Important center of gravity info!
"Important center of gravity info!
I had my first chance today to fly my Hornet in a large open field where I could really open up the throttle. While overall the model flew fine, one thing became very obvious to me--the CG marked on the plans is too far aft! Up until today, all of my flying has been at slower speeds in small schoolfields with calm conditions, and I liked the very light controls and high manueverability provided by this CG location. But once I got the speed up in a big field and also had to deal with a light gusting wind (5-10 mph), I noticed the model got very pitch sensitive at high speed and also had a small tendency to diverge in pitch when a wind gust hit it. Both of these should be cured by moving the CG forward.
I still need to do more flight testing to better understand the high speed characteristics of this model, but for now I'll re-emphasize to everyone about to fly this bird to move the CG 0.5" ahead of the location shown on the plans!"