Well, I got the prop balanced yesterday and found where I should place the battery for the recommended CG. This morning, I went to the back of the subdvision I live in and maidened the plane before the winds picked up. This is one great flying foamy!

I kept it pretty mild since the battery was just held on with velcro. Still did some down low hovers and even touch the tail on a few.

I did notice that if it gets too slow in harrier that you have to hold left aileron instead of right aileron. This is probably since my battery and ESC is on the right side of the plane. Even though it's still pretty close to center, it is on the right. I may look and see where other pilots are putting their batteries.

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A.K.A. ben_beyer

Very cool, any flight video?

No, I was alone and I don't own a GoPro or similar device.

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A.K.A. ben_beyer

Last night I did a little work on my Dalton Extra 300. I'm hoping to be able to finish up the wings so I can set the incidences soon. Will see as I'm pretty busy with work.

I needed to plane and sand to match the taper of the wing the trailing edge material on the right wing. After I get the balsa planed down, I of course switched to sand paper. To avoid messing up or thinning the skin, I put down masking tape. When I start sanding, I use two pieces because I tend to get aggressive. This way if I sand some of the top layer down, I can still easily pull it up without all the little bits that stick. Once I get closer to where it needs to be, I go back to one piece.

Also with my wing cores, I noticed on the front leading edge at the wing tips, it curved in about 1/16". So I added a piece of balsa to make up the difference. I noticed this on the left wing but only after I had sanded everything flush.

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A.K.A. ben_beyer

Well, the right wing of my Dalton 300 is ready to go for setting the incidences. I used my 22" sanding bar with 220 grit sandpaper and just slowly worked the edge down. I broke the leading edge into 4 different sections and worked them differently to get a nice even taper to the wing tip.

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A.K.A. ben_beyer

Wow, very cool to see that take shape!

I've been working on shaping the leading edge of the left wing. For one of the 1/2" strips of LE material, I had some glue on the material. I believe my plan was to put that on the back side against the foam core and somehow things got turned around. So I've been working again the glue residue and decided just to sand it down completely tonight rather than fight it and take off too much balsa on either side. This left me with some flat spots on the LE so marked the sides of them with a sharpie and just put some balsa filler on it. I'll sand it down tomorrow on another time and I'm hopefully going to be able to get the incidences set this weekend.

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A.K.A. ben_beyer

Well it was another windy weekend and I had to work and go to a wedding. I did manage to get some work done on my 40%er. I was hoping to set the incidence for the wings, but I had to order a 3/16"x18" drill bit. I could find an 18" bit that was 1/4" or bigger but not the 3/16" that I needed for doing the wings. I decided that I could go ahead and do the horizontal stabs.

For the first time since I've had this kit, I put both wings and both horizontal stabs on the fuse. However, I discovered that I needed to cut 1 7/8" off of the carbon stab tube. It was the same length as the phenolic so no big surprise there. I used my Aeroperfect meter to zero for the top of the fuse and then measure the angle on the tail. I drilled the holes for stab retention first and when I went to drill for the anti-rotation pin, I discovered a normal 1/4" drill bit is just barely long enough to make a small dimple.

I'll get a longer 1/4" drill bit tomorrow or the next day and go about finishing the stabs. I may have to open up the holes for the bolts that hold the horizontal stabs to the fuse to make sure I get the incidence to 0. I had to drill at a small angle so they're probably off by 0.25 degrees. It's very close though and the holes I drilled are only for retention of the stab anyways.

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A.K.A. ben_beyer

I didn't have time to get everything set up again so I just worked on odd jobs. One is a messed up part on the front of the motor box. This happened when I moved from central TX to west TX. I just cleaned it up, cut pieces close to what size was needed and glued them in. I plan on wrapping the front of the motor box with some carbon fiber cloth or something similar to help maintain strength.

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A.K.A. ben_beyer

Dang, that's a big airplane.

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Chris Boultinghouse