More Akrobat Flight Time

Has quickly changed my first impression (of not liking) during that first blustery outing.  Reducing aileron throw to 75%,  giving them 40% exponential, and 20% differential did the trick... the plane is now smooth.  A 45 degree down glide showed a slight curl up and nose heavy condition so one ounce of weight was removed and tested and now a down slope glide holds straight. 

The plane takes off and flies great at half power and full power doesn't increase its flying speed much though it certainly raises vertical performance so the match up with the  Saito 1.25 seems good.  It will require a lot of throttle flying to increase fuel enonomy by avoiding burning unneccesary amounts when not needed.

A flap down landing was pretty and I'm looking forward to a spoiler landing but I'd left the onboard glo on and so only got two flights and missed a chance to test a spoiler landing on a nice still day... I'd wondered why the motor wouldn't kill as idle was lowered... it got so low that one could count the revolutions by sight. A land switch settup including glow and very low idle is obviously a possibility.  Preliminary altitude test of both flaperons and spoilers didn't show that much if any pitch mix would be needed.  

Something that is apparent is the three degrees of engine right thrust called for seems to be excessive as vertical tracking under full power has to be corrected by left rudder.  This is one  of those times when  premonition  should have been listened to over the designers wishes.   I've concluded that the right thrust called for must have been due to some quirk of the prop drive unit originally used with this design and should not have been set using a direct drive shaft engine.  Because of the alignment of the large spinner, removing the thrust would not be simple.  Modern radios do help here however as some left rudder mix can be programmed at higher throttle settings to counter the excess thrust.

More flight time  for the  The Akrobat II

Has been flown enough now to be fairly well debugged.   Some changes that were needed, 
 A couple of notable flight characteristics.  Having no dihedral, gusty winds require careful attention on landings to keep the wings level and it is now clear why the 3 degrees right engine thrust as this bird wants to drift when going vertical... even with the significant right thrust, right rudder is sometimes needed.