GWS FW-190 Maiden

A few years ago I picked up a GWS FW-190 kit when they first came out.  The FW-190 is one of my favorite planes and I had to have it.  I could not leave it stock and just have fun.  I had to modify it.  I went about adding mechanical retracts, split flaps, filled and glassed the airframe, changed the cowl to be closer to scale and added some detail to the cockpit.  Well time got away from me and I jumped on and off the project over the past few years.  I finally decided I had been putting it off long enough and sat down to finish it.  It came in at a portly 37 ounces and was on the edge of being tail heavy.

My friend Mike and I decided we were going to go maiden a couple planes and set aside an afternoon that looked like it would be decent.  We loaded everything up and headed to the field.  We figured that we'd get things setup and charge a few packs and mid evening the wind would calm down to a calm 5mph.  Well it did calm down but not much.  It was still close to 10mph but it was down the runway.  The sun was setting and I was not going home to wait longer.  So I let her roll down the runway and off she went.  It flew well but needed some aileron trim.  I did a number of circuits, tested the roll rate and then started getting ready to see how she would land.  I tested the flaps and they were very effective but made the plane balloon quite a bit.  I had dialed in some elevator with the flaps but not enough.  I dropped the gear and started in a landing pattern.  It started to settle in nice but around 5-7 feet from the ground it would get very pitch sensitive.  I made about 10 passes working in the flaps and some down trim.  Each time it would get close but either start to stall early or ballon on me.  I finally got the timing down and got her on the ground with no damage.

I'm going to re-check the CG as I feel it is still a little tail heavy.  I'll give her another go on a calmer day and see how the landings go.  But I was happy with how it went even with the crazy landing attempts.