The Final Wingo Entry

This is it. I finally can fly the Wingo. It really was a nice flyer all along. I just needed to ignore the instructions given in the book.

Here’s what worked:

Battery pack all the way forward.

Hand launch at only ½ throttle.

Gentle toss into the wind.

When I gave it a toss it floated gently away from my hand. No problem at all. I just fly it like the Firebird XL. I can even ignore the elevator if I want. But, since I had the elevator, why not try a couple of loops? Yes, it will do it – barely.

Notes for the future:

The problem had solely to do with giving it full throttle on hand launch. It wanted to climb and stall immediately. With ½ throttle it wants to gently float ahead allowing plenty of time for my right hand to reach the controls – then throttle up and away it goes.

I think the center of gravity is too far forward with the battery all of the way ahead. The plane wants to lumber and not climb out well. Also, the crazy thing is so full of glue that it probably weighs a lot more.

Another thing I noticed is that with all of the gluing I did, the fuselage is no longer straight with the tail. This also makes the wing out of alignment. I realized how bad it was when I trimmed it for straight flight. After landing, I saw that the rudder was deflected about 10 degrees to make it fly straight. This has to add a lot of drag!

Will this really be the final entry on the Wingo? Well, I have some modifications in mind. I’ll straighten the fuse of course, but how about a camera mount? Maybe I’ll add a servo and a hatch to drop some parachute men or a flour bomb. As usual I have more ideas than time, but I’ll let you know!