Giles maiden flight
Well I finally got around to the maiden flight of the Giles! I think I might hold the record for the slowest ARF build ever!
As you can see from the photo, it wasn't a complete success but then again it wasn't a complete failure as the plane is still largely in one piece.
I started the day running some fuel through the new OS 70 four-stroke. It's had a couple of tanks through it but I wanted to check the idle setting. Here was the first problem, engine wouldn't start. Checked the glow, got glow. Checked the fuel flow after having to remove the prop and cowl. Fuel flow ok. Reset the mixture needle to manufacture reccomended. This fixed it. I should have tried the simple fix first!
Radio range check - all good.
Control surfaces - moving the right way and as per reccomnded (will have to double check this).
C of G - check.
Time to give it a go!
Fired her up and out to the field. I had the idle a bit high evident by the way it wouldn't stop rolling on the grass runway. Performed some slow speed passes down the runway with no major dramas. It tracked well with very little rudder input.
Set up into wind at the end of the runway and went to about half throttle. Now I must say I was worried about the throws and whether thay were adequate which were confirmed when I was at speed, and almost at full elevator. At the last second I considered aborting but I decided at was past the point of no return.
The Giles didn't quite leap into the air, rather more like my dog Missy who lumbers out of bed each morning looking at me saying 'really, do I have to get up, I was so comfortable where I was' the Giles took the same attitude. There was plenty of power but I was using almost full up elevator and not getting a great response. I quickly flipped to dual rate on the elevator (or so I thought) but still didn't get a good response. Time to bring it back in.
I did one lurching circuit where I was far from happy with the elevator response and the model seemed well out on the aileron trim. Lining up to land I remembered the fast idle setting. It came in hot and lurching to one side. The Giles ended up in the rough at the far end of the field in largely one piece. It wasn't till I collected it I could see what went wrong.
A club member mentioned he saw the covering just as I was taking off but thought it might be a streamer. So it appears the covering failed pretty early in the piece. That accounted for the lurching to one side but what about the elevator? I still need to check my actual throws are what the manufacturer reccomends but if they are, I would be using the high rate at a minimum next time.
As for the covering, the model was sold heavily discounted as damaged stock due to holes in the covering. I re-covered the wings with clear cover and inspected the fuse wihich looked ok. Obviously it wasn't. So I'd like to make it clear I don't think this incident is representative of the quality of this model, rather my poor inspection skills.
So what to do.
1. Fix the covering - I was thinking to stick with the funky colour scheme, a transparent blue on the lower half of the fuse to expose the inner workings.
2. Check the elevator throw. As I said, if my throws are as per spec (which I thought they were), then I'll use high rate as minimum, and double that for high rate.