First Sortie

Well, I resisted the urge to fly the Zero yesterday, as when I arrived at the oval at lunch time the wind had picked up. I chucked the Electrafun up, but it now has some kind of receiver fault. After two landings under trying circumstances the Electrafun is now grounded until some radio issues are sorted out with it.

However, this morning I gave the Zero its first sortie. At Weston oval it was quite still. I did my checks - this was the first time I had used my new JR x2610 transmitter and receiver. I had dual rates and exponential dialed in for the zero and had her in low rate position for take off.

I pluged in the 7.4v 1250 mAh LiPo pack, looked around again, took a deep breath and pushed on the throttle. She was airborne in about 2.5 metres - I guess pushing 10A into a brushed 350 class engine is quite a bit of juice. She immediatelly began climbing, way too much - climb - stall - climb stall - climb stall, I was struggling to keep her in the air, at one point narrowly missing the light posts for the skate park (no one was at the skate park - I should mention that). Pulled the throttle down a bit and trimmed in some down elevator, and suddenly she was behaving quite nicely. A little bit of airleron trim, running at about half throttle and she was going up and down the field quite gently.

She seemed very responsive to me, even on low rate, and I didn't dare change her up to high rate. I tried to little tricks - a loop, no problems although the elevator not being exactly square to the wing means she doesn't track exactly cleanly through that manuver, and a victory roll, which almost saw me in the ground because she took longer to roll than expected, and lost a lot more altitude. When I say close to the ground, think maybe 5 metres by the time I pulled up - closer than I would like.

Had her running up and down the field quite casually - by the end I felt pretty confident with her at only 10 metres or so.

Worrying a little about battery life I sent her to the far end of the field for an approach. The first approach was way to low, I gave some power and circled back around. Second time, got the wings level, power off, dove for airspeed, flared - flared her about 1-1.5 metres from the ground, and then gently pushed her down closer closer til she kissed the ground, still moving reasonably quickly. She rolled to a stop - a near perfect landing. I was just short of shaking on the adrenaline scale. She took some effort to keep in the air but she landed beautifully. Correctly trimmed she tracks straight and true at half throttle, and climbs slightly at full throttle.

This is going to be a very rewarding plane if I can keep her safe I think.

I'll post some pictures shortly hopefully.

The RV4 is still coming - waiting on some hardware to finish her up.