I got to maiden it last night. It went as well as could be expected and I figured out a few things to fix.
First off, I absolutely MUST get the programming of the radio right. The current setup is doable but not ideal. In some ways, it's downright dangerous. I'm going to spend as much time as necessary to get my transmitter doing these things before I fly it again:
- Double switch the motor. Both 2 position switches will need to be up in order to activate the motor. It will be a full on or full off motor activation.
- Program the spoilers to the throttle stick for fine control.
- Mix down elevator with motor on to help control the climb.
- Mix up elevator with spoiler deployment to help with landing.
It doesn't seem like a lot but currently, none of those things are happening and any one of them not working could spell disaster at the slightest mistake.
I also learned that Konrad was absolutely right about down thrust. His method of fixing it is not my favorite. I plan to add spacers to the motor mount to tilt the motor downward if there is enough room inside the nose to keep the motor case from binding against the top. If this doesn't give me enough angle, then I'll consider more drastic measures.
I need to increase the travel groove for the stabilator so that it has more upward deflection. It currently reaches the limit of motion before I run out of servo actuation or stick motion. I can increase it by 1/8" and solve that problem.
As for the maiden, it went well. I opted to let another glider expert at the club be on the sticks as he had decades of experience (including international wins) and I did the tossing. We were dealing with about 4-5 mph steady winds gusting to about 9 mph at times. It literally gusted right as I was letting go and tilted the left wing up so I released it a little sideways. I also threw it a little down (too much) because I was worried about stalling it on the throw. Sherman compensated beautifully and it glided easily to rest. There is no expo and the throws are at full so I imagine it was a bit twitchy to deal with. I won't know what to adjust until I get on the sticks myself. The balance looked good but again, I'll need to fly it myself to really dial it in.
We reset and decided to do a powered launch since everything seemed to be working well. As you can hear in the video, I barely tossed it and the BoT had plenty of power and just jumped out of my hand. This is where we learned that it wanted to do the figure 9 VERY badly. Sherman quickly ran out of elevator trim and still had the stick giving nose down to control the climb. As stated earlier, I can fix this by giving it some down thrust and mixing in elevator for the climb. He pulled it up to a decent altitude for a glide out. On the downwind turn, two things happened. One, the wind gusted again and lifted the left wing. Two, Sherman has basically only flown 6 servo sail planes for the last 15 years and tried to coordinate his turn from muscle memory but there is no rudder input on the left stick. Thankfully, he was able to save it without any trouble. But it was a scary moment I have to say. Even he yelped a little and I felt bad from him! The landing was a little hairy since it was running downwind at a lower altitude and he wanted to turn it back to us so it didn't land too far away. It dragged the right tip a little but no damage was done at all. It really was pretty gentle and I expect I'll do much worse over the coming months. There is a slightly audible "click" as it touches down. At first, I thought it was the sound of balsa snapping somewhere but realized it was just the left propeller blade bouncing off the ground and then clacking against the fuselage.
After that flight, I decided that there wasn't much else to learn until I fixed the above issues. I was flyable and I could have taken it up but the risk wasn't worth the reward. I exercised patience, packed it all away, and pulled out the Radian to get some easy flights in.
All in all, it was a success in my book. I plan to work on the items above and then wait for another nice weather day.