New Years Day

Yesterday was beautiful - no wind, sunny, 45° - a perfect day to test fly my new Skyray. I had made some modifications outlined here and I was anxious to see if they were improvements over the stock design.
Checked elevator nuetral and control movement and everything looked good. Took some pictures "just in case" (not that I was worried about CRASHING) and launched for first flight. Airplane took off fine but was WAY oversensitive on the controls and flying much too fast for my reflexes, so I held on for dear life (the airplane's life, not mine) until the engine quit, then greased it in for a perfect landing. I made some adjustments to the engine and elevator throw, and the second flight was much more managable. It still needs work though, so I decided to call it a day. Even with only two flights I learned some valuable lessons.
First of all I made 2 very serious mistakes and I'm lucky that one of them didn't cost me the airplane. One, I forgot to check the balance. Two, I forgot to check the position of the adjustable leadouts and ensure they were tight. EITHER of these issues could have easily resulted in a crash, and neither even occured to me until I was cleaning the airplane.
As for the elevator movement, I put the pushrod in the middle hole, the same place I had it on my stock Skyray. It didn't occure to me that the larger elevator might require less throw. Since I wasn't planning on any stunting on the first flights any way, I should have started on the outer most hole, adjusting inward as needed.
Finally, I should have spent some time experimenting with the needle setting. I had changed the muffler and prop, which of course (duh!!!) changes the way the engine runs. Since it sounded "OK" when it started, I didn't even mess with it, just launched - at way too high RPM's. On the second flight I went back to my original prop and richened the needle about half a turn, which helped considerably.
In spite of my miss-steps, the airplane flies well. I think with some tweaking, it will be a beautifly flying airplane to learn stunt with.

Cheers,
Ken