@Marty72 this post is dedicated to you.
As some of you might know I recently built the Master Series Spitfire. I found that the build itself is a little more complicated than Master Series Corsair which I have built, but the outcome is amazing, especially if you add some decals.
Unfortunately on the maiden the plane didn't fly well, on my first launch I had an issue with an aileron control horn that broke and I had to emergency land it with a lot of luck no damage was caused. On my second launch the plane was out of balance and seemed to be very nose heavy something that made it hard to trim the plane, regardless was no fun because I always had to hold the up elevator to hold the plane from nose diving into the ground. Somehow I landed again I managed to land the plane with no damage considering the circumstances. After fixing the balance issue I launched the plane for the 3rd time, this time around the plane flew better. A much less up elevator was needed to keep the nose from diving so a little trim should fix the issue, I climbed 3 mistakes high and started trimming out the plane. After a bit of trim the plane was a lot more stable and easy to control, but still stayed a handful for the less experienced pilot. The reason why I am saying that is because the wing airfoil that has no under camber wing tips like the Spitfire David designed does; makes the plane drop a wing tip on you on a sharp turn at lower airspeeds. This is something to watch for and be prepared for because an inexperienced pilot can easily freak out and lose control causing the plane to spin to the ground and crash. A good tip to delay a tip stall from happening and helping you get out of it is to turn your rudder towards the opposite wing from that which is experiencing the stall, then apply some opposite aileron input to level out the plane.
Here is a highlight video for the maiden flight.
Anyhow from the first maiden day the plane came back with a few bumps and bruises but all were fairly easy to repair. The next time I took it out the plane flew ehhh and upon a hard cartwheel crash the outcomes were a little less on the bright side as opposed to my previous outing with it.
Ok so this is bad but you all know me, I don't just RIP a plane because it needs surgery, so I put on my surgery gloves and got to work. The crash broke my wing in half and I guess it's mainly because the plywood spar from the original design was replaced with a 5mm balsa spar because I have a hard time finding and cutting out plywood. The first thing I did was glue the two wing halves back together and for extra strength I also added a small piece of carbon fiber rod that I had laying around. Once the wing was back in one piece I moved on to the fuselage which needed a whole lot more work to fix. The fuselage was ripped into 3 pieces so I was really pondering how I should put it back together and what would be the best way to re-enforce it. After running through all the ideas that I had I decided to re-enforce the sides of the fuselage with a thin 2mm balsa sheet, which was a good idea. It helped stop the hot glue from dripping all over the fuselage since it was glued on the inside and also helped put more pressure on the break point.
Next up was the entire motor pod area which also broke off and as easy as it seemed to fix, actually required more awareness which I didn't put into it. I had to make sure to get the motor aligned to the rest of the fuselage but since I wasn't thoughtful about it I ended up gluing it on an offside. Alright well with that out of the way the last thing to do was glue the wings back together with the fuselage. This was a little harder than I thought it would be because I found myself having to trim the sides of the fuselage for the wings to sit straight with the horizontal stabilizer. Once I got the wings to sit leveled with horizontal stabilizer gluing them into place was easy and went quite well.
The plane was repaired and ready for a re-maiden, and I was eager to give it another go. Without wasting time the first day I could I went to the field and took the Master Series Spitfire with me for another maiden. This maiden didn't go well either and after a short sketchy circuit around the field ended in a crash in which I broke the firewall. So now I have a new issue, one which I don't know how to fix or actually to be more exact, I don't know what would be the best way to fix.
@Splinter189 any recommendations?
To sum up considering Davd's design of the Spitfire is definitely one of my favorite FT models to fly, I think this one deserves a second chance, so I will rebuild this if I can't repair it once again, because I don't feel like I had the chance to really experience a decent flight with it yet.