Gull winged

My Seagull had its first airing on Sunday morning. The build instructions recommended throwing it into a 15-20 mph wind and on Sunday we had 25+ mph. The first flight was traumatic. The gull dived as if the tarmac on the road below was a sea full of fish. I reluctantly applied more and more up elevator until I was holding in full up - this leveled the flight out and I managed to head back to the lower part of the main slope at Frocester downwind and stuck it in beak first! I had to re-glue the clear plastic fin on one of the elevons and then re-adjusted the threaded linkages - lengthening each by about 3mm.

The 2nd flight was straight and level - the gull just needed more reflex
The gull behaved quite well and flew very quickly, if it was slowed down too much it sort of did a half-roll, stalled and dived sideways, I suppose this is its version of a tip stall. All in all it looked very realistic in the air.
Phil managed to capture everything in his usual diplomatic manner. He said something like ... "It looks very good and realistic in the air -BUT- on the ground the paint job looks quite amateurish." Bloody cheek! Talk about the pot calling the kettle black! I retorted that it had taken me about 10 minutes to get the paint job to the finished stage. (I was going to paint feathers on it but at 4 metres away you couldn't have seen them anyway!)
All the flights after the trimming flight were really good fun rolls were pretty shabby

- I bet a real gull could do them no better, loops needed a lot of speed and sky to stop it stalling and flipping over at the top. Inverted - forget inverted - just like a real gull.

It took me a long time from delivery to completion but the end result was not disappointing. I look forward to flying it in formation with Mike's eagle!
Chairman Bryan