Ok, so I want to go over a few things from the maiden.
First I want to talk analytics. I've attached a PDF of a chart I've made from the telemetry data. First off, my top speed was 79 MPH. Not bad at all. I was thinking closer to 100 but then I rememberd my previous math was based on a different motor with a higher KV. So, still... she goes at a good clip.
The flight was fairly short at about 2 minutes. Looking all of this data we get a LOT of information. With no flaps, I was taking off at around 30 MPH as indicated by the relaxing of the elevator and continued airspeed. You can see a strong correlation where there is a drop in airspeed after that as I back off the throttle to quickly get a feel for how she slows down and stalls.
What the overall picture of the elevator input tells me is that I do have a nose-heavy aircraft where I am having to feed in quite a bit of elevator. It's fairly jumpy in the graph and I mention in the video how I need to back off my expo. I believe the authority is there... just need to back off the expo so that my response is a bit more toward the center of the stick.
The flaps deployed tell me that I am having to mix in some elevator but barely any. There is a correlation between the flaps deployed, loss in throttle, and maintaining airspeed. I believe I was in a slight dive at this point, which would correlate well with a bit of elevator input.
Upon landing, you can clearly see how I am maintaining very little variation in elevator input as the airspeed drops with the flaps deployed. the abrupt drop in airspeed starts at around 30 MPH, which is a bit difficult to see in the image but when I zoom in on my graph, the slope clearly changes, along with the elevator going to full up.
While I was there the battery packs came down fine and a quick voltage check showed them still at 80% capacity. So My flight timer will be set at 5 minutes and I should have at least another 2 if there is need.
As mentioned in the video, the aileron linkages need to be adjusted slightly. I believe they are rubbing on the wing skin still so I'll have to go at that with a #11 blade. No biggie.
There was a touch of damage from the travel. Below is the worst of it and a little CA quickly patched it up, no sweat.
So, what happened on the landing? Well, I did not grind flat spots on my gear struts. Remember back that I am using the sprung (coiled) wire gear from the retract to the oleo. Flat spots were not ground onto the wire for the oleos and they turned at the higher speed. After getting that done on-site, I realized that the wire was not ground properly on the INSIDE where the wire is secured to the gear that causes the strut to twist as it retracts. So, I need to entirely pull out BOTH retracts and fix this issue. Unfortunately that means a bit of surgery and may leave some ugliness.
No damage to the airplane and now I get to finish out all the other fun details I have planned.