Hello all,

Got out on a really lovely Sunday AM to fly at a nearby school. I made a bunch of changes since the last weekend as a result of reading a number of posts in this forum and thinking some about the way the plane last flew.

The first flights were marred by various things related to me being back to near square one as a ukie pilot.  The Panther would act like a shot duck if it turned tightly and tended to roll in at the top of a loop, enough to make me step back to keep the lines tight. It was obviously flying too slowly. The setup was like the plans showed, with about 8 deg of rudder offset. The E-Flite 46 motor was set to 80% output and the Phoenix ESC was in the default mode, as delivered. 60 ft lines borrowed from Howard Rush, as you may recall, and an APC 11-5.5 prop.

I changed the following things:

Timer set up to 90% output
ESC set to run in governor mode -- just got the software and cable!
Master Airscrew 10-7 three-blade prop
Rudder set to zero offset
Moved the elevator pushrod in two holes to make flap-elev throw 1:1
Probably not significant, but added a canopy to complete the airframe.
New lines arrived during the week, .015 x 62ft long, about 67 ft CL to CL.

The results were that the plane is pretty much a joy to fly. Line tension feels good everywhere and by the third flight I was doing horizontal eights and even a raggedy square loop. The velocity stayed up through the square(ish) corners. Interestingly
the control sensitivity didn't seem to change much with the increased elevator throw. I guess that it is going about 5 or so MPH faster, though I didn't get any lap times. It has that nicely damped feeling that a Nobler has, and grooves along pretty well. It's easy to fly level laps at five feet. I know one can't make specific conclusions without a nicely controlled experiment, but most of these changes addressed deficiencies that were pretty obvious.

Used 1500 mAh for two 2-minute flights, compared to about 1300 mAh before. So about 10% faster and more maneuvers for roughly 15% more power consumption. Motor, ESC and battery barely warm to the touch, about 65 deg ambient temp.

I think I will try an APC 11-7 two-blade next as the Master 10-7 3-blade took a large glob of epoxy to balance and still is causing some buzz in the airframe that wasn't there with the 11-5.5 (extremely smooth)

So thanks to all you guys who post about props and other stuff. Someone actually reads that and it has been a big help to me.

John