46AX, muffler, aluminium spinner and landing gear - comes up quite nicely.
Some follow up photos post maiden flight. A few nuts and bolts to tighten, servo leads to label.
I've swapped the 11x4 prop and plastic spinner for a 12.25 x 3.75 prop and aluminium spinner.
There's two un-nessary holes in the fuse after I had to move the tank forward to accommodate the wing. I like to think of them as speed holes 🙂
Thoughts on the first flight
I setup the control throws and CG as reccomended in the manual. There are two settings per channel, 1) Regular and 2) Aerobatic. For the maiden flight I found the Regular settings quite comfortable, plenty of control without being too twitchy. I didn't get around to switching on the "Aerobatic" rates but considering these rates are more than twice the "Regular" rates I think a bit more practise before I go there.
As you can see from the video, takeoff roll was only about 10 metres after slowly advancing the throttle to a bit over half. A couple of clicks of down elevator was needed. No adjustment to aileron or rudder required. The flight was fairly short but long enough too get the feel for it. Landing was a piece of cake. Easier than any other tail-dragger I've flown and just floated in for an almost perfect (?) 3 point landing. I reckon if there was no wind you could go handsfree and let it float it itself.
Overall I was very happy with the first flight. No nasty suprises, takeoff and landing was a breeze. The next step is to push it around a bit harder and see what it'll do.
