My maiden went WELL today!!! It was probably my most relaxful maiden ever, thankfully. I will get to the point people on RCU want to hear about....aileron trim. Mine required just one click of right aileron trim, just ONE. Recall though that I warped my wings as close to resembling each other with my heat gun at the very beginning of assembly, which was Jan 2013 for me. Apparently that was enough, and it stayed put all this time while sitting in the house during assembly. We'll see how the sun affects the wings over time. Elevator trim was....none needed! Nor rudder. My engine started easy peasy and ran like a clock for both flights. I took the plane down the runway to test ground handling first, and it is very positive. Steered straight as can be, and turned around in half the width of our grass runway, which is 50' across. With that done, I brought her to the east end of the runway and took off. Gradually applying throttle, she ran straight down the runway with nary a rudder input, and she rose off ground before I hit half throttle, and in just at most 25'! Surprised me to be up so fast. She flies docile as can be. I think this plane could easily be used for a trainer! I did a number of inside loops (hey my wings did NOT fold), cuban 8's, rolls, inverted flight, and knife edge. All are predictable and graceful. Note that all rolls are basically slow rolls with this large wingspan. I will see if I can get more throw. It would be cool if the flaps could act both as inner ailerons while also being flaps...that would help the roll rate. Then again, this is a high wing plane with a huge span and not a 3D plane. Landings...piece of cake. I did not use flaps on both landings and wow the plane still comes in slow and drops in light as a feather. Winds were less than 3mph for my flights. I did deploy half and full flaps during the flights. There is lots of pitch up so I will mix in some down elevator with the flaps for further tests. I really like this plane now. My buddies at the field all oohed and aahed over it too. Might have to wipe off their drool from the Bravata! Few pics from today follow.
Some pics show how little trim my ailerons needed. These pics are with 2 clicks right trim. I later reduced it to one by recentering the left flap down a few more percentage points in my xmitter.
Note to self: Next day, I programmed in -10% elevator with the flaps, so that means the elev will go down 10% of whatever the flap deflection is. I had to give quite a bit of down elevator yesterday when I deployed the flaps. I think the -10% amounts to about 3/16" deflection, not much, and it should be a good starting point for the next flights. Also, I changed the aileron differential from 80% (down travel compared to up travel) to 90% in an attempt to get more roll authority. Also moved the right flap up a couple more percent so it matches the right aileron even better, and I centered the left aileron down a percent or two to match the wingtip trailing edge and the left flap trailing edge. Just trying to reach a good compromise on trailing edge settings to make it all look and FLY good, without right aileron trim that is unsightly and common among other Bravata's discussed on RCU.
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