[smuzz]

Date: 3 Apr 11
Conditions: Ideal - no wind at all, excellent visibility, perfectly mown strip
Aircraft: SkyAngels (JPower) Mig 15
Pilot: "Junior" Murray

Inspired by MickeyT's example at Parramatta Park on Oz day, we decided to get one. Building was a non-event with everything pretty much self-explanatory. Some of the parts could have offered a better fit, but not too bad. For the maiden, I elected to leave the drop-tanks and the 30-mm cannon (which is what I think it is) off the outside of the airframe - just wanted to get the important things attended to.
Configured with the stock 50mm fan+motor and ESC, we added an Orange receiver and a Rhino 1050 mAh 3S 20C battery. The cockpit area is cramped, with the receiver taking up a lot of space. I've got some re-working to do there yet as I need to move the receiver away from the elevator servo arm. We got the battery in for a motor-run test and discovered that the fan shroud was preventing the fan from spinning at all. It was glued in and pushed out of its circular shape (thanks for the help Gazz). Removed the fan and shroud and glued it in with 5-minute epoxy after repositioning it a little better in the duct. Fired it all up and all was well. We made sure we had no more than the recommended control throws, a lesson from the T-33!
The first two hand-launches demonstrated that we had forgotten that EDF jets need a little time to accelerate as Junior was giving it way too much elevator and causing a stall. The intake was a little bruised after these and will need some elapor therapy during the week. But, on to the flight - Kieran reminded us to give it a little time to get on step from the hand-launch before yanking on the sticks. This did the job and it was off. Very noisy but its flight characteristics were pretty good and it looked reasonably scale. Flew the battery to exhaustion and dead-sticked the landing - the surprise was how much it liked to glide in on the approach.
Got the battery out of the plane and on to the charger - it was at 3.3V per cell, so I don't think it will be serving us long into the future. Anyway, we recharged it and flew two more flights later in the day because the conditions were superb.

Overall Impressions: It does fly well when you give it a chance. We think we might invest in a cheap bungey because the hand-launches were a bit marginal. I'm going to re-furbish the nose and we'll be back at it. A bit difficult to compare it against the T-33 just yet, because the T-33 didn't have the advantage of a reasonably good battery. I'll get back here with an update some time.