FLIGHT TESTING CONTINUES ON SPRING 2005

During winter 04..05 I made electric trim for elevator and added electric fuel pump for back up. Trim is working OK and it was worth of effort to add it. Now I can trim this plane to fly hands off. I'm getting used to this very high aileron force compared to other control forses, but I'm not saying that it's good. It still is annoying but every possible solutions seems to mean lot of work, so I proseed like it is for now on. Other thing that happened was that one of those Al-pipes that hangs on tail got broken already after 4 hours in air. So now I'm made my mind to change those to wires.

Engine has been working OK, and I made couple of touch and goes. Plane hadles easily on takeoffs and landings, but you need to be fast with your feets on groud. Thats normal for taildragger... I also briefly tested flaps and those are working OK. Power off stall is almoust not a stall, not breaking down, just coming down nose almoust in level. I think that elevator movement is limiting factor here.

OK, now (11.5.05) I have 12,5 hours in this plane. I have tail wires working OK. We made one formation flying here in Salo area during quite strong thermals in air. It was really tiring to fly in these conditions as  this Koala needed constant consentration to this high aileron forse thing. So after that flight I made my mind to do something to this. I got some good toughts from fishnet peoples and here is my posting to that group after modifications and testflight: ------------------------------------- Here is some update to this high aileron forse item in SKoala. I changed pulleys (actually installed roller bearings to originals) to roller bearing ones and installed roller bearings to those aluminum "arms" on floor. I also moved those arms that I have to connect control stick to these aluminum pivot arms closer to pivot point of stick (to 2 inch from pivot point). (Please note that I have modification here, I already originally changed these connecting cables bethween stick and aluminum pivot arms to beared and adjustable push-pull rods.) Anyhow, what a difference in controll!! Now this plane feels like it should. It is much more controllable and forse needed is much much smaler. Result from these considerable small changes is really good. Also more movement to stick for aileron controll is good, because now both elevator and aileron movements are about in line. Ailerons still need more forse than elevator, but not much. Turns are easier to do and I even felt comfortable in yesterdays windy weather. So thaks to Bird, Dulinsky and others to point out these possibilities to improvements. For those who are still building I recomend to consider these modifications. But please note that these experimental planes are "one of a kind" planes and what works for one may not work for other... ------------------------------------------

This picture explains modifications that I made to reduce aileron controll force. This made significant difference for "controll harmony".

So, now I have 12,5 hours of flight and I'm geting feel of this bird. It's about time to add more weight to cocpit and test how things are going with near cross weight...

But before I can ask someone to take a ride with me I tought that it would be nice to have something else than only plywood to sit on. So I sew some cowers for seats. Actually those look suprisingly good considering that I haven't made that kind of thing before. These took time some 20 hours to do.

PS. now 26.5.05 I have 15 hours in plane, and that control improvement feels good...

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