This afternoon Brett (EcoDragon) and I went to the park across from my house to fly the Shockflyer. This was Eco's first time flying this sort of model, and my third. On the maiden flight I found that the empennage (tail group) flexed a lot, as did the fuselage, which isn't a surprise as there is minimal reinforcing of the foam simply two trangular sticks of balsa which you can see along the fuse in the pic below. The CG seemed a little too far aft for the first few flights as well. We added some strips of packing tape to the horizontal stabilizer (can be seen below) and a few spots on the fuse. . .this added enough rigidity. When doing rolls you can still see the tail lag behind just a little, and when transitioning through the stall buffet you can see the tail shake! In any case today if flew great, and Eco commented that it flew more like a normal airplane than he expected. Eco was torque rolling it at 5 feet off the deck so I guess he was comfortable with it pretty quick. I grabbed some pics, they aren't great but we thought you guys might like to see it.
Here she is after the flights.
Slow, high alpha Pass
Torque Rolling
Ben "Hwkmn"
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