[Dougf]

Hi all,
A few notes from the maiden yesterday, with thanks to Mike, Hector and Robert for their assistance.

The plane is a PNP, and I installed an Admiral rx with gyro stabilization. Went with a 3S 3200 for the first flight, well balanced to the right CG with the battery full forward. The rx has 3 gain pots for stabilization around roll, pitch and yaw axes, and I rolled the gains back about 30% from maximum. This was way too much gain! After takeoff the plane oscillated in roll a lot, making it very hard to control the plane, but managed to get it back on the ground.

The clevis pin on the nose wheel broke off and had to be replaced, luckily Hector had a spare in his tool box. The clevis needs to be metal type, otherwise it will keep breaking.

Turned the gain way down, maybe 20 or 25% above zero, took off again and flight went much better, plane probably doesn't need any gyro at all.

The other thing that happened on both flights was that the throttle cut out at max throttle about 20 seconds after both takeoffs. Power returned by pulling back on the throttle a bit each time. There's lots of comments on RCGroups about this and basically this points to hitting LVC and/or voltage sag due to a weak battery. Apparently a battery that is perfectly good on a prop plane may not be up to powering an EDF. I have some new Admiral 4S 4000MaH 40C LIPO's that hopefully will do the trick.

Other than that, looks like a nice plane to learn how to fly EDF's and get up to speed for the Avanti.