I know why she nose dived into the dirt.....

After building a few free flight gliders with the left overs of my project, it occurred to me that there was something totally wrong with all of my builds.

Is it the angle of incidence, or angle of attack on the horizontal stabilizer?
I found out by messing around with the scrappers, and having to put a paper elevator on them, to make them fly.....

Anyway a little tinkering later, I have adjusted the HS on the Swift, so that it is level with the main wing, not sure if this is correct, but should be able to fine tune it using the elevator when I do eventually take it out again.

Here are the little gliders, they fly quite well, wind is supposed to be gusting up to 80mph tonight though so wont be doing much flying, will take them out when it calms down a little.

I have learned so much building her, it's been fun and I have enjoyed solving the problems as they arrived. I definitely have the bug now, will definitely have to learn to fly, might build a trainer next....

Before and after shots below....
Before and after she smashed her face into the dirt again lol.....
I had her perfectly balanced, she rolled to the left again and nose dived. Anybody got any ideas????

where is the cg on it? did you use a cg calculator to find the correct cg?

The CG is supposed to be 4.61 cm from the leading edge according to this calculator...>>>
http://adamone.rchomepage.com/cg_calc.htm

Not sure how accurate it is, I will rebuild her again, move the cg back a little try again right after I have built another wing and repaired the other damage...:P

I will also get the tape measure out again, and double check that I have correctly entered all the sizes into the calculator...

maybe a motor will help for the power to get up in the air.

We have the technology to rebuild her....:P
Been having a go at repairing her it's remarkable how much quicker you can do something if you have done it before a few times, I have also started on my trainer, Cessna 195, probably not a good plane for a novice builder, but I am just about keeping up with the plans. All balsa this time....
Few more pics, because I know people like looking at pics...

I will never trust that online CG calculator again....
The CG is actually nearer 7.4cm from the LE and NOT 3.61 as suggested by the on line calculator.

Anyway, after another failed flight I decided to glue, stick and tape the wing together as a temporary fix, and throw it taking one battery out at a time and patching her up between flights, to come to this conclusion.
I have braced the new (broken) wing and hope it holds up, then I will skin it and fine tune the CG.

She actually flew, and flew straight and good, even with the broken wing. If the repair doesn't hold up I will start again from scratch and rebuild her from the bottom up, now that I know what I am dealing with. I will also make detailed plans, if anybody else fancies having a go at making her....

If anybody has a reliable CG calculator I would be most grateful, not sure I want to go through this every time I build a new plane.....

very nice I cant wait fo rthe plans I think I would like to try this one.

ok guy's I need some help...
She is gliding nicely now, upside down....

I launched her a couple of times from down low, the first time she caught a slight breeze and lifted a little then glided nicely back down to earth, second time she flew nice and straight and glided down to earth sliding along on her belly to a nice gentle stop...

With this in mind I decided to launch her properly off the side of a hill local to us, great she took off lovely, started to lift, then rolled 180 and glided back down to earth.....

So I trimmed the ailerons, walked back up the hill and launched her again, exactly the same thing.

I am getting to thinking here that this is pilot error, and my reactions aren't quick enough to hit the ailerons at the right time to stop the roll, and it is a smooth roll very graceful, but I may be trying to run here before I can walk.

Maybe time to go back to the drawing board and build a plane with a top mounted wing.....

OK here goes, part one of the plans, please excuse the rough drawing, but it is as near to scale as I can get it, I am drawing up the wing layout at the moment, that will follow shortly, I am making a few changes so bear with me.....
It was a toss up between longer fuselage or bigger VS, I added some balsa strips onto the VS and it doesn't seem to alter the aesthetics, so I'm sticking with that. For my sanity, I am building some dihederal into the wings, which consequently, will be as one complete wing this time round 2.75deg, I am also building washout into the wing.
The fuselage will be slightly skinnier and I am looking into a more satisfactory way to mount the aileron servos. I have completely redesigned the battery compartment, and the rudder and elevator servos are going to mounted into the fuselage nearer to the tail so they can be controlled with wire instead of the bowden cables, which were ok, just ok lol.
Oh and I am still contemplating whether or not to leave the foam out and just build her from balsa, had all sorts of issues with weak points on the fuselage, will still probably use a solid foam nose cone though for impact resistance...

I will probably be moving those wing spars forward to allow for positioning of the aileron servos.
I think that's about it for now....

Here's the wing then.
The spars should read 1/8 x 3/16 and not 1/8 x 3/8.
And 760mm root to tip.....
fuse and tail feathers to follow, probably in a couple of days after I have finished the wing....