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E Flite Valiant 1 3m first flights

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Steve Coltrin

I just got this plane. I did a few flights to trim the control surface. This video has footage from the next 4 flights. The owner's manual says to place the battery at the front of the battery box, but I found that made the plane very nose heavy. I'm using the recommended 3 cell 2200mAh battery. I have the battery almost all the way to the back of the battery box, and it flies perfect there. The wind was blowing pretty hard.

I own 7 tail draggers, and this is the easiest one to take off and land with. Takeoffs are so easy it is almost like it has tricycle gear. It is pretty agile for a high wing plane. It's not a 3D plane, but it does all the sport plane maneauvers that I do when flying. It needs almost no down elevator to fly inverted. (Maybe that is because I have the battery back so the CG ballance isn't so nose heavy.) The flaps are really effective. I probably didn't need them with the wind I had today, but I used half flaps for all four landings. I increased the recommended Flap/Down Elvator mix to 8% for takeoff flaps and 11% for landing flaps. It was ballooning quite a bit with the recommended settings. I don't use flaps for takeoffs, as it lifts so easy without them.

The plane is very light compared to the other planes I have that are this size. Because of that, in heavy winds it has a harder time turning around while taxiing on the runway. With the wind pushing on the vertical fin/rudder, it wants to weather vane into the wind. I find it works best to taxi with full up elevator to push the tail wheel down on the ground which gives it more turning authority. (I do this with all my tail draggers.) In spite of being so light, and only having 3 cell power, it still flew really well in the wind. Most of the time I was flying at 1/2 throttle, even into the wind. The timer for my battery is set at 7.5 minutes, but I'm not horsing it around a lot.

I wish all my planes flew as nice as this one does.

posted by broncsfan07kd