[Drew]

An update on the deporn model I christend with the rego "2-FUGLY". It actually flew quite well. THe fact that the wheels and wing were only retained with rubber bands made adjustment of COG trivial. Even with COG a bit off, it worked quite well.
The negatives:
1. I made the elevator about half the size it needed to be to get suitable authority. Easily fixed by gluing another strip of depron to the top of the exisiting control surface.
2. Depron is too flexible and soft to rely on for mounting servos - the elevator servo worked loose to the point where I was holding full elevator just for straight, level flight. Reinforcing with a small sheet of balsa significantly improves this.
3. Undercarriage which is not properly fixed to the fuse moves as soon as you do the first bump oin the ground and this results in a different balance - nose-overs on taxi-ing.
4. Depron, whilst adeqaute for flight forces folds as soon as the nose hits the ground. I have a video of an attempt at taxi-ing and I'm pretty sure the tail folded all the way over to the wing! Once folded, all inherent strength goes out the window.

So, a couple of non-optimal landings have resultesd in scrapping the fuse. The wing is still good and proven so I'm probably going to try fitting it to a stick fuse for the next fugly installment. .