OK, now for a bed time story.....

This might be more properly put in the design section, but since it involves re-building, I'll put it here. So, a couple of years ago I built a plane. It was a sort of updated and expanded USA-1. Sort of. It kept Billy Werwage's basic airfoil though it was increased in thickness slightly and a bit expanded in overall size. The plane was about 770 square inches with a substantially increased tail moment and horizontal tail plane area. But you could still see the USA-1 in it. Fine. The plane came out a bit porky, but not too bad (I don't see 61 ounces on 770 square inches as being particularly overweight). Problem was, it was really tail heavy. Most of 4 ounces had to go into the nose to balance it. the original engine, an OS40VF, just didn't have the horsepower to pull the thing around and it really flew pretty miserably. Stall in corners and sort of soft.

Great, so after only 3 or 4 flights, it went in the rack and was forgotten about mostly. A bit later I took it down with the intention of losing some weight in the tail. So I cut the bottom block off (I mean, did it really need to be reinforced with 5oz CF cloth?) and tapered the bottom of the fuse sides taking most of an inch off at the tail and built a new and much, much lighter and sleeker bottom block. I did a quick and dirty finish of the bottom block and just painted it white, thinking that if the changes paned out, I could go back at some point and repaint the new bottom block to match the rest of the trim. I also pulled all the lead out of the nose and refitted it for a RO-Jett .65 figuring more power couldn't hurt (though the RO-Jett does weigh less so the tail heavy part would probably be exacerbated if I didn't get enough off - but hey, power is power). Unfortunately, I just never really got around to trying it out.

Well, after a fairly disastrous weekend in which I splatted my really good flying profile and managed to put a gaping hole in the wing of my main PA plane, I decided to pull the beast down and see what I had (this is some 2 and a half years after doing the mods - OK, so I'm slow sometimes). So, I cleaned her up and put in the RO-Jett and figured I was still a bit tail heavy but decided to try it like it was and go from there. Wonderful. I had forgotten to build a tail wheel, so I hacked something out quickly and off I went.

I have to say the bad stuff first. It was still kind of squirrelly and the fact that the push rod adjustment was pretty far off made that first flight pretty exciting. And having symptoms of what was either a bad tank or a ton of crude in it didn't help much either. Spitting and sputtering and threatening to quit was fun. But I did manage to do a couple of loops and was pretty impressed that even as tail heavy and squirrelly as it was, it flew a pretty good track through the loops. So great, land it and flush the tank, change fuel filters, shorten the pushrod a ton, bolt on a 3/4 oz spinner weight and try again.

The second flight was better. It still was a bit goosey in level flight but better. Tough to keep on a track, but more from being a bit tail heavy that from any sort of hunting. the engine was still running poorly but better (confirmed by a load of crude in the filter at the end of the flight), but overall much better. Loop tracks were steady and while the inside and outside controls were still off (much tighter insides than outsides - OK, shorten the pushrod a some more), it was much closer (as an aside - Man, how did I get the pushrod so far off to begin with?). I was impressed that now there was no sign of stall or floundering in corners. In fact, the sucker turns a blinding corner in both directions. Rather brave of me doing both inside and outside squares considering how the engine was running, but hey, I got away with it. I even did a passable triangle. So, take it home and get to work.

So, it now sports a new fuel tank, About an ounce of lead in the nose and I'll add that spinner weight back if needed. I got out an incidence meter and got the control system adjusted appropriately (I hope), taped the flap hinge line and built a better tail wheel (the one I quickly hacked out was a bit springy), did some more thorough bench trim and we'll give it another try tomorrow evening. The point is, I had basically given up on this plane. Figured it for a hanger queen (she is rather pretty). But it turns out that she may be a decent performer after all. Hopefully, if it works out tomorrow night, I'll fly it in the contest this weekend. I'll still need to more permanently fix a couple of things and repaint that bottom block, but hey, having a decent fly plane vs. a wall hanger: priceless.

Fun stuff, these toy planes.

Edit: I suppose I should post a picture of it. this is before the modification. The bottom block is thinner now and white.

Now thats encouraging after the weekends debacle!
see you saturday if not sooner

Splatter one ship, pull down the other, thats the right stuff Randy!!

Flew it again tonight with some more trimming. Not too bad. I mean, it's a bit heavy and it shows if you try to yank it around in corners. No real stall, but some bumps for sure. Needs longer lines and some messing with the balance on the flaps, but not too bad. It won't be ready for the contest this weekend unfortunately. I don't think I can get all done that it needs by then, but it's worth messing with some more.

I suppose it will be the classic plane for both classic and PA this weekend, but that's OK.

My grandfather's Black Tiger got a heart transplant over the last week.  After the Big Job crash, he needed an OTS plane for Brodak.  The controls in this plane were absolutely horrible, so he cut it open, gutted the whole inside of the plane, put brand new controls in it and voila, it flies great now.