Did the wing drawing and frameup this morning, just about everything that could go wrong during building did, just a string of stupidity...Fortunately nothing that ruined the model, just my attitude.....
I played with the wing sweep and tail surfaces till I got something as large and swept as possible while still looking like a mig 19. I mid mounted the horiz stab for simplicity which meant I had to put the motor tube up above the carbon pivot rod. In fact this was helpful to offset the vertical stab drag by having the thrust line above the wing, at least that was my thought.
I inserted the motor mount backwards, realizing it just before the CA set, pulled it out and tried to clean up and redo it. Made the canopy from laminated foam and decided it was taking too long to shape by hand so used the belt sander and it grabbed it and flung it on the floor and ruined it so I had to do another one. I thought my wing fillets were set but they weren't so got some glue on my pinkie which promptly stuck to my new shirt...you get the idea....
Got it framed up at 5.5oz dry without electronics, and did some glide tests inside, my boost CG turned out to be 3/4" ahead of where I had initially thought, so It took 1 oz of noseweight instead of 1/2 oz, so my final rtf weight was 10 3/4 oz. Final wing area was 120 sq inches.
Got it all ready to maiden and one of my new servos started to twitch uncontrollably, so I had to pull it and exchange it at the hobby shop.
Got out and it was pretty windy, 10-12 mph but the model handled it very well. I set up the model on the rail and found I had just barely enough clearance to the servo and stabilizer control arm, but there was enough so I was ok.
Did the countdown and the model pitched forward a tad off the rail into the headwind, but a quick pullup to near vertical and it only needed a tad of roll trim, pushed forward as it burned out and it settled into a near perfect hover in the headwind. It was a bit sluggish in roll on downwind but made a nice slow landing. I gave it a bit of up trim for boost, reduced the glide trim a few % and put in two clicks of left aileron. Next flight was near perfect even in the high wind, but as I flared a gust of wind just held it about a foot of the ground and then it died and plopped like a pancake, but no damage. In high wind it's bettery to just fly it down to the ground instead of trying to flare. Last flight was really good, boost and glide were perfect, did nice gentle s turns into the wind and let the wind take the model back to the downwind end of the runway and set up for landing and did a nice gentle flare. We'll see how she does in dead air, but the windy flights were pretty good considering the small wing.
I took her home and started some panel lines. I decided to do sort of a mashup between russian and czech markings using what colors of trim vinyl and monokote I had. I got too tired to finish the left side panel lines tonight, I have to get up early and do a rocket glider demo at a school after the eclipse tomorrow and I need to get an early start.
It looks pretty good in the air with the highly swept narrow chord wings and tail.
Here it is so far.
