An Ultimate 4th of July!!

I maidened the AW Ultimate today, the 4th of July, 2011! It was not a real favorable start when I discovered upon unloading at the field that I apparently forgot my wing bolts to hold on the bottom wing! (Later found them.) After drumming some replacements up from Bob Ross, I then proceeded to assemble the plane. I initially attached one cabane to the top and bottom wings with the four bolts backwards. Discovered the issue on the second cabane, so went back and corrected all of them. This was the first time to assemble the plane at the field, and it took almost an hour, bah humbug! It WILL get faster, lol.

Then Tad brought up mixing the oil with the gas, and asked if I remembered that one bottle of oil goes with TWO gallons of gas. OOOOOOPS, I mixed it with just ONE gallon of gas. Another bah humbug, so Tad let me fill up for my flights from his can. I will have to remix mine with another gallon of gas to get the proper ratio.

Other than those little snafus, the maiden day was flawless. The DLE-55 started up perfectly both time, and ran flawlessly. It idled low, transitioned smoothly without burbles, and hit high ends powerfully. The flight was easy, and the landing was perfect on the first try. This plane lands slowly and with the nose high as long as some throttle is maintained. Seemed very slow to me and there was no indication of a desire to stall. I tested stall speed up high at first, and the stall is just a gentle mushing. The plane must be tail heavy because it really wanted to tuck to the LG in both level flight and KE whenever rudder was applied, and because NO down elevator was required to hold inverted level flight. This would also explain the lack of nosing over on the grass field. I am going to see if I can move the batteries forward at all. The plane also wants to roll out of KE, so I will need to check on that situation after I get the CG where I like it. I think I will eventually need to program some aileron to counteract the situation.

2nd flight was as fun and enjoyable as the first, with another takeoff and landing that were very sweet. It was a fantastic maiden and 2nd flight, made more memorable with both Tad and Jeremy there to witness it. I do think I like this 50cc plane more than my Extra 330L.

Update: Today I programmed in 10% up elevator whenever rudder is input, and 5% more aileron in the direction of roll, when rudder is input. Hopefully these mixes go a long way towards correcting the tuck in to the LG and the roll out whenever rudder is input for KE. I will probably leave the mix off for the first flight with the CG moved forward a smidge. If the CG solution does not do enough, I will turn on the mix to see what happens.