I have always wanted to scratch build an airplane so I went to the hobby shop and priced out the parts it was going to cost almost as much as buying a new airplane by and apply and taking the parts out so I decided to wait. One day after work I stop by another hobby shop to see a friend and there was an airplane laying over to the side that was in really bad shape made out of foam. I asked about the airplane and the owner of the hobby shop said it was a foamy that had been beat to death and he wanted to know if I was interested in it. I said maybe and he sold it to me for $50 it had the same motor and speed control that I had previously looked at for building one from scratch the motor alone was the E-flite 480 size brushless with a 40 amp speed control so that is $120 worth of parts alone after doing some research I found that the four servos that are installed on the plane were $23 a piece the plane was rough the fuselage was bowed because It had been stored on its nose. There were battle scars and cracks where it had been reglued. Barbecue shewers shoved in the tail in order to keep it straight but I decided what the heck the only plane I have is a Super Cub and I want to learn to fly 3d this would be a good trainer so I would try to repair the airplane in order to fly it and in the worst case it wouldn't work and I would have all the parts to build my scratch build. It did not have a receiver and I had one left over from when I purchased my DX 6i so I installed receiver bound it to the radio and then realized that a some of the connections were backwards because you couldn't tell which wires ran where because they were inside the foam so I just plug them in and did a flight control test to tell me which ones were where. After unplugging and plugging into the right slots and spending a few minutes trimmimg and adjusting settings in the radio it was time to head to the field for the first test flight. Now remember if it doesn't fly I haven't lost anything because I bought it just for the parts. My son held it and hand launched it because the landing gear had been destroyed in previous crashs. When it took to the air to my surprise it nose dive... quickly pulling back on the stick it leveled out and began to fly fairly stable just pulling hard one side and wanting to nose dive. After holding back on the stick and getting at least two mistakes high (a phrase that I should have remembered and you'll see why later). I begin moving the trim buttons until it flew steady and level I had set up lower rates at 65% and my high rates at 100% because I didn't know how the plane would react. After flying around for a couple minutes on low rates I moved all the switches to the number one position (high rates).Wow! This thing will turn on a dime! I flew around doing tricks rolls stalls knife edges. Everything that I could think of, this plane would do. It had plenty of power for vertical flight, rolls, spins, loops, anything I could imagine. I was very excited! I flew around for awhile forgetting to set my timer on my battery so I decided to bring it in and try landing without landing gear. As I got used to the plane my nerves settled down and I started flying at lower altitudes forgetting the two mistakes high rule. I was about 20 feet off the ground and tried to switch from high rates to lower rates while flying the airplane.... duh! The following pictures are a result of what happens when you do this. I learned a lot from the maiden flight, I fell in love with this aircraft and I will try to repair it and show the videos of repair and then I want to scratch build one that is similar in flight characteristics but a little more stable for beginners to learn how to fly 3D.
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